- Rajāʾ ʿĀlim (1970-, Saudi Arabia) – Ṭawq al-Hamām (2010, English trans. The Dove’s Necklace, 2016). An unidentified body of a young woman 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 C: Cities: Saudi Arabia: Mecca).
- Hind Bāghfār (?, Saudi Arabia) – al-Barʾah al-Mafqūdah (‘Lost innocence’, 1972). This novel, one of the first by a Saudi woman, is set in Cairo, where a young university student, Ghurbah, witnesses the murder of her friend at the hands of her friend’s neighbor, who then blames her for the murder (reference). As Ghurbah cannot prove her innocence, she flees to her aunt and uncle in Alexandria before continuing to move between cities. She creates a new identity and works a different job in each city. Each time she is recognized, she manages to escape prosecution.
- Maḥmūd Diyāb’s (1932 – 1983, Egypt) play Al-Zawbaʿah (‘The storm’, 1976) portrays the tensions that are aroused in a rural village community by the news that Ḥusayn Abū Shāmah, a villager who has been framed for a murder he did not admit and has spent the last twenty years in jail, is about be released and has vowed vengeance (reference). The panic that ensues in the village leads several community members to quickly better their lives, and panic especially grips the real murderers, one of whom confesses his crime before the expected return of Ḥusayn, but Ḥusayn never shows up (reference).
- Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s (1898 – 1987, Egypt) play Yā Ṭāliʿ al-Shajara (‘The tree climber’, 1962). In this absurdist drama the husband and wife barely talk. The play is about Bahādir, who is married to a widow and who owns a small house with a garden in which stands a single orange tree with a lizard living at its foot. Bahādir builds his life around that tree while his wife, childless and sterile because of a self-preformed abortion, thinks she is still pregnant. The wife and the lizard suddenly disappear, and the husband is suspected of murder, especially when he reveals that his tree needs to be fertilized by a human body (reference) (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales).
- Yūsuf Idrīs (1927 – 1991, Egypt) – al-Ḥarām (1959, English trans. The Sinners, 1984). The body of a dead new-born baby found on the bank of a canal in a village in Egypt confuses its inhabitants. An investigation is started, leading to the suspicion of seasonal workers, who are a constant subject of abuse and disdain. One of these, ʿAzīza, the mother of the baby, gave birth on the bank of the canal after being a victim of rape. For fear of the scandal, she accidently kills the baby while trying to muffle its screams (reference). The novel “exposes the conventional moral codes of pre-revolutionary Egyptian rural society and its maze of hypocrisy but at the same time humanizes its characters once they come face to face with tragedy”. The novel was made into a 1965 movie (reference) (also in V: Village and Rural Life).
- Ṣalāḥ ʿIsā (1939 – 2017, Egypt) – Rijāl Rayya wa Sakīna (‘Raya and Sakina’s men’, 2016). The novel is a fictionized history of two Egyptian sisters considered the country’s most infamous serial killers. With the help of their husbands and two local men, the two sisters, owners of a set of brothels in Alexandria, killed 17 women between 1920 and 1921 and were sentenced to death in May 1921. The novel uses real-time documents from the sisters’ file and describes their story while also reflecting on colonized Egypt of the 20th century, including famine, the 1919 revolution, and the World War I (reference) (also in 1914 – 1918 World War I).
- Al-Bashīr Khurayyif (1917 – 1983, Tunisia) – al-Dijla fī ʿArājīnihā (‘Dates in their clusters’, 1969). This novel is set in the Nefta oasis in Tunis between 1910 and 1930. Its story revolves around the deaths of three people, all victims of an unscrupulous character’s scheming and of the miserable conditions of the impoverished southern area (reference) (also in V: Village and Rural Life).
- Ilyās Khūrī – al-Wujūh al-Bayḍāʾ (1986, English trans. White Masks, 2010). Within the context of the Lebanese Civil War (see 1975 – 1988 Lebanese Civil War) the unnamed narrator of this novel, a sociology student, embarks on a investigation into the murdered of the ordinary postal worker Jaber after he sees his death announcement in a newspaper under the title “Dreadful murder in the UNESCO district” (reference). As he interviews and talks to different people linked to Jaber, different versions of the murdered character and what could have happened are described, while the novel also reflects on Jaber’s despair at the death of his martyred son (reference).
- Amara Lakhous (1970-, Algeria) – Scontro di civilità per un ascensore a Piazza Vittorio (2006, English trans. Clash of Civilizations over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, 2008). Set in an apartment building in Rome, the novel revolves around the murder of a man. As the neighbours one by one offer the police their testimony, they provide a plurality of voices from different backgrounds informing the reader on the displeasures of their lives, such as the eternal arguments between the inhabitants over the elevator. One of the suspects is Amedeo, the Algerian who everyone thought was from Rome. Lakhouṣ’ originally published the book in Arabic as Kayfa Tarḍaʾ min al-Dhiʾbahdūn an Tʿaḍak (‘How to be suckled by the world and not get bit’, 2003) but rewrote and reconceived it to the eventual Italian version (reference) (also in W: Outside the Arab world: Europe: Italy).
- Aḥmad Murād (1978-, Egypt) – Fīrtīgū (2007, English trans. Vertigo, 2010). This political thriller novel exposes the corruption of businessmen and politicians in the author’s native Egypt, where he worked as the personal photographer of President Mubarak for a period of five years before this latter was overthrown. Hero of the novel, Aḥmad Kamāl, is also a photographer who by chance witnesses and photographs the murder of several corrupt businessmen in the bar Fīrtīgū in downtown Cairo, where he was waiting for his friend who is collateral damage to the assassination (reference). What follows is Aḥmad’s entanglement in a web of cover-ups and crimes (also in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Corruption).
- Mīkhāʾīl Naʿīmah (1889 – 1988, Lebanon) – Mudhakkirāt al-Arqash (1949, English trans. Memories of a Vagrant Soul: Or, the Pitted Face, 2011). The novel is a story of a mysterious man who works as a waiter in a New York café and disappears one day leaving behind a diary which comes in the hands of the narrator, Naʿīmah himself. The diary is full of existential questions on humanity and quotidian scenes, and it turns out that the man suffered from amnesia after killing his new bride. The story concludes with a quote the man had written on a small scrap of paper: “I killed my love with my own hand because it was more than my body could sustain and less than my spirit longed for” (reference).
- Yusuf al-Qaʿīd’s (1944-, Egypt) al-Ḥidād (‘Mourning’, 1969) and Akhbār ʿIzzbat al-Minaysī (1971, English trans. News from the Meneisi Farm, 1987).
This first novel describes the conflict between the requirements of the official justice and traditional patterns of family retribution. Four monologues are used in this novel to reflect on the character of their shared father, al-Ḥājj Manṣūr, who has died of strangulation. Through these reflections and the ambiguous attitude of each of the four children, the image emerges of al-Ḥājj being a domineering and sometimes cruel person. Despite their grievances, two of the children try to avenge their father but do not survive. A third son, Ḥamīd, also tries to seek revenge, but the novel ends without telling the reader if he succeeded, and who the murderer of the three family members is (reference).
In Akhbār ʿIzzbat al-Minaysī, Ṣābrīn is found dead in the rural village of al-Ḍahariuah, in Egypt, and a police investigation follows. It turns out that she was raped and impregnated by her master’s son and forced to have an abortion. But her brother was set to undue the shame she caused and forced her to drink rat poison, leading to her death. The story is set before, during and after the defeat of 1967 (see 1967 al-Naksah), an event which also plays out in the dynamics of the rural village life.
- Kamāl al-Riyāḥī (1974-, Tunisia) – ʿAshīqāt al-Nadhl (‘Lovers of the villain’, 2015). When the teenager Sārah is found murdered, her mother accuses Nādiyā, who is the owner of a media organization and the wife of the famous writer Kamāl. But then more teenage bodies are found. In search for the murderer, a criticism is made of the skewed social relationships that result from an opportunistic and corrupt society in post-2011 Tunisia, that lead to murder and theft (reference). All is permitted, as long as the end justifies the means.
- Muḥammad Zafzāf (1945 – 2001, Morocco) – Bāʾiʿat al-Ward (‘The flower seller’, 1996). In this novel, a flower seller is killed by her maid, who, in her escape from an apartment window, falls to her own death (reference). This crime leads the neighbours to ruminate and speculate about the flower seller as a historical and cultural enigma, unable to pinpoint her exact story and origin.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Sultan S.M. Al-Qahtani. 1994.The novel in Saudi Arabia: emergence and development 1930-1989: an historical and critical study. (doctoral dissertation University of Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom) Retrieved from http://theses.gla.ac.uk/8131/ (last accessed 4 May 2021) p. 85
- Roger Allen. 2000. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 205
- Najiyyah Aḥmad Qadrī. 2022. “al-Ightirāb fī Masraḥ Maḥmūd Diyyāb: Masraḥiyyah ‘al Zawbʿah’ Namūdhijan.” Majallah al-Buḥūth fī Majallāt al-Tarbiyyah al-Nawʿiyah 8(43): 857-896, p. 867-8
- C. F. Audebert. 1978. “Yā Ṭāliʿ al-Shajara and Folk Art.” JAL 9: 138-149
- Tania al-Saadi. 2012. “Three Arabic Novels Starting with a Crime.” MEL 15 (1): 1-19, p. 3
- Issa Peters. 1986. “Book Review: The Sinners, by Yusuf Idris.” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 20(1): 110-112, p. 111
- Robin Moger. 2020. “An Expert from The Men of Raya and Sakina.” www.jadaliyya.com, 4 May 2020, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41064 (last accessed 26 October 2023)
- EAL, p. 446
- Suzy Hansen. 2010. “White Masks.” Bidoun 21(II), https://www.bidoun.org/articles/white-masks (last accessed 26 October 2023)
- Ursula Lindsay and Marcia Lynx Qualey, hosts. 2020. “Getting Away with Murder.” Bulaq Podcast, The Arabist, 14 January 2021. https://www.sowt.com/en/podcast/bulaq-bwlaq/getting-away-murder (last accessed 22 June 2022)
- Maud Newton. 2008. “An Introduction to Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio.” www.worldwithoutborders.org, 3 November 2008, https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2008-11/an-introduction-to-clash-of-civilizations-over-an-elevator-in-piazza-vittor/ (last accessed 28 October 2023)
- Mohammed Matarneh. 2019. “‘Vertigo’ d’Ahmed Mourad, un roman noir pour dépeindre les heures les plus sombres de l’Egypte.” Synergies Turquie 12: 151-180, p. 161
- Cornelis Nijland. 1995. “Love and Beyond in Mahjar Literature” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books 46-55, p. 51
- 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. 260
- Muḥammad al-ʿArqūbī. 2015. “‘ʿAshīqāt al-Nadhl’ lil-Tūnisī Kamāl al-Riyāḥī … Nabash fī al-Maskūt ʿannu.” www.reuters.com, 25 March 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/oegen-tunisia-novel-ea5-idARAKBN0ML1QO20150325 (last accessed 28 October 2023)
- Samuel England. 2012. “Morocco, Latin America, and the Problem of Reading.” MEL 15 (2): 137-152