The Forum for Arab and International Relations (FAIR) at Katara Cultural Village organised a seminar on political novels in the Arab world and the impact of intellect on literature, in which Qatari author Abdulaziz Al Mahmoud and Eritrean novelist Haji Jaber took part.
The seminar discussed the start of political novel in the Arab world, the political concepts that the Arab novel focused on, how to read the political novel, in addition to recommendations of political novel titles.
Al Mahmoud said the novel has a lot of capacity to discuss the individual, the world, people’s problems and is the vastest sphere of expression and documenting historic events to serve as reference for researchers, adding that it can explain the meaning of some terms.
He gave the example of some terms from different civilizations that reached Arabs through books, while some movies helped in spreading them among the public.
Al Mahmoud mentioned examples of international novels and how authors tried to create a special symbol language with readers so that the reader would be able to understand the message of the author. He also reviewed his own experiment in historical writing and his contributions of telling the readers about mysterious historic figures.
For his part, Jaber said that no matter how its direction was different, a political novel is a means of delivering messages to relevant authorities, adding that any narrative novel written by novelist as an expression of rebellion, rejection of manifestations and problems, and search for solutions, is considered a political novel no matter how the author tried to introduce passion and imagination to it.
Jaber reviewed his own novel experiment and how his works discussed the issues of repression, racial discrimination, human trafficking and arms in Africa.
FAIR is an independent think tank based in Doha and was established in 2011 to further cultural and political development, stimulate debate, promote dialogue and forge consensus among different intellectual and political groupings. It is committed to empowering citizens and enabling politicians, intellectuals and policy makers to reach better and more informed solutions to local, regional and international problems.
