Middle East/North African Lit discussion

I am waiting for my copy to arrive. Some group leader, huh? But if anyone wants to get started, I invite you to go ahead and I will catch up.

I just got my copy yesterday, hoping to start soon.

i have a copy, but haven't started yet. i read one of her novels a really long time ago and remember loving it so i'm super curious about this book. :)

Thank you Lauren for leading the discussion :)

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I will not be able to read this book , but I read for Hanan Al-Shaykh , |I liked the story of her mother The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story; it was a very interesting read , while The Story of Zahra: A Novel was a depressing one , I couldn't make a soild opinion about it ; yet it is categorised as one of the best one hundred Arabic novels .

Marieke wrote: "i have a copy, but haven't started yet. i read one of her novels a really long time ago and remember loving it so i'm super curious about this book. :)"

What did you read for her ?

Read the first story and quite liked it, what an opening sentence.Actually there were times when I would have liked to have bitten off my mother-in-laws nose.

i read Women of Sand and Myrrh: A Novel, but it must have been almost twenty years ago that i read it.

i'll try to start these stories within a couple of days. :)

I've read 4 stories and I've enjoyed them except I had some problems with "The Land of dreams". I couldn't really believe that someone like Ingrid existed in such a naive dream world and that she would be accepted. Or was the entire story and it's resolution supposed to be the dream?

The first story reminded me of The Boy who cried Wolf. I read somewhere that many of these stories and fairy tales have a duplicate version in every culture. Think this is one.

That sounds very likely.
I liked "The Spirit is Engaged Now" as a different take n contacting the beyond.

I loved the image at the end of that one, when she is cradling the cup.

Yes. I did too. I want to say too much that can spoil if one hasn't read it.

I am about halfway through the book. A little background on the author cobbled together from a variety of sources.

Hanan Al-Shaykh was born in 1945 in Beirut, Lebanon where she went to a traditional Muslim primary school for girls. Al-Shaykh began writing at a young age and by sixteen had essays published in the newspaper she would eventually work for, al-Nahar. She attended the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt and worked and as a journalist for a women's magazine, Al-Hasna.

Her first novel Intihar Rajul Mayyit was published in 1970, followed by which contained more autobiographical elements, including her relationship with her religious father and her marriage. In 1976 she moved to Saudi Arabia because of the Lebanese where she wrote Hikayat Zahrah (The Story of Zahra). No publisher would touch it and she had to self-publish. v

In 1982 Al-Shaykh moved to London, and in 1989 published Misk al-ghazaal (Women of Sand and Myrrh). Also banned from many Middle Eastern countries, it follows the story of four women (two from an unnamed Arab country, one Lebanese, and one American) coping with life in a patriarchal society. It was named one of the 50 Best Books of 1992 by Publishers Weekly. That same year she published Barid Bayrut (Beirut Blues), a novel consisting of ten "letters" written by a Muslim woman named Asmahan during the Lebanese Civil War.
In 1994, Al-Shaykh published a collection of short stories called Aknus al-shams an al-sutuh (I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops). Only in London followed in 2000

One of the criticisms about her which I thought was interesting was that her stories are so critical of religion and the relationships between men and women are portrayed so negatively, that they feed into the West's bias against Islam and preconceived notions about gender in Islamic countries.
What do our readers think of that idea?

Lauren wrote: "One of the criticisms about her which I thought was interesting was that her stories are so critical of religion and the relationships between men and women are portrayed so negatively, that they f..."

Funny, I hadn't seen or felt the stories that way as of yet and I'm also about half way through. These stories don't seem at all realistic, though, and that may make some difference. Some of them seem almost in a dream world.

The posts made this read all the more interesting. I intend to start it right after I finish "THe Druze of Belgrade".

I agree with Sue on the dream world quality, I felt that as well. I like the stories, but as towards a bias, I suppose some of the stories do not show men in the best light, but than many here in the States do not either. I am not all that familiar with their culture, only of course what I have heard and read, so it is hard to say if these stories are realistic portrayals or not.

I also find the stories have a dream-
like quality. But her characters strike me as so lonely - I felt the same way about the women in women of Sand and Myrrh. Everyone seems so isolated and unhappy.

The story I have liked the best so far was Qut Al-Qulub. I thought it had the most nuance and the most interplay between the modern and the traditional.

can't wait to start this book. I read the Story of Zahra when I went to the university of Jordan and adored it. I can't wait to start reading this one but I have to wait because it isn't released on kindle until April 1st. Ugh!!

I've already started the book the day before yesterday, but as I read through the first couple of stories, I couldn't find anything extraordinary about it. I'll keep you updated as I go on.

I found some of them so heavy handed but I am holding back to see what more people say before I go into specifics.

I liked "The Marriage Fair, there was just something very cunning but human about the characters motivations.
While everyone was pitying her she was secretly rejoicing.

I found the story intriguing too, but in the end, I don't agree with the idea that marriage must kill passion. It's a very pessimistic view (with plenty of supporting evidence!), and in the end I'm not convinced. The writing itself was skillful, but I'm still searching for a story in this collection that I can say I really liked!

Melanie, I'm in the same situation. Some stories are interesting, more than others, some seem better written than others. All in all, so far it seems an uneven collection.

I didn't agree with the premise, but that is the story that has stuck in my mind for some reason. It did, I believe contrast the culture, in this marriage fair custom with the new thinking, that not everyone wants to marry for whatever reason they have. I do agree the collection as a whole is very uneven, but that story and the story with the woman cradling the teacup are the two I liked the best.

So far the teacup would be my favorite.

I finished the collection, and I realized one reason why I don't enjoy Hanan al-Shaykh's work. Her characters are not likable. However, this is not necessarily a failure on her part. I might be very intentional. she shows people's eccentricities, misperceptions, and weaknesses, I appreciate when authors balance these with other qualities because it reminds me of how we do this all the time for our friends. When authors focus only on characters' madness, dark sides, and obsessions, it seems to reduce literature to an angry message to the world. For those of us who have come to expect inspiration, pleasure, or beauty from literature, her writing may seem lacking. Fortunately there's no consensus on what is meant by "good" literature, which means there's something for almost anyone.

I find the men to be very unsympathetically written and some of the stories to be very heavy handed.

I've decided not to finish the book. The stories are so uneven and, as Lauren writes above, some are quite heavy handed. Some seem almost naively written to the point that I wonder if they were written at different points in the author's career. I read about 2/3rds of the book.

there are so many other books that I want to read that I prefer to move on.

I understand where all that was mentioned above come from. I'm half way through the book and up until now I don't find a story that I really enjoyed reading. There's a recurring gender prejudiced theme here and there that the way in which it was handled doesn't appeal to me much. I'll update you as I go on.

I'd love to hear from someone for whom these stories really work or at least ring true.

I would too Lauren as I don't know if my response is culturally influenced more than I think it is. That's so difficult to know.

It may be culturally influenced, and it may also be generational. I think of Hanan al-Shaykh as a writer of the previous generation, not the current young generation. She writes as part of a generation that was fed up with religion and many cultural traditions. Women of her generation tended to speak out against localized patriarchal traditions. I think that young women today are less hostile to localized traditions, and more likely to think of themselves in terms of global networks. It's hard to make such a generalization. I wonder if anyone has studied this...

That's interesting Melanie. Also interesting is that she's just a few years older than me but obviously raised in a very different environment. Of course the whole feminist movement was rising in the US and Europe when I was in college too so perhaps she is expressing some of the same kind of thoughts in different cultural terms. And her society was different and more patriarchal.

The most interesting to us as Arabs is that we've always thought of the Lebanese as more open and suffer less from the patriarchal traditions in the Arab world. Hanan AlSheikh showed the opposite. The psyche of her characters are overly oppressed with gender biases (It seems more of a prejudice to me). Moreover, there's a lot of angry messages communicated through this collection of short stories. I can't say that I enjoyed any of them, although there were touching PARAGRAPHS in Samar's story.

Thanks for the insight Marwa. I guess personal, familial experience is what we must be seeing reflected.

Sue wrote: "Thanks for the insight Marwa. I guess personal, familial experience is what we must be seeing reflected."

I agree that it seems personal to me. but I have to stress that my opinion is personal and somewhat biased as well and maybe it's just that I don't see things the way she reflects them in her writing. I believe that, whether a man or a woman, each of us has his/her own faults and flaws and after all that's exactly what makes us human. Her generalizations is the thing that didn't appeal to me much, or that's how it seemed to be.

Marwa wrote: "Sue wrote: "Thanks for the insight Marwa. I guess personal, familial experience is what we must be seeing reflected."

I agree that it seems personal to me. but I have to stress that my opinion is ..."

I think that's what we each bring to our reading Marwa and that's why sharing in this, and so many other GR groups , is so great. We bring so many perspectives to our reading.

Lauren wrote: "I'd love to hear from someone for whom these stories really work or at least ring true."

This is a common thing I keep reading from this thread. I wrote a review for the short stories but haven't had time to type it up yet. Really, how can these stories not ring true is the question? What about them seems fictitious? They all follow some melodramatic line, yes, but that's just like life. Some of them do seem a bit far-fetched but she's not writing about alien invasions. I feel the only ones that seemed a tad redundant were The Spirit to Engage Now and whatever the one about the cheating man and the wife's urn. I guess living in the Middle East gives a different perspective allows the possibility for these stories to ring true, even if they do seem soap-operaish

Zahra, you are right, my phrase' ring true; is not clear. What I meant was not that they seemed fictitious, but rather that they seem melodramatic.

My biggest problem with her stories is that they never seem to get below the surface. The male characters are indistinct. I don't feel like I really understand how the women negotiate their environments - whether they are married, single, living in the west or the east. I want more from her characters.

It is also why a story like Qut al-Qulab really worked for me. I felt like I was seeing multiple worlds intersecting - the world of the village, the absence of the men because of jobs in other countries, the very personal story of the main character and how the rest of the village understood her.

I think Melanie is correct, that some of this is generational.

It may also be tied up with our ideas about gender, feminism, and personal freedom.

Lauren wrote: "Zahra, you are right, my phrase' ring true; is not clear. What I meant was not that they seemed fictitious, but rather that they seem melodramatic.

My biggest problem with her stories is that they..."

Thanks Lauren, you express some of my concerns also.

Here I am joining this discussion over three years later! I'm not even sure if I was in this group back then.
It's probably too late to get any replies on this, but I just want to say that I am currently reading The Locust and the Bird: My Mother's Story and absolutely loving it!
Interestingly enough, I almost decided not to read it while I was reading the prologue! I have it as a library book and was so turned off my the tone and style that I decided to return it.
The next day I decided to give it another try and now I'm hooked! The story is beautiful and moving. Because it's a real life telling of Hanan Al-Shaykh's own mother, the story is very simple and straight.
I highly suggest reading it before writing her off completely!

Thanks Jalilah for the endorsement. I haven't found a lot by Hanan al-Shaykh that I would want to reread, but she's certainly worth knowing about, and I'm glad that you're enjoying The Locust and the Bird!