Authors explore the power of words in many forms at opening weekend of the Sharjah International Book Fair

The 34th Sharjah book fair has drawn a big crowd of leading authors and literary industry professionals from the region and around the world.

Ben Okri, a Booker Prize winner, shared his thoughts on prose and poetry at a panel talk on Friday. Satish Kumar / The National

The role of the story and the effectiveness of book translations were some of the key topics examined in the opening weekend of the Sharjah International Book Fair. Launched on Wednesday at Sharjah’s Expo Center, the 34th edition hosted another large gathering of celebrated international and local literary figures and industry professionals for panel discussions and In Conversation sessions centring on the written world.

Lost in translation?

At one of Thursday’s panel sessions, All Languages: Problems of Translation, Emirati author Dalal Khalifa – who has translated Arabic works to English in addition to having her own novels translated into English, French and Italian – said despite the best of efforts, something is always lost when a work is not read in its original tongue.

“When it comes to the richness of the Arabic word, there are also some challenges,” she explained. “For example, the word ‘dunya’ means more than simply ‘the world’. It can also mean life, it can also mean life versus the afterlife.”

An old classic refreshed

Later that evening, a new English translation of a classic Urdu work was celebrated.

The English version of Shikwa and Jawab-i-Shikwa, with the title of Complaint and Answer, by the late Pakistani poet Muhammed Iqbal, was launched as part of the book fair.

Written in fragments between in 1909 and 1913, the spiritual work extols the blessings of God with a pointed message to readers to elevate themselves over petty differences and serve mankind faithfully.

English book merchant Idris Mears, who sells a wide range of spiritual literature in the book fair under the store name Black Stone and Holywell, described the translation of Iqbal’s work as significant.

“Iqbal’s poetry partly acts as a lever to move people’s perceptions, and this is what this book did when it was first published all those years ago,” he said.

“I hope that with this translation, it can result in more people being inspired and we get a modern day Iqbal who can also change the way we think.”

The power of story

Friday night saw the appearance of some of the festival’s biggest guests; the Man Booker Prize-winning Nigerian author Ben Okri, Pakistani poet and novelist Fatima Bhutto and American young-adult fiction writer Joan Bauer.

The latter and Okri appeared in the panel discussion Fantasy World: The Magic of Tale, Imagination and Development.

Bauer, whose latest work is Tell Me, says writing for young adults expands her creativity more than penning adult novels.

“There is something about the genre, because it acts as a bridge between childhood and manhood,” she said. “Writing these books really gives me energy and fills me with hope and idealism. I feel younger, and it’s much better than getting plastic surgery.”

Meanwhile, Okri, whose work includes poetry and novels, doesn’t see a separation between the genres.

“That distinction is really an illusion,” he said. “The more poetic the novel, the more universal it becomes. The more story there is in a poem, the more accessible the poem becomes.”

In the panel session Voice From Around The World, Bhutto described how young survivors of a recent earthquake in Pakistani used writing as a way to make sense of tragedy.

“I went to visit these young people and everyone wanted to talk about it and say where they were when it happened,” she recalled.

“I remember telling one of the organisers (in the makeshift shelter) that if I get enough letters about what happened I can put in the book. Not more than a week later I received more than 160 in the mail.”

•The Sharjah International Book Fair runs until Saturday. For details visit www.sharjahbookfair.com