tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055475983412062876.post412369739969767270..comments2023-11-03T12:28:41.044+03:00Comments on Ibrahim Farghali: Gennia fi Qarora> Jennie in a bottleAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07456335311775438403noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2055475983412062876.post-60182808333175944582008-01-12T14:49:00.000+03:002008-01-12T14:49:00.000+03:00I am not a literary critic, just a translator from...I am not a literary critic, just a translator from arabic into Italian, but I am a great eater of novels, if we may say so, so when I read a novel I do not consider it an Arabic or an English or an Italian novel etc., I just see it as a piece of art.<BR/>The accuses that lately have been raised to the particular subject of sex in some recent arabic novels are very silly, cause the readers, and also the critics, are so much involved in analising the sexual images that they completely forget the overall effort made by the author in constructing his novel, sorry, his piece of art. It is a pity, cause both “Ibtisamat al qiddisiin” and “Ginniya fi-l qarura” are really two novels of, as Edward Said would put it, their time. I think that when Said says in his “Culture and Imperialism” that a novel is a way to understand the political economical and cultural environment in which it is born, he is very right. It is true too that a part of the Egyptian society faces different daily problems than the ones faced by Haniin or Christine and Rami, but we can not neglect that a big slice of the society is living them, the fact that the two parts do not communicate with each other, is another matter, let’s leave it to the sociologists!<BR/>When with my Egyptian students of the Italian Cultural Center I discuss about a best seller like “Omarat el Yaqoubian”, 70% of the class says “It is not realistic! we are not like that! Al Aswany is writing something for you” meaning with this “you” Europians or Americans. So let’s consider their comments: we may say that a 30% of the Egyptian society is living in a world of its own, we are not here to judge why, but just to assume it cause it exists. Let’s put it in another way, when Mario Puzo wrote his novels about the “Godfather”, as Italians we should have said “It is not realistic, we are not like that...”, which is behaving like the ostrich, burying its head under the sand.<BR/>Intellectuals all over the world have started playing a very useless role which is criticizing each others, at the expences of criticizing the world we are living in, so I believe it’s the few enlighted writers’ due to continue writing about what they see and what they feel it is an important topic in their society, but we should say in “the” society, or aren’t we living in a globalized world?<BR/>What is very funny for me is observing the changes that are currently happening in the Egyptian society, which are very similar to the ones that the Italian society went through after the “American Liberation” and the entrance of chocolate bar in our destroyed and loser post Second World War poor country. Even reading Orhan Pamuk’s “Istanbul” makes you feel the same way: willing it or not, we had to change, we had to become modern - or shall we say “western”?<BR/>Why did I say funny? Cause the above mentioned 70% wants to completely neglect that modernization is entering their lives, and they consider only it’s tecnological aspect expecting to be allowed to reject the changes in manner and costumes that it is bringing with.<BR/>The fact that the Italian society became modern thanks to the American subsides for building a fence against the Varsavia Pact countries, does not have to make us forget – although we unfortunately always do – that this implied a great change in the Italian traditional society: mini skirts, bikini, the so to speak “liberation of woman” – but are we really free? But this is another matter, that “Ginniya fi-l qarura” explains better than me.<BR/>I’ll be waiting to read “What happended to Christine” in the third part... of your trilogy...<BR/>barbarabarbarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08580957328769244944noreply@blogger.com