Nothing new… another year of the Nobel Prizes for World Literature, and Arabs are completely absent even from the nominations for the award that were announced in mid-October. Although you may think that this is due to the weakness of Arab literary production, the reality is that this is not completely true, as Arabic literature still holds a distinguished position within the production of world literature, but no one among the award supervisors pays attention to it…or rather, they do not want to.
Throughout its history, the Nobel Prize for Literature, which is administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, has not been won by a single Arab writer except Naguib Mahfouz, who won the award. This reflects the award’s bias towards Western values, and its exclusion of Arab writers, and even non-Arab writers who oppose Western values, including the Russian Leo Tolstoy.
The award has gained global credibility for more than a hundred years. Based on the scientific and practical structure on which the award is based and the system and standards that it follows. He points out that the Arab world does not have an Arab award that depends on such an academic entity and that rises to such a global level.
Arab absence
The first and last time, since 1988 until now, that Arabs won the Nobel Prize for Literature was for the great Egyptian writer, Naguib Mahfouz. The truth is that Mahfouz was not the only one who deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature. The general situation at that time was full of writers and poets whose names were written in history and who influenced society with their writings and compositions. Many names emerged after that without achieving this.
Despite the clear bias of the Swedish Academy, this cannot be taken as an excuse to justify any shortcomings in Arab literary productions. Despite the state of culture and literature extending in the Arab world throughout the ages and in all fields, literature and culture, which directly affect the societal and individual situation, have lost their splendor in the recent period.
Language barrier
Some believe that the Arabic language, despite its beauty and eloquence, stands as a barrier between the Nobel Prize and Arabic literature. It is not a recognized language or among the languages in which the research takes place, and those in charge of the award ask those studying Arabic literature abroad to nominate Arab names to receive the award, which hinders reaching decisive results to introduce those in charge of the award to Arab literature and creativity.
This is in addition to the fact that there are some critics who believe that Arabic literature includes issues that do not concern the Western reader. It does not approach his world and does not express it as much as it expresses the Arab reader, which distances the Western reader from Arabic literature and its issues, while some criticize the Arab writers’ preoccupation with always turning to the West, and they see that forgetting the self and decorating the image of the other makes literature lose its content and aesthetics.
Translation crisis
There is another real crisis that cannot be overlooked, which is the translation crisis. Naguib Mahfouz’s turn to the French language was his path to Nobel Prize and international recognition. It has transcended locality to the barriers of geography and its expression of the one human spirit that does not differ among races, because the success of any literature stems from its connection with humanity and its expression of it.
Simple translation may be a good way to convey Arabic literature to the Western reader and researcher, but it is not sufficient alone to view and understand Arabic literature, as the award nominations depend on the selections presented in English or various European languages.
Clear bias
There are Arab writers who have the qualifications to win a Nobel Prize based on their creativity. Especially Tawfiq al-Hakim, who laid the foundations for creativity, as well as Taha Hussein, who, despite translating his writings into French and other languages, did not win a Nobel Prize, and this cannot be explained except as explicit persecution and bias against Arabs.
Indeed, the award’s bias against Arabs has reached a blatant level, which is clearly evident from the neglect of diaspora writers, who immigrated to European countries and wrote in their languages, and clearly contributed to supporting the Arab presence in the West and thus approached the award theoretically, but to no avail.
The Arabs are not the only ones whose share in the Nobel Prize for Literature was weak. There are other countries that did not win the Nobel Prize, such as Brazil, Pakistan, India, Korea, and Venezuela. These countries and their creators are in the last rows of the award, while there are other countries that won the award in a clear percentage, such as the United States, which won it with a percentage of about 33% of the award results.
As for the Arabs, although some may consider that the language barrier and the translation crisis may give the award organizers some right to talk about the difficulty of accessing Arabic literature, this does not seem logical in light of its role and responsibility as a prestigious international award. Arabic literature has a heritage and a present, and Western researchers must strive to discover it as Arabs seek to discover them, without marginalizing the Arab creative experience.
