- Ayman al-Dabūsī (?, Tunisia) – Intiṣāb Aswad (‘Black erection’, 2016). A young Tunisian man narrates his partaking in the Tunisian ‘Jasmine Revolution’ to his psychologist, and links it to his own sexual liberation and experimenting. His narrative alludes to the fact that a social revolution cannot succeed without the complete liberation of the body. However, the narrator ends up suffering from a sex-addition, desperately looking for sexual contacts, a symbol for the failure of the revolution (reference) (also in D: Disabilities, Illness and Psychological Diseases: Addiction: Sex-addiction and 2011 Arab Uprisings: Tunis).
- Jamāl al-Ghīṭānī (1945 – 2015, Egypt) – Risālat al-Baṣāʾir fī al-Maṣāʾir (‘The Epistle of Insights into the Fates’, 1989). This collection of short stories portrays many homosexual and/or paedophile Arab Shaykhs from the Gulf who assault Egyptian young men or children. In one of the stories them, a father is forced to emigrate in search of a better livelihood. After a long separation from his family, he is shocked to realise he has become so alienated from his children that he is sexually stimulated when looking at his own daughter (reference). In another short story, ‘Wa fimāyalī ma jarā li-al-ḥalabī’ (‘The following is what happened to the man from Aleppo’) an Aleppan dessert maker is ruthlessly beheaded after killing his Saudi sponsor who molested his eight-year-old-son (reference).
- ʿAbduh Jubayr (1978 – 2023, Egypt) – Taḥrīk al-Qalb (‘The Morning of the Heart’, 1982). This novel describes the decay on all levels of a typical middle-class family in 1970s Egypt. We see the younger characters, in a kind of interior monologue, talk about, think, or comment on a number of biological or psychological facts on which society would normally keep silent, such as menstruation and a young man’s desire to see his mother’s underwear (reference).
- Ḥanān al-Shaykh (1945-, Lebanon) – ʿUthrā Lundinstān (2015, English trans. The Occasional Virgin, 2018). This novel tells the story of two longtime friends, the Muslima Hudā and the Christian Īyfūn, who fled Lebanon for Canada and London respectively 20 years earlier. The first part of the novel focuses on their sexual adventures when they reunite on vacation at the sea in Italy (reference). The second half is set in London one year later, when they meet again for a vacation. Together, they meet a conservative Algerian man, whom they decide to teach a lesson by Hudā fooling him into believing that virginity is renewable and using sex as a tool to revenge him (reference). The novel reflects on the effects of sexual repression on the psyche of individuals.
Refrences:
In order of appearance
- al-Kabīr al-Dādīsī. 2018. Masārāt al-riwāyah al-ʿarabiyyah al-muʿāṣirah, Muʾassah al-raḥāb al-ḥadīthah: Bayrūt, p. 97
- Stephan Guth. 1995. “The Function of Sexual Passages in some Egyptian Novels of the 1980’s” in Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature, eds. Roger Allen, Hilary Kilpatrick, and Ed de Moor. London: Saqi Books 123-130, p. 124, 125
- Hanadi al-Samman. 2008. “Out of the Closet: Representation of Homosexuals and Lesbians in Modern Arabic Literature.” JAL 39: 270-310, p. 291
- Fayyiz ʿAlām. 2016. “Murājiʿa li-Riwāyah ‘Uthrā Lundinstān’.” www.raseef22.net, 27 May 2016, https://raseef22.net/article/8538-book-review-londonstan (last accessed 11 November 2023)
- Arifa Akbar. 2018. “‘The Occasional Virgin’ by Hanan al- Shaykh review – farce, faith and sexual revenge.” www.theguardian.com, 17 June 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/27/the-occasional-virgin-by-hanan-al-shaykh (last accessed 27 January 2019)