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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 June 2000 Issue No. 486
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A source of inspiration
Some trace the origins of the Arabic novel back to the Thousand and One Nights, others to Hadith Eissa Ibn Hisham. Still others believe the novel is a foreign import from 19th-century Europe. My first concept of the novel was formed by the Qur'an. It attracted me as a fine form of the art of story-telling. Until today, the stories of the Qur'an have an unparalleled effect on our feelings.
The stories told in the Qur'an follow the most modern principles of novel writing. They do not begin, like 19th-century novels, by setting the stage for the drama, then built toward a climax before reaching a resolution in the last pages. They are more like 20th-century literary experiments, in which events do not follow a monotonous, diachronic sequence but move according to dramatic requirements, which dictate where the different parts of the story are located. In modern European novel-writing, this represented a revolution, as can be seen in the works of Joyce or Proust.
In the Qur'an, the story of Mary, for example, is distributed among various suras. Each of these contains part of the story. For this reason, the Qur'anic stories, with their noble content and style, were the first to provide me with a concept of the novel that I felt I could use in my own writing.
This effect extends throughout my work in general, but perhaps it is most apparent in Morning and Evening Conversations.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
