Newspaper Article

TALENTED ARAB NOVELISTS BRING A BITTER MESSAGE TO THE WEST

Reviewed by Milton Viorst, a writer on the Middle East and the author of "Sands of Sorrow: Israel's Journey from Independence "

1988

Overview

Cities of Salt By Abdelrahman Munif Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux Random House, 627 pages, $18.95 The Sand Child By Tahar Ben Jelloun Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 176 pages, $17.95 Logically enough, leadership has come from Egypt, the first of the independent Arab states. The Arab world's geographical center, Egypt also is the most self-assured of its societies and the culture that is most at home with Western literary forms. Nagulb Mahfouz, the merciless dissecter of Egyptian mores, is a world-class novelist and a candidate for the Nobel Prize. Not far behind him is a generation of younger Egyptians whose talents are matched by Palestinians and Lebanese willing to place their unhappy societies under a literary microscope. Meanwhile, writers at the edges of the Arab world are scrambling to catch up.

• Publisher: Tribune Publishing Company, LLC