- Albert Cossery (1913 – 2008, Egypt) – Mendiants et Orgueilleux (1955, English trans. Proud Beggars, 1981). This novel centers the stoic former philosophy university professor who voluntarily turned into a beggar, Gohar. Gohar settles to work and life in a brothel where drugs is abundant. He is also a drug addict and one day, while he is looking for his supplier in a brothel, he encounters the dead prostitute Arbana. A police investigation led by Nour El Dine follows, in which Gohar is a suspect. As the investigation unfolds, the novel describes the lifestyle of Gohar and his friends, as well as the constrains of bureaucracy put on Nour El Dine (reference). The novel was made into a 1991 movie with the title Shaḥātīn wa Nubalāʾ (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: The Marginalized).
- Najīb Maḥfūẓ (1911 – 2006, Egypt) – Thartharah Fawq al-Nīl (1966, English translation Adrift on the Nile, 1993) describes a group of people who are estranged from worldly affairs and spend most of their time smoking hashish on a houseboat on the Nile. The group consists of several members that each represent different sections of the middle class, such as the protagonist Anīs, a lonely man whose wife and daughter died and who was fired from his job for submitting a blank report (he had written the report under the influence of drugs and didn’t realize his pen was out of ink). Other members are a film star, a lawyer, a journalist, a short story writer, and two more civil servants. When the film star runs someone over by car, everybody except Anīs take the cowardly way out (reference).
- Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī’s (1911 – 2004, Tunisia) – Mawlid al-Nisyān (‘Birth of oblivion’, 1945). Made up of seven chapters, this novel explores the human desire for beauty and life fulfillment through the story of Madīn and Laylā (reference). They travel to a village known for healing sickness through magic, where Madīn finds help with a healer, Ranjihād. She explains to him the meaning of time and existence. Under influence of the sorceress, Madīn wishes to achieve eternal life, but he gradually becomes insane and sees the alcoholic drink ʿAraq as his only medicine (reference). He slowly starts to estrange from the world around him and eventually does not even recognize his wife Laylā.
- Mīkhāʾīl Rūmān’s (1927 – 1973, Egypt) play al-Dukhān (‘The smoke’, 1962). This novel deals with the subject of drug-addiction and struggle against political tyranny. It is set in the aftermath of the 1952 revolution by Jamal Abdel Nasser and criticizes his oppressive practices that degraded human existence to its lowest level (reference). Hero of the play is a young man named Ḥamdī, who turns to hashish when he cannot find a job (also in 1954: Nasser comes to power in Egypt).
- ʿAbd al-Salām al-Sharīḥī (1983-, Yemen) – Dāliyā (‘Dalia’, 2015). This novel describes the difficult lives of women in the remote Yemeni countryside through the story of Dāliyā (reference). It follows Dāliyā’s life as she grows up in the rural area, moves to a city, and then returns to her small village. In addition to portraying rural life and the ways in which women are oppressed, the novel also describes the widespread use of Qat in the countryside, beginning at an early age, and the severe addition is causes (reference) (also in V: Village and Rural Life).
Refrences:
- Scott Esposito. 2012. “Proud Beggars: plumbing the extremes of pride and poverty.” www.thenationalnews.com, 17 February 2012 https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/books/proud-beggars-plumbing-the-extremes-of-pride-and-poverty-1.372117 (last accessed 25 July 2023)
- Hilary Kilpatrick. 1992. “The Egyptian novel from Zaynab to 1980.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 223-270, p. 257
- Faryāl Jabūrī Ghazūl. 1997. “al-riwāyah al-ṣūfiyyah fī al-adab al-maghāribī.” AJCP 17: 28-53, p. 38, 39
- Anwaar Abdelkhalik Abdalla. 2014. “A New Perspective on Mikhail Ruman’s ‘Smoke’ in ‘A President of His Own Republic’.” Arab Stages 1(1)
- ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Muqarmī. 2015. “‘Dāliyah’ … Riwāyah Takshif Maʾsāh al-Nisāʾ fī Yaman.” www.aljazeera.net, 24 March 2015 https://www.aljazeera.net/culture/2015/3/24/%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A7-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D9%83%D8%B4%D9%81-%D9%85%D8%A3%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%86 (last accessed 6 May 2023)