- Kafā al-Zuʿaybī (1965-, Jordan) – Laylā Wa al-Thalj wa Ludmīllā (‘Layla, the snow and Ludmilla’, 2007). With on the background a collapsing Soviet Union, Laylā studies medicine in St. Petersburg where her communist father sent her to (reference). She is friends with Ludmīllā who lives a free life, while she herself is still influenced by the situation in her home country, Jordan. There, disappointed with the achievements of Arab revolutions, her father becomes increasingly religious. Laylā thus finds herself between two fires, that of her home country and her patriarchal father, and her life in Russia and love for the Russian doctor Andrīyyā (also in W: Outside the Arab World: Russia and the former Soviet Union).
- Maḥmūd al-Bayyātī (1949 – 2014, Iraq) – Raqs ʿalā al-Māʾ: Aḥlām Waʿah (‘Dancing on Water: Difficult Dreams’, 2006). An Iraqi poet living in Czechoslovakia re-evaluates his longstanding commitment to Marxist politics after the fall of Soviet communism in Eastern Europe. The poet moves to Sweden and finds a wallet containing a large sum of money. He re-imagines his new exile in Sweden through his search for the owner of the wallet and through the related question of how to distribute the money (reference).
- Muḥammad Makhzangī (1950-, Egypt) – Laḥazāt Gharaq Jazīrat al-Ḥūt (2006, English trans. Memories of a Meltdown: An Egyptian between Moscow and Chernobyl, 2009). Set for its largest part during four seasons in Kiev in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, this novel stages the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a series of personal losses. Makhzangī, who traveled to Kiev on a Soviet post-doctoral fellowship, examines his own attachment to the idea of a utopian society that the Soviet order represents. Its collapse translates into a painful collapse of a personal illusion (reference).
- Ḥayfā Zangana (1950-, Iraq) – Nisāʾ ʿalā Safar (2001, English trans. Women on a Journey between Baghdad and London, 2006). The writer narrates the ideological and social void that Iraqi exiled writers who were affiliated with the Iraqi Communist Party experienced depicting the lives of a group of Iraqi women in London (reference).
- Dunā Ghālī (1963-, Iraq) – ʿIndamā Tastauqiẓ al-Rāʾiḥah (‘When the Scent Awakens’, 2006), describes a community of Iraqi migrants in Denmark and their sense of displacement from Iraq and from the Iraqi Communist Party (reference).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- ʿAbd al-Sitār Nāṣṣir. 2009. “Inhiyār Rūsiyāh wa ʿĀdāt al-Sharq al-ʿArabī: Laylā wa al-Thalj wa Lādmīllā fī Ḍiyāfah Kafā al-Zuʿaybī.” www.addustour.com, 5 June 2009, https://www.addustour.com/articles/476260-%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%87%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A7-%D9%88%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%82-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%8A-%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%89-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AB%D9%84%D8%AC-%D9%88%D9%84%D9%88%D8%AF%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%84%D8%A7-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B6%D9%8A%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%A9-%D9%83%D9%81%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B2%D8%B9%D8%A8%D9%8A?desktop=1 (last accessed 23 November 2021)
- Johanna Sellman. 2016. “The Ghosts of Exilic Belongings: Maḥmūd al- Bayyātī’s Raqs ʿalā al- māʾ: aḥlām waʿrah and Post- Soviet Themes in Arabic Exile Literature”, JAL 47, pp. 111-137