Last night I was at the Beirut39 event at Manchester Literature Festival. Beirut39, for those who don't know, is a project set up by the Hay Festival and Bloomsbury to highlight the 39 best young Arab writers. In the summer, Bloomsbury published their work in an anthology. I haven't read the whole thing - just the three entries of the writers who were there last night - but judging by the work of Abdelkader Benali, Yassin Adnan and Ala Hlehel, the quality is good. What really struck home last night was this sense that politics, religion and tradition are an inescapable theme for these Arab writers. And that was much the same feeling I got from Granta: Pakistan, a wonderful anthology of new writing from that country. I subscribe to Granta anyway, but with work from Mohsin Hamid and Mohammed Hanif, this issue was particularly strong. So I ended up writing about it for The National, as you can see below.
What came out of both Granta: Pakistan and Beirut39 was this idea that to truly understand the issues facing a country or a people, fiction is crucial. In fact, I would argue I learned more about the life of a Palestinian man living in Israel via Ala Hlehel's short story than I ever would in a newspaper.
Arts & Life
20 Oct 2010
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