- Hudā Barakāt (1952-, Lebanon) – Ḥārath al-Miyāh (1998, English Trans. The Tiller of Waters, 2004). Set in a destroyed Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, this novel narrates the story of Niqūla Mitri, a fabric tradesman suffering from hallucinations, and his beloved Shamsah, a Kurdish maid. As he struggles to adapt to the new reality surrounding him, he sees the world through the code of cloth: from the intimacy of linen to the most impersonal of synthetics, allowing him to weave his life story with thousands of years of the human relationship with fabric. This novel won the Naguib Mahfouz price for literature in the year 2004 (also in 1975 – 1988 Lebanese Civil War).
- Tahar Djaout (1954 – 1993, Algeria) – Les Vigiles (1991, English trans. The Watchers, 2002). Hero of this novel is the young inventor Mahfoud, who spends his nights working on a modernised loom. However, one of his neighbours who spots his lights being on in the nighttime, falsely accuses him of plotting against the government. When he tries to register his invention, he is confronted with an ineffective bureaucratic machine riddled with paranoia. This novel won the Prix Méditerranée in 1991 (also G: Dysfunctional Governance: Government (bureaucracy) and the individual).
- Ḥuzāmah Ḥabāyb (1965-, Palestine) – Mukhmal (2016, English trans. Velvet, 2019). This novel tells the tragic love stories of several Palestinian women living in the Baqʿa refugee camp in Jordan. Velvet is the favorite fabric of one of the characters, Qamār, a widowed tailoress who becomes the protégé of the novel’s heroine: Hawāʾ. Through tailoring and their shared love for soft and smooth velvet fabric, the two find a way to deal with the ultraconservative and patriarchic system they live in. The novel won the 2017 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature (also in M: Movement: (E) migration, Refugees and Return: Refugees in Arab Countries).
- Imān Ḥumaydān Yūnis (1956-, Lebanon) – Tūt Birrī (2001, English trans. Wild Mulberries, 2010). A coming-of-age story of a young girl, Sārah, living in Lebanon in the 1930s in a Druze village, ʿAyn Ṭahūn, where mulberry silkworms are massively produced. It depicts the decline of the long-standing silk industry “as a trope for the putrefaction of the nation’s traditional ideals” (reference). Sārah, having been raised by a shaykh and an aunt, takes the reader on a quest to find her mother, through which the novel portrays the feminine world of the Druze (also in M: Minorites: Druze).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Yasmine Khayyat. 2008. “Younes Humaydan, Iman, ‘Wild Mulberries’. Translated from the Arabic by Michelle Hartman.” JAL 39: 311-320, p. 318