Understanding magic in writing to revolutionise Arab literary culture: Experts

Sharjah:

The first day of discussions at the 37^th edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF 2018) included a unique panel, ‘Magic and Writing’ shed light on the challenges and solutions to educate the Arab youth to enhance the reading culture and to gear them towards creating content in the rare genre of horror and magic.

Ahmed Murad who is an Egyptian author and screenwriter of fiction and non-fiction  said, “I was a terrified child and I am still scared of going to the bathroom at night. But I would still say try to make your child scared of some things that would fan his imagination”. Referring to his mystery novel Blue Elephant which was later made into a film, Murad said, “sometimes cinema gives life to a book that people otherwise may not read because they are not fond of reading”.

He further said, “There are many fears, these fears should be written down on a paper to find the writer within us.” He admitted that people like the idea of fear but then it differs from one person to the other. The panelists admitted that the new technology children’s games, YouTube videos also often instill fear in children. But that kind of fear does not motivate you to write.

Being a good writer entails extensive research was a consensus. But the lack of Science fiction writers or even ghost writers was not attributed to a lack of talent. Instead, the session highlighted the difficulties in writing a science fiction novel. Also, an emphasis on other categories of novels that attract recognition and awards was seen as a major reason for writers steering away from this genre.

Reinstating the need to ‘diversify’ from political, social and romantic novels, Ussama AlMussalam a writer from Saudi Arabia talked about the difficulties of motivating people to write for this genre. However, the panelists also concurred on how the use of fighter jets like F-1 and F-2 in the World wars was attributed by Germans to Si-fi novels. Mussalam also said, “Ghosts do not exist in the Arab culture as we don’t believe in the reincarnation of Spirits. We believe in genies, this could also act as a possible deterrent for the under development of this genre in the middle East. The little work that we have seen on horror or ghost writing is because many people have westernized their local culture.”

Commenting on this line of thought was Abdul Wahab Al-Rifa, a GCC science fiction novelist who said, “Hardly any scientific imagination seems to be taking shape in this region. We talk about going to planet Mars, but we need to introduce incentives and prizes for the genre of horror literature. Often big names in the Arab region don’t accept Sci-fi as a genre very well.”

Finally, the closing remarks of the session emphasised on the fact that the beauty of literature lies in putting imagination into form. Additionally, the focus was to nurture a reading environment that’ll encourage the younger generation to be able to generate better content.  

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© Press Release 2018