- ʿAlī Badr (?, Iraq) – Bābā Sārtre (2001, English trans. Papa Sartre, 2009). This novel retrospectively critiques, through systematic and shrewd satire, Iraqi existentialists of the 1960s. Exaggerated to absurdness is the protagonist ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, who presents himself as an intellectual, but who does not produce any writing at all (reference). After an successful study-period in France, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān returns to Iraq where he aims to establish an intellectual movement similar to that of Sartre in search for meaning in his own life, which he funds with his family’s wealth. The novel displays an amusing adaption of Sartre’s existentialism to Iraqi consumerism.
- Kamel Daoud’s (1970-, Algeria) debut novel written in French titled Meursault, contre-enquête (2013, English trans. The Meursault Investigation, 2015) is a retelling of Albert Camus’ 1942 novel L’Étranger from the point of view of ‘The Arab’ that Camus’ hero Meursault murders. In Daoud’s novel he is given a name: Musa, whose story is told narrated years after the murder by his brother, Harun (reference). Rather than Algeria being a background for Camus’ existential questions, Algeria after independence becomes an existential question itself as it descends in violence (reference). It won the 2014 Prix François-Mauriac and the 2014 Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt in 2015.
- Ḥajī Jābir (1976-, Eritrea) – Rāmbū al-Ḥabashī (‘The Abyssinian Rimbaud’, 2021). This novel tells the story of a woman from the Harari people, Almāz, who accompanied the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud during his final years in Harar, Ethiopia. They embark on a romantic relationship and the novel describes how the two get to know each other and each others culture and language (reference) (also in W: Outside of the Arab World: Sub-Saharan and West Africa: Ethiopia).
- Ibrāhīm Naṣrallah (1954-, Jordan / Palestine) – Zamān al-Khuyūl al-Bayḍāʾ (2007, English trans. Time of White Horses, 2012). In nearly 600 pages, Naṣrallah traces the effects of Zionist colonialism from the 1880s on the life in the fictional Palestinian village of Hadiya, showing the colonial prehistory of the Nakbah under the Ottoman and British empire (reference). It was written within his broader project Palestinian Comedy, an eight-novel series in the spirit of Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine (see for further description in I: Ideologies and Political Movements: Zionism and 1948 al-Nakbah).
- Hānī al-Rāhib (1939 – 2000, Syria) – al-Mahzūmūn (‘The defeated’, 1961). Written when al-Rāhib was a twenty-two-year-old student in Damascus, this semi-autobiography narrates the story of Bashīr, a poor student who migrates to the university campus in Damascus. Having lost his faith in God, and not believing in the pan-Arab discourse, he resorts to reading French authors, among others Albert Camus’ Caligula and Les Justes and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mouches. Nevertheless, Bashīr and his colleagues feel that life is pointless in a context of everyday life in which pan-Arab ideals and basic human solidarity fail (reference).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Yaseem Hanoosh. 2012. “Contempt: State Literati vs. Street Literati in Modern Iraq.” JAL 43: 372-408, p. 387
- Laila Lalami. 2015. “‘The Meursailt Investivation’, by Kamel Daoud.” www.nytimes.com, 8 June 2015 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/books/review/the-meursault-investigation-by-kamel-daoud.html (last accessed 7 December 2022)
- Youtube Channel: The Novelist – al-Riwāʾī. 2021. “Murājiʿa Riwāyat ‘Rāmbū al-Ḥabashī’ li-Ḥajjī Jābir”, 26 March 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvKK1u2xRGs (last accessed 12 January 2024)
- Karim Mattar. 2014. “Out of time: colonial history in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s ‘Time of White Horses’.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 50(2): 176-188, p. 180
- Yoav di-Capua. 2018. No Exit: Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization. Chicago University Press: Chicago, p. 122-3