- Rajāʾ ʿĀlim (1970-, Saudi Arabia) – Ṭawq al-Hamām (2010, English trans. The Dove’s Necklace, 2016). An unidentified body of a young woman’s is found in an alleyway of contemporary Mecca, sparking an investigation. However, because the body is naked and seems to have fallen from a high window, collective silence and shame hovers over the city. Through its labyrinthine structure, the book reflects on how social, religious, and cultural changes in the city have affected a deeply religious society, especially concerning the role of women. With this novel, ʿĀlim was the first woman to win the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011 (note) (also in P: Police novels, Thrillers, and Crimes: Murder).
- Ḥamzah Baqūrī (1932 – 1984, Saudi Arabia) – Saqīfat al-Ṣifā (1983, English trans. The Sheltered Quarter: A Tale of a Boyhood in Mecca, 1991). Partly an autobiography, this novel tells the story of Muḥsin’s upbringing in the city of Mecca, close to the Kaʿbah, in the first half of the 20th century before the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia. From a child’s perspective, it describes the architecture of the city and its urban neighbourhoods, but also the journey of its pilgrims, the status of women, schooling, social life, and religion itself in the holy city (also in F: Children and Family Life: Bildungsroman: Arabic Bildungsroman).
- Ḥāmid Damanhūrī (1922 – 1965, Saudi Arabia) – Thaman al-Taḍḥiyah (1959, English trans. The Price of Sacrifice, 1965). This novel is generally considered Saudi Arabia’s first (reference). The novel keeps switching between Cairo and Mecca, as it describes the ideological and psychological changes its hero, Aḥmad, goes through when studying medicine in Egypt and falling in love with a female student, and after returning to Mecca after obtaining his university degree. The novel also describes the changing Meccan society in the face of modernisation (also in O: Occupations, Professions, and Hobbies: University Life: Academics and Students).
- Buthaynah al-ʿĪssā (1982-, Kuwait) – Kharāʾiṭ al-Tīh (‘Maps of wandering’, 2015). This novel opens in Mecca where a couple on their Hajj lose their seven-year-old son Mashārī in a flood of pilgrims. The novel is set for twenty-two days and follows the parent’s quest to find him, which takes them from Kuwait to the Sinai in Egypt, and their confrontation with questions about their beliefs and what it means to be a parent. It also describes of their son’s wanderings in the region while encountering forgotten and neglected worlds of those marginalized from the holy city and its surrounding areas, many of whom have restored to crime lacking other options of living (reference) (also in S: Social Issues and Societal Change: The Marginalized).
Refrences:
- Fāris Tawfīq al-Bīl. 2015. Al-Riwāyah al-Khalījiyyah: Qirāʾah fī al-Ansāq al-Thaqāfiyyah. Dār al-Akādīmyyah li-Nashr wa al-Taqzīʿ: Amman, p. 29
- Sawad Hussain. 2017. “An Excerpt from Bothayna al- Essa’s ‘Maps of Wandering’.” www.arablit.org, 11 April 2017, https://arablit.org/2017/04/11/an-excerpt-from-bothayna-al-essas-maps-of-wandering/ (last accessed 23 February 2019)