- Marwān ʿAbd al- ʿĀl (1957-, Lebanon / Palestine) – Īfān al-Filasṭīnī (‘Ivan the Palestinian’, 2011). Bin Hawāsh, a Tunisian who fled from the dictatorship of Bin ʿAlī and settled in Germany, struggles between his communist and socialist ideology and his traditional and Islamic background. This is shown for example in his refusal to marry his sister to a non-Muslim, swearing to Stalin that he will kill her if she does. The novel shows the characters disillusionment when he reaches Germany and realizes that the ideology he read about and supported in Tunis differs from reality. He then falls back to his traditional customs (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab world: West and Arab world: Europe: Germany).
- ʿAlī Aḥmad Bakāthīr’s (1910 – 1969, Egypt) play Mʾasāt al-ʾUdīb (1949, English trans. The Tragedy of Oedipus, 2006) reflects on the historical and politically influenced conflict between Islamists and the growing Marxist movement in the Arab world in the 1940s. Oedipus, a Marxists, fails to achieve social justice while his enemy, Tiresias, does succeed by suggesting that social justice can only be reached by the will of God (reference) (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Mythology and Legends: Greek Myths and legends: Oedipus). The English translation of the play appeared in The Arab Oedipus: Four Plays (2006, ed. Marvin Carlson).
- Rashīd Būjdirah (written elsewhere as Rachid Boudjedra, 1941-, Algeria) – Al-Tafakuk (‘The unweaving’, 1981). This novel depicts the communists’ contribution to the liberation war in Algeria. In the novel, two seemingly opposed characters are bound by a photograph: that of the elderly former soldier al-Ṭāhir, and the young female urban employee Salmā. Salmā’s patience and curiosity lead al-Ṭāhir to tell her his battle stories of the Algerian war. Al-Tafakuk is the first novel that Būjdirah wrote in Arabic. He translated the novel to French himself, with the title Démantèlement (‘Dismanteling’, 1982) (also in 1954 – 1962 French Algerian War and Algerian Independence).
- Ghāʾib Ṭuʿmah Farmān (1927 – 1995, Iraq) – Khamsat Aṣwāt (‘Five voices’, 1967) uses five narrators to portray Baghdad’s society following World War II, but before the 1958 revolution, showing the many tensions faced by the intelligentsia during that period (reference) (also in 1958 Coup in Iraq / 14 July Revolution).
- Ḥaydar Ḥaydar (1936 – 2023, Syria) – Walīymah li-Aʿshāb al-Baḥr (‘Feast for Seaweed’, 1984). This novel interweaves two narratives: the communist uprising in the Marshes of southern Iraq in 1968, and the daily realities of 1970s Algeria where the Iraqi communists live in exile, among them Mahdī Jawwād (reference). After the rise of the Baʾath regime in Iraq, Mahdī was jailed and tortured before escaping to Algeria, where life after independence did not correspond with the dreams of the revolution. The novel is a bitter portrait of revolutionary failure in the Arab world (reference). When re-published in 1999, the novel was met with protests by Islamists who claimed it was blasphemous, as the novel predicted the rise of Islamic fundamentalism (reference) (also in 1968 Baʿthist coup in Iraq).
- Ṣunʿallāh Ibrāhīm’s (1937 – 2025, Egypt) – Mudhakkirāt Sijn al-Wāḥāt (‘Notes from al-Wahat prison’, 2005). This book is a collection of the author’s prison notes first written on cigarette rolling paper. He spent five years in prison for his communist activities during Jamal Abdel Nasser’s presidentship. He describes instances of torture that he and his friends, some of them also famous writers such as Fuʾād Ḥaddād, went through. At the end of he novel, the author included a history of the Egyptian communist party. An annotated selection of this novel appeared in English translation in That Smell and Notes from Prison (2014) (also in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Prison Literature and Torture).
- Ḥabīb ʿAbd al-Rabb Surūrī (1956-, Yemen) – Ibnat Sūslūf (‘The daughter of Suslov’, 2014). Set at the seaport of Aden, Yemen, from the 1960s until the 21st century, protagonist of this novel feels attracted to the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Marxist party. When he meets her again years later, he is surprised to discover she has become a niqab-wearing devout Muslima. The novel also describes the historical setting of British colonisation and the creation of an independent Yemen (also in C: Cities: Yemen: Aden).
- Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb (1926 – 1964, Iraq) – Kuntu Shiyūʿiyyan (‘I used to be a communist’, 1959). This memoir by the Iraqi author al-Sayyāb, who was himself a communist in the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) until 1954, is a critical view of communism and illustrates the Iraqi political tides during the Cold War. Published first in 1959 as a collection of essays in the Baathist newspaper al-Ḥurriyya, it was edited in 2007 by Walīd Khālif Aḥmad Ḥasan and published as a book (reference).
- Arwā Ṣāliḥ (1951 – 1977, Egypt) – al-Mubtasarūn (1997, English trans. The Stillborn, 2018). Having been a member of the political bureau of the Egyptian Communist Workers Party (founded in the wake of the Arab – Israeli War and the Egyptian student movement of the early 1970s) the author in this book looks with critical eyes, combining her personal experience with intellectual analysis, at the Marxism of her generation and the role of militant intellectuals in the tragic failure of the communist project in Egypt (reference) (also in 1970 Death of Nasser – Sadat President of Egypt).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
ʿAbdu, Īlī. 2011. “Marwān ʿAbd al-ʿĀl ‘al-Filastīnī’.” www.al-akhbar.com July 20, 2011 https://al-akhbar.com/Literature_Arts/91812 (last accessed 26 January 2025)
- Mohammad Almohanna. 2016. “Greek Drama in the Arab World.” A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama, eds. Betine van Zyl Smit. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester, West Sussex, p. 370
- Roger Allen. 1992. “The Mature Arabic Novel Outside Egypt.” In Modern Arabic Literature. eds. Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 193-223, p. 217
- Sabry Hafez. 2000. “The Novel, Politics and Islam: Haydar Haydar’s ‘Banquet for Seaweed’.” New Left Review 5, p. 128, 131, 132
- Māhir Ḥassan. 2017. “‘Walīmah li-Aʿshāb al-Baḥr’… Riwāyah fī Muwājihat al-Jamīʿa” www.almasryalyoum.com, 26 June 2017 https://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/1154353 (last accessed 31 March 2019)
- Ursula Lindsay and Marcia Lynx Qualey, hosts. 2018. “Stillborn in Egypt, Fractured in Palestine.” Bulaq Podcast, The Arabist, 21 March 2018. https://www.sowt.com/episodes/bulaq-bwlq—stillborn-in-egypt-fractured-in-palestine (last accessed 26 January 2025)