- Wajdī al-Ahdal (1973-, Yemen) – Arḍ Bilā Samāʾ (2008, English trans. A Land Without Jasmine, 2012). When the young, beautiful university student Samāʾ (Jasmine in the English translation) disappears under suspicious circumstances, the police question her family, neighbours, and acquaintances. Through their testimonies, an image of Samāʾ forms in which she is objectified by male voyeurism and their predatory advances. The novel was also turned into a play (also in L: Love, Lust and Relationships: Lust and Sex: Female Sexuality).
- Salim Aissa (?, Algeria) is known for his detective stories set in contemporary post-independence Algeria. An example is Adel s’emmele (‘Adel gets entangled’, 1988). Adel is a police inspector working in Algiers who is presented the strange case of a young girl, Amal, who has been found dead in her studio (reference). Adel and his colleague inspector Chelli, find a tape on which Amal says she decided to commit suicide, yet they treat the case as a murder investigation. One of the suspects is Boudri, a wealthy Algerian who owns the music studio where Amal worked. The novel depicts a grim Algiers of the 1980s.
- Parker Bilal is the pen name of Jamal Mahjoub (1996-, Sudan / UK), who under that name started to publish several English-language crime and investigation novels. One of these is titled The Golden Scales (2012). It centres on the Sudanese, down on his luck, former police inspector Makana who fled to Cairo and is hired by the powerful Hanafi, owner of the city’s soccer team, to track down his missing star player. In his search, Makana is confronted with the city’s underworld of among others religious fanatism, Russian gangsters and security forces (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Sports).
- Hédi Bouraoui (1932-, Tunisia) – Retour à Thyna (‘Return to Thyna’, 1997). Zitouna and the journalist Mansour investigate the violent death of an author. The novel is told by al-Fdaoui, who is the murderer of the author and a friend of the four investigators. A central character in the novel is Zitouna, who is the object of desire of the narrator and the deceived author. The story is set in Sfax, the capital of southern Tunisia, and throughout its narrative it also recounts the multi-civilisation history of the region (reference).
- Nasīmah Būlūfah’s (?, Algeria) detective story Nabḍāt Akhir al-Layl (‘Heartbeats in the dead of the night’, 2014). After Ṣāfīnāz is murdered, possibly by her husband Riyāḍ, investigator Laylā takes on the case. She is helped in this by the many journals that Ṣāfīnāz left, in which she wrote all the details of her life, and a novel she wrote with the title ‘Ashbāḥ al-Midīnah’ (reference). The suspenseful search for the murderer is intertwined with love stories, among other between Laylā and the lawyer Samīr, and class struggle, all narrated by a character whose remains unknown (reference).
- Amal Būshārib (1984-, Algeria) – Sakrāt Najmah (‘Sugar star’, 2015). This novel centers the murder of a painter, Ilyās Māḍī, who returned to Algeria from Italy under the guidance of a Sufi Sheikh named Burhān al-Dīn. Ilyās is found stabbed in the apartment of his grandfather with his last painting. The case is researched by inspector Ibrāhīm and his assistant Khayr al-Dīn, and the possible killers are many, while the case also seems linked somehow to Freemasonry and Sufism. The novel draw links between contemporary and historical Algeria, for example through its Jewish characters, references to music, and intertextuality (reference).
- Rabīaʿ Jābir (1972-, Lebanon) – Taqrīr Mīhlīs (2006, English trans. The Mehlis Report, 2013). This novel focuses on the United Nations (UN) investigation into Rafik Hariri’s death by a car explosion. The result of this investigation, the Mehlis report, named after the German Judge on the case Detlev Mehlisto, is awaited on by the whole Lebanese population, including the hero of the novel, Samʿān. Samʿān is a middle-aged architect who wanders around in Beirut looking for answers to the assassination. In the meanwhile, his sister Yūsafīn, who died during the Lebanese Civil War, speaks to him from the mysterious Beirut underworld of the dead where eventually Hariri also appears (also in 2005 Cedar revolution Lebanon).
- Yāsmīnah Khaḍrāʾ (written elsewhere as Yasmina Khadra, pseudonym for Moḥammad Mūlisihūl, 1995-, Algeria) has written a series of detectives about Inspector Llobthat which have been translated to English. They include Mūrtūrī (1997, English trans. Morituri, 2003), about the inspector and his devoted lieutenant investigating the kidnapping of one of the top bankers of Algiers, Abyaḍ Mazdūj (1998, English translation Double Blank, 2005), in which a diplomat is murdered, and Qismat al-Mayit (2004, English trans. Dead Man’s Share, 2009), which involves a murder case in which the loyal lieutenant is embroiled.
- Rafik Schami (1946- , Syria) – Diedunkle Seite der Liebe (2004, English trans. The Dark Side of Love, 2009). This novel, originally written in German, starts in 1969 with the body of a murdered Muslim army officer hanging in a basket from the portal of the St. Paul’s chapel in Damascus, Syria. When the Secret Service investigates the case, they stumble upon hundreds of interwoven tales of betrayal, revenge, and forbidden love, eventually leading them to a generation old blood feud between the Catholic Mushtaks and the Orthodox Shahins. The novel describes an impossible love story, in addition to the domestic turmoil in mid-twentieth century Syria which sharpened the tensions between religious and ethnic minorities (also in L: Love, Lust and Relationships: Inter-religious and ethnic (romantic) relationships: Between Muslims and Christians).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- Nadia Ghanem. 2015. “Adel s’emmele by Salim Aissa – Book Review”, www.tellemchaho.blogspot.com, 21 October 2015, www.tellemchaho.blogspot.com/2015/10/adel-semmele-by-salim-aissa-book-review.html (last accessed 22 June 2022)
- Elizabeth Sabiston. 2000. “Hédi Bouraou’s Retour à Thyna: A Female Epic?” Dalhousie French Studies 53: 134-143, p. 135
- ʿIysā Ḥadībī. 2015. “Qirāʾah fī Riwāyat ‘Nabḍāt Ākhir al-Layl’.” www.diwanalarab.com, 24 February, 2015 https://www.diwanalarab.com/%D9%82%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A1%D8%A9-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-41117 (last accessed 6 October 2023)
- Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥ Qārif. 2016. “‘Sakrāt Najmah’: Khalf Qissah Būlīsiyyah” www.alaraby.co.uk, 14 January 2016 https://www.alaraby.co.uk/”سَكرات-نجمة”-خلف-قصّة-بوليسية (last accessed 23 June 2022)