- ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAlūllah’s (1939 – 1994, Algeria) play Ḥumq Salīm (‘Salim’s Madness’, 1972). This play is based is a monologue in Gogol’s short story ‘Diary of a Madman’ (reference). Though the daily life of its hero, Salīm, whose work is sorting papers and sharpening pencils for his boss, the play offers a view on Algerian society and the injustices that it is confronted with. Salīm, in love with his boss’ daughter, believes that her dog is sending out messages and when he intercepts and reads the messages, he discovers the details of the boss and his daughter’s bourgeoisie life (reference). The play reflects on Salīm’s inability to realize his ambitions and express his emotions, and his subsequent decline into insanity (also in D: Disabilities, Illness, and Disorders: Psychological Disorders: Hallucination and Deliriums).
- Sharīf ʿAbd al-Ṣamad (?, Egypt) – Tshīkhūf wa al-Sayyidah Ṣāḥibah al-Shiwāwā (‘Chekhov and the lady with the chihuahua’, 2018) This novel imagines what would happen if Chekhov, the famous Russian author, would live in the small village of Port Said in Egypt during the time of the British occupation. Each chapter is introduced by snippets of Chekhov’s work. Chekhov stays in Port Said at a time when he suffers from tuberculosis, and while he spends most of the days inside his house, an encounter with three sisters and an Australian writer called Coetzee cause him to venture out (reference).
- ʿAlī Badr (?, Iraq) – Asātidhat al-Wahm (‘The Professors of Illusion’, 2011). This novel portrays three poets who are torn between their poetic aspirations and their obligations as conscripted soldiers who are forced to join the Iraq-Iran war’s northern front (reference). The novels characters, especially Munīr, who has a Russian mother, make a strong link between the circumstances of Iraq under the Saddam regime and Russians under the Soviet Union. Several Russian poets (such as Mayakovsky and Anna Akhmatova) are referred to in the novel as they are translated and analyzed by the protagonists who make the universe of Russian poetry their escape from war (also in 1980 – 1988 Iran – Iraq War).
- In the last novel of Ibrāhīm ʿAbd al-Majīd’s (1946- , Egypt) trilogy about Alexandria, al-Iskandariyya fī Ghaymah (2013, English trans. Clouds over Alexandria, 2019), the decline of Alexandria is narrated by a poet in love with Russian literature, especially the poet Mayakovski, which the novel regularly refers to. The story is set under al-Sadat’s reign in the seventies, when his regime formed a coalition with the Islamist movement and radical Salafi Islamist thought infiltrated the city, leading to the loss of the city’s cosmopolitan spirit (reference) (also in C: Cities: Egypt: Alexandria).
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- ʿAzūz Hanī Ḥayziyah. 2020. “Sīmāʾiyah al-Khiṭābah al-Masraḥī Qirāʾah fī Masraḥiyyah ‘Ḥumq Salīm’ li-ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAlūllah” Majallah Sīmiyāʾiyāt 16(2): 348-338, p. 341, 342
- Marcia Lynx Qualey. 2019. “An Excerpt of Sherif Abdel Samad’s ‘Chekhov and the Lady with the Chihuahua’.” www.arablit.org, 12 September 2019 https://arablit.org/2019/09/12/an-excerpt-of-sherif-abdel-samads-chekhov-and-the-lady-with-the-chihuahua/ (last accessed 25 November 2022)
- Ikram Masmoudi. 2015. War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 15
- Mohga Hassib. 2014. “Ibrahim Abd elmeguid: ‘The Hero Is The City’.” ArabLit, 31 January 2014 https://arablit.org/2014/01/31/ibrahim-abdelmeguid-the-hero-is-the-city/ (last accessed 20 January 2019)