Arab novelists and writers discuss the role of the novel in reshaping human consciousness
Sharjah, November 12 / WAM / An elite group of Arab novelists have confirmed that the novel is one of the most important arts capable of reshaping human consciousness by evoking marginalized voices and forgotten identities in history and geography.
This came during an intellectual symposium entitled “The Novel as a Narrative Space for Exploring Identity, Marginality, and Human History,” held within the activities of the 44th session of the Sharjah International Book Fair 2025, which brought together the novelist Dr. Shukri Al-Mabkhout, the Algerian novelist Al-Siddiq Haj Ahmed, and Dr. Maryam Al-Hashimi.
Dr. Shukri Al-Mabkhout, who won the Booker Prize in 2015 for his novel “The Italian,” provided an in-depth reading of the concept of margin and its relationship to history through the novel, explaining that the problem with margin is not only its location, but rather its ability to reshape the historical narrative itself.
For his part, the Algerian novelist Al-Siddiq Haj Ahmed enriched the symposium with a creative testimony linking his own experience to the symposium’s questions about marginality, identity, and post-modern discourse, stressing that ancient Arabic literature was full of images of marginality, from the poetry of tramps, through stories of travel and diaspora such as Sinbad and others.
Dr. Maryam Al-Hashemi focused on the philosophical dimension of the concepts of identity and history in the structure of the novel, considering that the novel is the literary entity most capable of containing the complexities of human life.
She believed that this literary genre inherently carries problems of identity and the presence of history in writing because it is a living, ever-changing organism that interacts with society and feeds on its questions.
In a related context, a number of writers and researchers discussed, during a session entitled “Series of Eight,” the historical role of the first Arab universities in producing knowledge and disseminating science, and the importance of simplifying this knowledge heritage and presenting it to new generations in a concise language and attractive graphics.
Dr. Hamad Bin Saray, novelist Nadia Al-Najjar, and Dr. Muhammad Abdel Razzaq participated in the session, who reviewed the “Eight Series” published by Dar Al-Hudhud as part of an Emirati knowledge initiative aimed at reviving the scientific heritage of Arab and Islamic civilization and presenting it to children and young people in an interactive narrative style.
A literary session entitled “Masterpieces in the Details of Daily Life” discussed the essence of the beauty inherent in small details, their role in building the novel and giving it its human depth, and how ordinary moments can be transformed in the hands of the writer into scenes vibrant with life and meaning.
Egyptian writer Noha Mahmoud and American writer Ben Lowry participated in the session, who shed light on the writer’s relationship with the details that make up the text and the role of imagination in transforming reality into vibrant narrative material.
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