Beirut by the Book

A well-known Arabic proverb has it that the Egyptians write, the Lebanese publish, and the Iraqis read. It’s a gross simplification, to be sure, for in reality there is no such neat distribution of literary pursuits. Indeed, Lebanon, which has one of the highest adult literacy rates in the Arab world (close to 90%), boasts its fair share of writers and readers! Yet there is some truth to the oft-quoted observation, if not simply because it highlights the important and historical role of Lebanon—through its capital Beirut—as the Arab world’s publishing hub for quality books of all kinds.

Western publishers wanting to tap into the Arab world’s literary scene often translate books that were first published in Beirut, even if by non-Lebanese authors. For example, Penguin Press HC is publishing Rajaa Alsanea’s novel Girls of Riyadh, providing a glimpse into the frustrated lives of a clique of upper-class young women in Saudi Arabia. And San Francisco’s City Lights recently put out Sinan Antoon’s novella I‘jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody, which portrays the nightmare of Saddam’s Iraq. Alsanea is Saudi and Antoon Iraqi, but their books were published in Lebanon; Alsanea’s was subsequently banned in Saudi Arabia.

Many Lebanese writers are known to readers in the US and the wider English-speaking world. Though it is common to cite mystical poet Gibran Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) and the versatile Amin al-Rihani (1876-1940) in this regard—due to their fame in both the Arab world and America—contemporary authors are not far behind. Novelists Elias Khoury, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Hoda Barakat, who write in Arabic, and French-language novelist Amin Maalouf, have all been translated into English. Novelist Nada Awar Jarrar and (Palestinian-Lebanese) memoirist Jean Said Makdisi write in English, and are indicative of a growing trend; Rawi Hage, whose novel De Niro’s Game won rave reviews in Canada and will soon be released by Steerforth Press in the US, is the latest example.

A lively debate on the role and relevance of Islam in modern societies has long been underway in the Arab literary world; the same can be said of more detailed issues concerning Islamic law. Fascinatingly, however, Beirut is a place where one can also find works by Western writers of Muslim origin who have decided to plunge into the debate. These include a number of polemical books familiar to Western readers.

Occasionally, these books are translated into Arabic, as with Irshad Manji’s The Trouble with Islam Today, which appeared under the more circumspect title Muslimoun wa Ahrar (loosely translated as “Muslims and Freethinkers”), courtesy of Cologne-based publishing house Al-Kamel Verlag; as an added cautionary measure, no translator is credited. More common is for the work to be sold in English—thereby lessening the potential for controversy. For example, I recently bought a copy of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s memoir, Infidel, from a local bookstore; her earlier collection of essays, The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam, is also available. Other books critical of Islam that hit the stands here include titles by Robert Spencer, Serge Trifkovic, and Oriana Fallaci. For an indictment of religion in general, you could pick up the just-arrived god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by the irrepressible Christopher Hitchens.

Few books are banned, and when they are it’s not just Islamic sensibilities that are at issue. A couple of years ago Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code was banned and all copies pulled off the shelves when the leaders of Lebanon’s Catholic communities protested the novel’s content. Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi’s study Who Was Jesus?: Conspiracy in Jerusalem, which questions longstanding Christian beliefs concerning the crystallization of Christianity as a religion, suffered a similar fate. Yet Salibi’s controversial The Bible Came From Arabia and its follow-up, Secrets of the Bible People, are available in English as well as Arabic translation, possibly because of an assumption that his claims concerning Old Testament place-names and geography do not affect Christianity directly. Again, polemical works can also be found. I recently came across Bertrand Russell’s essay Why I Am Not A Christian, and though I can’t say the same of Ibn Warraq’s Why I Am Not A Muslim—which was directly inspired by Russell’s book—I was nonetheless surprised at one point to find The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, a scholarly but controversial anthology edited by Ibn Warraq. This is particularly significant, as Arabic-language works questioning traditional Islamic historiography—including those by two Lebanese authors, the pseudonymous Abu Mousa al-Hariri and the assassinated Mustapha Jiha—are officially banned.

Interest in Israeli and Jewish subjects is high among the Lebanese, and this is reflected in the number of relevant Arabic-language original and translated books on the market. The quality of such books varies widely, as scholarly treatments of Israeli and Jewish history sometimes vie for space with anti-Semitic tracts. Like the US (but unlike much of Europe), Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is sold openly in Lebanon, with two publishing houses having put out separate translations; the Bisan edition notably includes a glowing foreword. There are also several versions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in circulation; more importantly, the notorious forgery is invariably presented by its editors as truth, as well as cause for the collective stigmatization of Jewry.

Yet this should not obscure the fact that many insightful works by and about Jews and Israelis are available in Beirut bookstores. Possibly because Al-Kamel Verlag (of Cologne, Germany), is managed by Iraqi poet Khalid al-Maaly, many of its authors are of Iraqi origin. Interestingly, this is the publishing house that reintroduced Iraqi Jews—most of whom left Iraq in 1950-51—to the Arab world, a phenomenon which has resulted in the availability in Beirut and a few other Arab cities of works by several major Iraqi Jewish writers. These include Israeli novelists like Sami Michael, Shimon Ballas, and the late Samir Naqqash (who—in contrast to Michael and Ballas—never made the switch from Arabic to Hebrew), as well as Canadian man-of-letters Naim Kattan, who writes in French. All the above writers grew up in Iraq, where most tried their hand at what would later become their profession. Other publishing houses tackling Middle Eastern Jewish subjects include the London-based Al-Warraq, which has published several works by former head of the Iraqi Jewish community Meer Basri (died 2006). These are available in bookstores here and are prominently displayed at the annual Beirut book fair, which features the output of publishing houses across the Arab world and beyond.

Along with the aforementioned Al-Kamel Verlag, Beirut-based Riad al-Rayyes Books publishes academic works investigating various approaches to sexuality (including same-sex erotica and practice) throughout Arab history, handily disproving generalized claims of Arab prudery. (Sexuality of a more visual nature can be found in the pages of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, which are sold legally in Lebanon—though adult mags geared toward women, gays, and lesbians are nowhere to be found.) While Riad al-Rayyes also puts out strictly political books, usually adhering to a traditional Arab nationalist line, Saqi Books—based in Beirut and London—publishes a range of titles representing diverse ideological views. Saqi publishes in both Arabic and English, and its annual catalogue includes scholarly works, intellectual polemics, and fiction, as well as highly uneven journalism on Middle Eastern and other topics.

Lebanon has often been a place of refuge for religious minorities and political dissidents fleeing persecution in neighboring countries; less dramatically, Lebanon provides a favorable atmosphere for Arab writers wishing to experiment with new styles and themes without fear of censorship. Syrian poet Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), often cited as a possible future recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, moved to Lebanon in the 1950s and became a Lebanese citizen. Together with Yusuf al-Khal, another Syrian-Lebanese poet, Adonis founded the innovative and controversial Shi‘r, a journal that revolutionized Arabic poetry in the 1960s, doing away with classical stylistic conventions and simultaneously introducing a host of distinctly non-Islamic themes. Later, Adonis founded and edited Mawaqif, an influential cultural and literary journal also published in Beirut. Another Syrian poet, the late Nizar Qabbani, also sought out the free and open atmosphere of Lebanon, and wrote many of his most famous poems in Beirut.

A number of controversial novels made their first appearance in Beirut. For example, future Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s Awlad Haratina (later translated as Children of Gebelawi and later still as Children of the Alley) was first serialized in an Egyptian newspaper in 1959. Mahfouz agreed not to have the religious allegory published in book form in Egypt, and selected a publishing house in Beirut (Al-Adāb) for publication. The book was duly banned in Egypt, and for decades the only commercially available Arabic-language version was the Beirut edition. It is perhaps no coincidence that another Egyptian novelist, Edwar al-Kharrat, chose Beirut for the publication of his first novel, Rama and the Dragon, depicting the forbidden love between a Coptic Christian man and a Muslim woman. That was in 1980; the novel and its author have since won recognition in Egypt. Indeed, in 2000, Edwar al-Kharrat received his country’s State Merit Award for his impressive oeuvre. And in 2002, the American University in Cairo Press published an English translation of Rama and the Dragon.

Curiously, however, Edwar al-Kharrat’s novels were among several works impounded by organizers of the Cairo book fair (the largest in the Arab world) earlier this year, neatly characterizing Egyptian ambivalence toward the author. In Egypt, works deemed offensive to Islamic sensibilities are often marginalized or banned outright; this affects foreign writers as well as Egyptians like al-Kharrat, feminist Nawal El-Saadawi, and previously even Mahfouz.

That the atmosphere in Lebanon is significantly freer makes all the difference insofar as the annual book fair is concerned, as well as that of the general state of publishing. Not only are censorship laws relatively lax, but cultural norms tend toward the liberal on the subject of freedom of expression. Direct criticism of Islam and Christianity and their respective symbols is theoretically prohibited, and a few specific works that question the orthodox religious historiography of either religion or assail one or another of Lebanon’s myriad religious sects have been banned. Yet there remains a good deal of leeway for critical authors focusing on religion. Most other subjects—including the sexual—are fair game, and rarely run into legal trouble. All this means that Beirut will continue to play a major role in Arabic-language publishing for the foreseeable future, providing opportunities not only for Lebanese authors, but also for non-conformists and dissenters across the Arab world.

--NBCC member Rayyan Al-Shawaf is a writer and freelance reviewer based in Beirut, Lebanon.