Bookshelves are stacked with nostalgia. Browsing through the books is a flash from the past year. Readers everywhere were treated to a literary rollercoaster of emotions.We witnessed the end of an era with the final installment in the Harry Potter series (though there are hints at an encore) while Middle East politics heated up with the launch of Jimmy Carter’s controversial book on the Palestinian situation. The local literary scene was just as eventful, as Alaa El Aswany’s latest novel hit the stands unleashing the expected gasps from shocked readers. Fans of Naguib Mahfouz were not left out in the cold. “The Children of the Alley was finally released in Egypt in Arabic. The beauty of books is that as we turn the final page of the year, we can still glance at our bookshelves and get the same rush of emotion we felt when we first read them. After all, there’s always more room on the shelves for the exciting year ahead.
Harry Potter and the Deathly HallowsBy JK RowlingWe saw the tears from JK Rowling – and her fans – as she bid farewell to the blockbuster Harry Potter series. Leading up to the publication of the seventh – and supposedly final – installment, the book hit stores among speculation, internet leaks, and lines of children dressed in Hogwart uniforms. Even months after the book’s publication, Rowling triggered controversy by revealing that Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay.USA Today named “Deathly Hallows its book of the year, “wands down. “Rowling gave her story an ending that was as graceful, unpredictable and satisfying as the series itself. She made us believe that the imagination – like her own little wizard, now all grown up – still lives, wrote USA Today.
Palestine: Peace Not ApartheidBy Jimmy CarterThe crowning achievement of Jimmy Carter’s presidency was the Camp David Accords, and he has continued his public and private diplomacy ever since, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his decades of work for peace, human rights, and international development. So it was no surprise when his insider look at the Palestinian issue grabbed readers’ attention.The book’s title spurred a huge controversy. In an interview with Amazon, Carter said, “Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land.”My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.
The Grass is Singing By Doris LessingBritish novelist and Nobel laureate was described by the Swedish Academy as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny. The 88-year-old author – too ill to travel to Sweden for the ceremony – concluded in her acceptance speech that the “storyteller is deep inside every one of us. Her first novel, “The Grass is Singing (1950), set in South Africa under white rule, tells the story of human disintegration through Mary Turner, a confident, independent woman who is transformed by depression and frustration spurred on by the failure of her husband. The monotony of farm life drones on until the arrival of a vigorous black servant. Mary is suddenly trapped in a web of attraction as well as repulsion as she battles with racism in colonial South Africa.
A Thousand Splendid SunsBy Khaled HoisseiniHosseini’s first novel, bestselling “The Kite Runner, was a hard act to follow. But his newest novel has dominated the bestseller lists since its publication last summer. This Afghan epic tells the story of the nation’s tumultuous times from a female perspective. Hosseini’s style is sweet and simple, tugging at his readers’ heartstrings.
ChicagoBy Alaa El AswanyThe Arabic publication caused quite a stir earlier this year with its reference to the G-spot (written in English for want of a familiar Arabic term). El Aswany tackles the tough societal issues in his own frank manner as a mosaic of Egyptians and American lives run into each other at a university campus in Chicago. The English translation just hit bookstores.
Awlad Haritna (Children of the Alley)By Naguib MahfouzThis year, Mahfouz’s most controversial novel finally launched its local, Arabic publication. Originally issued in 1959 as a serial in a local newspaper, it was never republished in Egypt until this year.The allegorical novel tells the story of the multi-generational struggle of the descendants of the patriarch Gabalawi against social, political, and economic injustice. It provoked religious leaders in Egypt who opposed it because of its reference to the Prophet Mohamed (though Mahfouz did not refer to him specifically by name).
