Novelists: Modern narrative reimagines the self and the world
Sharjah, November 11 / WAM / Novelists and writers have confirmed that the contemporary novel has become a space for self-revelation and reshaping, and that the writer, no matter how far he strays from his autobiography, continues to leave his impact on the literary work, directly or indirectly.
They considered that modern narration has become a conscious process of re-imagining the self and the world, and that writing, whether for adults or children, carries different levels of openness, disclosure, and questioning established concepts about identity, childhood, fear, and exile.
This came during a session entitled “Manifestations of the Self and Narrative in the Contemporary Novel” that hosted novelists Ahmed Abdel Latif from Egypt, Mais Khaled Al Othman from Kuwait, Haya Saleh from Jordan, Rima Bali from Syria, and Burhan Sutmiz from Turkey within the activities of the Sharjah International Book Fair 2025.
Novelist Ahmed Abdel Latif explained that the self that appears within a literary work is a complex layer of the writer’s thoughts, dreams, fears, and obsessions toward the world, and the writer within his text is not the central character, but rather one among other characters, and that no matter how much he tries to hide his identity, some of its features will leak out, but not as a single clear mass that can be talked about.
For her part, novelist Mays Al-Othman spoke about her experience in her writing, noting that journalistic language tends to be direct and clear, while creative writing carries layers of experimentation and coloring, stressing that the two fields run in parallel and do not meet.
In turn, the novelist Haya Al-Saleh explained that the multiple types of her writing, between criticism, adult novels, and children’s literature, make her face different challenges. Writing for children and young people requires representing the child’s fears, voice, and awareness. She stressed that self-reflection in children’s literature is more special than its appearance in adult literature, and that her experience revealed to her the profound difference between the two types.
Novelist Rima Bali pointed out that writing remains writing, whether it is close to the roots or far from them, and geographical distance sometimes gives a clearer and deeper vision of the concepts that constitute the fictional material.
Novelist Burhan Sutmiz considered that fictional literature is a space that allows for the reconstitution of the divided soul because the text creates a new reality that allows the writer to understand himself better, explaining that life is precise to the extent that literature offers multiple mirrors that help to realize hidden layers of the self.
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