The most prominent Arab novelists and their most

important works
Their names shine with their ink
Cultures and languages always differ between countries to share a single
language, which is the language of literature and writing, and the Arab
world is replete with creative minds of writers and novelists, and with
many literary prizes that have been able to do justice and reward many of
them.
However, we wanted, in our article, to highlight the most prominent of
these novelists and writers, including:
Ahlem Mosteghanemi
A contemporary Algerian poet and writer, one of the most successful
Arab writers of her time, she was born in exile during a turbulent period
in Algeria.
In 1993 she published her first novel (Memory of the Flesh), which is the
first novel of her famous trilogy. More than 1.2 million copies of this
novel were sold, and it was the first Algerian novel to be written in the
Arabic language.
In 1997 she published the novel (The Fawda al-Hawas), which is the
second novel of this trilogy, and she followed it in 2003 with the novel (A
Beder A Bed), the third and last part of the trilogy, which achieved an
unprecedented spread in the Arab world.

At the end of 2009, Ahlam published her book (Forgetting. How Much),
and in 2012 she sold more than two hundred thousand copies of her novel
(The Black Fits You).

To be her last published work, published in 2018, entitled (Sensuous as

Parting).
Novels
Zakirat el Jassad (Memory of the Flesh/The Bridges of Constantine) -
Published by Dar al adab, Beirut, 1993, 34 printed editions. Considered
by critics as a turning point in Arabic literature.
Fawda el Hawas (Chaos of the Senses) - Published by Dar al adab in
Beirut 1997, 30 printed editions.
Aber Sareer (Bed Hopper) - Published by Dar al adab in Beirut 2003, 22
printed editions.
El Aswad Yalikou Biki (Black Suits You so Well) - Published by
Hachette-Antoine in Beirut 2012
Anthologies
Ala Marfa al Ayam (In the Harbour of Days) - Published by SNED in
Algers 1973
Al Kitaba fi Lahdat Ouray (Writing in a Moment of Nudity) - Published
by Dar Al-Adab in Beirut 1976
Algérie, femmes et écriture (Algeria, Women and Writings) - Published
by l'Harmattan in Paris 1985
Akadib Samaka (Lies of a Fish) - Published by l'ENAG in Algiers 1993
Nessyane.com (The Art of Forgetting)- Published by Dar Al-Adab in
Beirut 2009
Waciny Laredj (Arabic: ‫ األعرج‬H‫واسيني‬, pronounced Wasini al-A'raj) (born
8 August 1954) is an Algerian novelist, short story writer and academic.
A famous Algerian novelist, he was known among novelists for his
unique narrative style that oscillates between excessive poetics in some
novels such as: (The Jasmine Collar, North Sea Terraces, Lolita Fingers),
and the historical narrative regenerative in (The Prince's Book, The
Andalusian House).
His works were translated into many languages, including: German,
Italian, Swedish, and others.
Selected works
al-Bawwaba al-Zarqa (The Blue Gate, 1980)
Waqa'i min Awja Rajulin Ghamara Sawb al-Bahr (Facts from the
Sufferings of a Man Who Ventured Toward the Sea, 1981)
Waq al-Ahdhiya al-Khashina (The sound of the rough shoes, 1981)
Ma tabaqqa min Sirat Lakhdar Hamrush (What Remains from the
Biography of Lakhdar Hamrush, 1982),
Nuwwar al-Lawz (Almond Blossoms, 1983)
Masra Ahlam Maryam al-Wadi'a (The Death of Tender Maryam's
Dreams, 1984)
Asmak al-Barr al-Mutawahhish (The fish of the wild land, 1986)
Damir al-Gha'ib (1990)
Faji'at al-Layla al-Sabi'a ba'd al-Alf, Raml al-Maya (The Disaster of the
Seventh Night after the One Thousand Night, Raml al-Maya, 1993)
La Gardienne des ombres. Don Quichotte à Alger (Protector of the
Shadows: Don Quixote in Algiers, 1996; Harisat al-Dhilal, Don Quishotte
fi’l-Jaza’ir, 1999)
Les Miroirs de l’aveugle (The Mirrors of the Blind Man; Maraya al-Darir,
1998)
al-Makhtuta al-Sharqiyya (The Eastern Manuscript, 2002)
Kitab al-Amir: masalik abwab al-hadid (The Prince’s Book: The Paths of
the Wooden Gates, 2004)
Al-Bayt al-Andalusi (The Andalusian House, 2011)
Mamlakatu al farasha (The kingdom of the batterfly, 2013)
Nissaou Casanova (Casanova's women, 2016)
Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq
An Egyptian author and physician, he was known by the title “The
Godfather” for being the first Arab novelist to write in the fields of
horror, science fiction, and adventure, and this style was not common
among novelists.
His works were well received by critics and readers as well, most notably
the series Beyond Nature, the novel Utopia, and the novel Al-Sabkha.
Radwa Ashour
An Egyptian writer and novelist, her pen was known for the exceptional
and courageous, and she was known for her fictional style that uses
historical fiction as a lens to see reality in a deeper way.
Radwa Ashour has many critical works and literary studies, and some of
her famous works, such as the Granada Trilogy, Farah, and Scream, have
been translated into English, Spanish, Italian and Malay.
Gibran Khalil Gibran
Gibran is not only one of the most important novelists, but he is also a
Lebanese Arab poet, writer and painter. He emigrated as a boy to the
United States of America and devoted himself to writing literary articles
and short stories in both Arabic and English. He passed away at the age
of 48 in New York City in 1931 after a struggle with illness.

Among his most important literary works are The Prophet (1923), Jesus
Son of Man (1928), Meadows' Brides (1910), Teardrop and Smile (1941),
Rebellious Spirits (1914), Broken Wings and Processions (1922).
Tayeb Salih
A Sudanese writer, born in 1929 in the Traffic Region in northern Sudan,
has many social stories.
The most important of them is: (Season of Migration to the North) which
won as one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century and was
converted into a movie.
He also has: (The Light of the House, Dumat Wad Hamed, The Wedding
of Zein, Merioud, and a palm tree on the schedule, the lights are like stars
from the flags of the Franks and Arabs).
Tayeb Salih passed away on February 18, 2008 in a London hospital.

Tayeb Salih was a Sudanese author and journalist. He is remembered as a

prominent figure in the postcolonial literary movement.

Born in rural Karmakol, in northern Sudan, Salih studied at the

University of Khartoum and the University of London. Salih wrote a
column for London-based Arabic language newspaper al Majalla and
later took a job at the BBC's Arabic Service. He later worked in a variety
of diplomatic positions, including as the director-general of the Ministry
of Information in Doha, Qatar, and as representative to the Gulf States for
the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO).

After years of success as a diplomat and education advocate, in 1966

Salih published the novel Season of Migration to the North, which
concerned the impact of British colonialism on modern Sudanese identity
and culture. The novel won immediate accolades from critics worldwide,
and it remains his most famous book, alongside the novella The Wedding
of Zein.

Despite critical acclaim, most of Salih's work remains untranslated. His

collected works, which include political essays, travel writing, and book
reviews, are popular and widely available in Arabic. Salih remained a
controversial figure into his old age, publishing an essay in 1990 that was
sharply critical of the Islamist regime in charge of Sudan at the time.
Taha Hussien
He is called “the Dean of Arab Literature,” and he is an Egyptian writer
and thinker, born on February 15, 1889, and is considered one of the most
influential Egyptian writers in the twentieth century.

He has many works in the novel and the short story, and he is considered
one of the first writers to write in his autobiography, and we mention of
his works:

The days, the prayer of Karawan, the tormentors on earth, lost love, the
tree of misery, the hadith of Wednesday and other works.
Ahmed Khairy Al-Omari
An Islamic thinker distinguished by his contemporary style in dealing
with Islamic issues. He is an Iraqi writer and dentist, born in Baghdad in
1970, and belongs to the Umayyad family in Mosul whose lineage traces
back to Caliph Omar bin Al-Khattab. His father is a well-known Iraqi
historian and judge, Khairy al-Omari, and his books include:
(The night of the fall of Baghdad, a series of light in the galaxy, my father
named Ibrahim, a series of prayer chemistry, tablets and dorsal, retrieving
Omar, biography of a coming caliph) and other works.
Saud Al-Sanousi
A Kuwaiti writer and novelist, and a member of the Kuwaiti Writers
Association and the Kuwaiti Journalists Association, he won in 2013 the
International Prize for Arabic Fiction in its sixth session for his novel
(The Bamboo Leg), which won the State Encouragement Award in the
State of Kuwait in 2012, and his works also include:

(Prisoner of Mirrors), which won the Leila Othman Prize for the novel in
2010, (Mice of My Mother Hessa), which was published in 2015, and the
novel (Hammam al-Dar) which won the Bin Azraq Prize in 2017.
Youssef Zeidan
Youssef Mohamed Ahmed Zidan is a university professor, Egyptian
writer and philosopher, and a specialist in Arabic manuscript heritage and
its sciences.

He has authored several books and scholarly studies on Islamic thought,

Sufism, and the history of Arab medicine, and has a literary contribution
to published fictional works.

In addition to regular and non-periodical articles in a number of

newspapers, he also worked as Director of the Manuscripts Center in the
Library of Alexandria.

With the aforementioned, the illumination of our ink did not stop at all
the writers whom we have mentioned, but rather they are the tip of the
iceberg.

These are pens whose letters are inexhaustible, and their feelings do not
emanate, so that their owners can write in their letters many works of
which they are very proud.
Ghada Samman: A Writer of Many Layers
By Pauline Homsi Vinson
One of the most important Syrian writers in the last century and whose
fame has extended to this day, the majority of fat lovers do not realize
that she wrote 31 books and translated them into ten different languages,
including French, English, German, Russian and others.
Ghada Samman is a prolific writer who has produced over 40 works in a
variety of genres, including journalism, poetry, short stories, and the
novel. Outspoken, innovative, and provocative, Samman is a highly
respected if sometimes controversial writer in the Arab world who is
becoming increasingly well known internationally; several of her works
have been translated from Arabic into languages such as English, French,
Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish, German, Japanese, and Farsi.

Available in English translation are “Beirut ’75” and “Beirut

Nightmares,” both translated by Nancy Roberts. “The Square Moon,”
translated by Issa J. Boullata, won the University of Arkansas Press
Award for Arabic Literature in Translation. All of the works above have
been reviewed in previous issues of Al Jadid. Forthcoming is Nancy
Robert’s translation of “Laylat al Milyar” (“The Billion Dollar Night”),
which can be considered the third in a trilogy about the Lebanese Civil
War, following “Beirut ’75” and “Beirut Nightmares.” In addition,
several of Samman’s poems have been translated into English and
published in anthologies such as Nathalie Handal’s “The Poetry of Arab
Women.” Several early interviews with Samman are also available in
English in anthologies such as “Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab
Feminist Writing,” edited by Margot Badran and Miriam Cooke, and
“Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak,” edited by Elizabeth Warnock
Fernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan. There is a wealth of material on
Samman in Arabic, including several book-length studies and numerous
interviews. Increasing attention is being paid to her in literary works in
English, as in Miriam Cooke’s “War’s Other Voices: Women Writers on
the Lebanese Civil War” and Joseph T. Zeidan’s “Arab Women
Novelists: The Formative Years and Beyond.”

Lebanese Society
Symbolic Use of Animals

Magic Realism

War Macabre

This essay appeared in Al Jadid Magazine, Vol. 8, no. 39 (Spring 2002)

Copyright (c) 2002 by Al Jadid