Syrian literature
Other prominent themes have been everyday life in major cities including Damascus and Aleppo, but also in villages and smaller towns, reflecting the writer's own experience.
[2] Furthermore, until the founding of the modern state of Syria in 1946, the works of Syrian writers largely developed in similar cultural contexts as the literature in the geographic region of modern-day Lebanon.
She especially emphasized the absence of certain political themes, due to the writers' dependence on the goodwill of the government, censorship and publication bans, such as the 1982 Hama massacre and other forms of repression, which she saw absent in modern Syrian literature.
Given the violations of human and political rights in the country, she emphasized the "silence" around these issues as an overarching feature:[6]Contemporary Syrian literature is created in the crucible of a tenacious authoritarianism.
Manifold silence, evasion, indirect figurative speech, gaps and lacunae are striking features of Syrian writing, habits of thought and wary writerly techniques that have developed during an era dominated, [...], by authoritarian governments with heavy-handed censorship policies and stringent punitive measures.Following the outbreak of the war in Syria in 2011, Kahf wrote that partially as a result of social media and the Internet, this silence had changed and "A new Syrian identity and literary tradition are being formed around the events of the last few years.
This anthology, written in the service of the Sultan of Syria Nur al-Din Zengi and his successor Saladin, contains numerous mentions of Syrian poets and their verses.
[18] Usama ibn Munqidh (1095–1188), a Syrian writer and poet, politician and diplomat, was one of the most important contemporary chroniclers of the Crusades from an Arab perspective.
In tea rooms and coffee houses, storytellers called hakawati entertained people with their tales, characterized by colloquial expressions, rhymes and exaggerations.
[24][25][26] These stories may have originated from various traditional sources, such as One Thousand and One Nights, from epics by legendary Arab heroes such as Antarah ibn Shaddad and Sultan Baybars or from the Quran.
These include the historical novels by Ma'ruf Ahmad al-Arna'ut (1892–1942) as well as al-Naham (1937, Greed) and Qawz-quzah (Rainbow, 1946) by Shakib al-Jabiri, which represent milestones in the development of modern fiction in Syria.
Adab al-Iltizam, the "literature of political engagement" characterized by social realism, largely replaced the romantic trend of the past decades.
As literary scholar Hanadi Al-Samman puts it, "In the face of threats of persecution or imprisonment, most of Syria's writers had to make a choice between living a life of artistic freedom in exile [...] or resorting to subversive modes of expression that seemingly comply with the demands of the authoritarian police state while undermining and questioning the legitimacy of its rule through subtle literary techniques and new genres".
Among others, several major reasons have been named:[42][43][44] Since 1960, the year he published his first collection of short stories, Zakaria Tamer has been one of the best-known prose authors among the Arab public.
[48] His novel Walimah li A'ashab al-Bahr, (A Feast for the Seaweeds), first published in Beirut in 1983, was banned in several Arab countries and led to an angry reaction from clerics at Al-Azhar University when the book was reprinted in Egypt in 2000.
The plot focuses on two left-wing Iraqi intellectuals who fled their country in the 1970s and who blame dictators and authoritarian politics for the oppression in the Arab world.
In some of her novels, such as Beirut '75, she exposes class differences, gender conflicts and corruption in the Lebanese capital and indirectly predicted the civil war that would soon follow.
[50] The early works of the Syrian Kurdish writer Salim Barakat (* 1951), born in Qamishli, are characterized by his youthful experiences with the diverse cultural influences of the Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, Circassian and Yazidi ethnic groups in this region bordering Turkey.
[51][52] Khaled Khalifa (1964–2023), born in a village near Aleppo and living in Damascus from the late 1990s until his death, was a Syrian novelist, screenwriter and poet who is also one of the well-known Arab authors.
[54] Other notable Syrian prose writers since the late 20th century include Khairy Alzahaby (1946-2022) Taissier Khalaf, a novelist and cultural historian born in 1967 in Quneitra, Fawwaz Haddad (b.
By drawing on the content of historical Arabic poets, who knew no taboos and were, among other things, critical of religion, Adonis intended to revitalize this intellectual openness.
[58] The poet, playwright and essayist Muhammad al-Maghut (1934–2006) is considered one of the first authors of Arabic free verse by liberating his poems from the traditional forms and revolutionizing their structure.
His play for the theatre, Al-ousfour al ahdab (The Hunchback Bird), was originally a long poem written while hiding in a small, low-ceilinged room.
Al-Maghut also collaborated with Syrian actors Duraid Lahham and Nihad Qal'i to produce some of the region's most popular plays, such as Kasak ya Watan (Cheers to You, Nation), Ghorbeh (Alienation) and Dayat Tishreen (October Village).
In addition to numerous plays and screenplays, his works include poetry collections, novels, newspaper articles and literary translations from English into Arabic.
His plays, written in Arabic, have been performed in original and translated versions since the 2000s, including in theatres of the Middle East, the USA, Great Britain, France and Germany.
"[69] Similar fates and experiences are present in Liwaa Yazji's plays Goats (2017) and Q & Q (2016), performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London,[70] and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
[73] According to literary critic Anne-Marie McManus, these "contemporary works of art can shed much-needed light on the political, social and psychological contours of an uprising.
Rather, their works are expected to meet Orientalist clichés, for example regarding the dangers of the flight into exile or the trope of the oppressed Arab woman.
[76] Exiled in London, the writer and activist Dima Wannous published ironic stories about people in her home country under the title Dark Clouds over Damascus.
Since the 1950s, experimental novels and contemporary themes, such as discrimination against women, have been published by Ulfat Idlibi (1912–2007), Widad Sakakini (1913–1991), Salma Kuzbari (1923–2006), Colette Khoury (b.
