{"id":5658,"date":"2011-04-02T12:37:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T08:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=5658"},"modified":"2011-04-03T15:34:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T11:34:59","slug":"novels-of-the-revolution-what-will-they-look-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/novels-of-the-revolution-what-will-they-look-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Novels of the Revolution: What will they look like?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today in Al Masry Al Youm, <\/em>I have a piece about \u201c\u2018Revolutions everywhere\u2019: Egypt\u2019s novelists shift the red lines<\/a>\u201d discussing the past, present, and future of censorship and self-censorship in Egyptian literature.<\/p>\n

In it, Egyptian novelist Ibrahim Farghali shares his hope that the new period will give authors more freedom to discuss religion, sex, sectarianism, women\u2019s liberation, illicit relationships, homosexuality\u2026well, you name it. But the January 25 movement is likely to affect Egypt\u2019s literary scene in another way. Like the 1919 and 1952 revolutions, it\u2019s likely to inspire a number of novels, plays, stories, and poems.<\/p>\n

Several prominent authors have already given a nod toward writing a #Jan25 novel. Egyptian novelist Ahmed Alaidy<\/a> said, in The Washington Post, <\/em>that he had been working on a novel about an imagined revolution that he will need to rewrite. Novelist and political commentator Alaa al-Aswany has promised to write a novel of the revolution. And Libyan novelist Ibrahim al-Koni told Qantara <\/em>magazine that, \u201cThe idea of writing about these events has befallen me like a disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sort of literature will this produce?<\/p>\n

Ibrahim Farghali, critic and author of The Smiles of Saints, Children of Gebelawi<\/em>:<\/strong> Certainly the revolution [will have] a very big impact on the literature, and it\u2019s obvious that many of the writes will attempt to document the revolution and take advantage of the subject in their novels, because the days of the revolution really were full of drama, exotic, contradictions and tough days, violence and irony and so on.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Naje<\/strong>, cultural journalist and author of Rogers: <\/em><\/strong>First I wish there will not be many novels about the revolution. I believe using the revolution as topic for the literary will lead to kitsch literature, and will turn that great moment to silly stories.<\/p>\n

Mansoura Ezz Eldin, IPAF-shortlisted novelist, author of Maryam\u2019s Maze, Beyond Paradise: <\/em><\/strong>Maybe one the revolution\u2019s influences will be a blooming of a sort of dictator\u2019s literature as in Latin America. What we discovered about Mubarak\u2019s regime after the revolution is beyond any imagination. It was more like a gang than a regime and all this tales about corruptions and how they ruled the country may provoke writers to make use of it.<\/p>\n

More on red lines:<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an essay on red lines in Daily News Egypt,<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in which the author suggests that \u201cin this period of heightened tension, certain issues [red lines about religion, I assume] are probably better left unchallenged.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s an article today in The National: <\/em>Art and life in the new Egypt<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Artists may still experience some forms of censorship, including self-censorship, but the whole scene will be different, Labib added. \u201cTake for example the fact that you\u2019ll be able to take photographs in a public place without being asked to obtain a permit first. How great is that?\u201d<\/p>\n

And on reading revolutions:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Al Ahram Weekly, <\/em>the new chair of the General Egyptian Book Organization, Ahmed Megahed, discusses his plans for the GEBO. He says, among other things, \u201cTo compensate Egyptian publishers for the cancellation of this year\u2019s Cairo International Book Fair\u2026three smaller fairs will be organised by the GEBO over the coming six months in Aswan and Ismailia.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: With many of the ‘red lines’ now swept away novelists throughout the Arab world are free to touch on subjects hitherto out of bounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":5659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,5],"tags":[2692,3645,4483,125,18300,5776,5773,5774,2464,18332,18291,126,4706,104,2627],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}