Doha, Qatar: The activities of the Katara Festival for Arabic Novel continued in its ninth session, amid a large audience, especially novel lovers and those interested in literature, who lined up to obtain the autograph of novelists and critics on their winning books in the eighth session of the award, numbering 16 writers, in addition to four writers who won in previous sessions of the award.
Book signing parties continued for three days, the continuation of the Katara Book Fair, and the exhibition of Ihsan Abdel Quddous, who was chosen as Person of the Year.
On Saturday, two symposiums were held, the first dealt with the topic: “The Arab Romantic Novel between Reality and Aspirations,” in which Dr. Muhammad Al Amiri, the Jordanian critic, Dr. Saeed Yaqtin, the Moroccan critic, and the novelist Dr. Ahmed Abdel Malik spoke.
The second symposium was entitled: “The Role of Ihsan Abdul Quddus in Enriching the Arabic Novel.” Speakers include Dr. Fahd Al Hindal, a Kuwaiti writer and critic, Dr. Rami Abu Shihab, a Palestinian writer and critic, Dr. Amani Fouad, a professor of modern literary criticism at the Egyptian Academy of Arts.
The first symposium dealt with the topic of romance from several axes.
The first axis was the manifestations of the social structure in the Arabic romantic novel. The second axis was the romantic narrator, through the novel “After Sunset” by the Egyptian novelist Muhammad Abdel Halim Abdullah as a model. The third axis discussed the reasons for the absence of romance in Arabic novels.
Dr. Yaktin recommended that Katara Publishing House hire Arab researchers to study the phenomenon of romance in the Arabic novel, because the Arabic novel fluctuates between realism and the new novel, and the romantic novel almost disappears from the Arab novel scene completely.
Dr. Ahmed Abdel Malik believes that the novel is a work of art in the first place, and there is no need to set a scale to measure romance, given that there are narrative foundations that must be adhered to, provided that the novelist is left free to amaze the reader.
Dr. Abdul Malik touched on the definition of the novel and the term romance, expressing his belief that the disappearance of romance in the Arabic novel is due to the influence of censorship on literary works in Arab countries, in addition to the self-censorship of the writer, which is due to his adherence to societal norms and traditions.
The second symposium dealt with Ihsan Abdel Quddous’ novelist experience, by addressing the novelist’s experience with Egyptian cinema, and from the angle of the dialectic of purpose and reception in Ihsan’s novels, in addition to deconstructing the novelist Ihsan’s narratives to find out his motives and the messages he tried to convey to the recipient through the narration.
