How good fiction can help the Middle East turn the page

Publishers from the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, the UK and India have gathered at the Sharjah International Book Fair. Pawan Singh / The National

What stories matter the most to us? Are they the ones in which we recognise the familiar, or are they the ones in which we are able to discover strange new worlds? It is often both, and sometimes even at once.

In the Middle East, we do not need to look very far to find the depressingly familiar tales of conflict, death and destruction in the everyday media we consume. Yet in countless volumes of literature, there are also many, many more individual stories of hope and wonder, written by people from here or who have stories set in or related to our region.

It is in and of itself an entire landscape to spend time in. Currently, book lovers are exploring the Sharjah International Book Fair, where publishers have gathered from the UAE, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, the UK and India. Another great medium for storytelling is film and there is currently the Red Sea Film Festival showing movies from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Algeria.

In Dubai at the end of the January, the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature will host the celebrated American writer and physician Abraham Verghese and the Nobel Prize-winning Tanzanian-British novelist and academic Abdulrazak Gurnah. Also attending the festival is the Booker Prize-nominated Nigerian author Chigozie Obioma and the Emmy Award-winning journalist Hala Gorani.

Plenty of storytellers and stories to provide us with diverse and rich perspectives on the world in which we live.

British novelist Samantha Harvey’s accomplishment, according to the Booker Prize committee, has been to position 'the entire planet within a single narrative frame”. EPA

Equally so, this week, Samantha Harvey was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize for Orbital. The decision has been hailed as much for representing a first home win in half a decade for what was once an exclusively British competition, as it has been for the beauty of the prose, or the originality of the story set in an international space station orbiting the Earth across one day.

The setting of this tale is also a reminder of the many intersections between people of different cultures and nationalities and how stories can cross borders and break down barriers more than any political speech or piece of news.

Harvey’s accomplishment, according to the Booker Prize committee, has been to position “the entire planet within a single narrative frame”. It went on to add that “Orbital blurs distinctions between borders, time zones and our own individual stories. This is a vantage point we haven’t encountered in fiction before, and it is infused with such awe and reverence that it reads like an act of worship”.

The future is now. The science fiction genre is today simply fiction. That’s because our world is changing in front of our very eyes, just like the watching astronauts in the book.

Our world is changing in front of our very eyes, just like the watching astronauts in the book 'Orbital'

“Harvey makes the case for the futility of territorial conflicts, and the need for co-operation and respect for our shared humanity,” said Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation. “This is a theme that couldn’t be more sobering, timely, or urgent.”

Ms Wood added that this year is one of “geopolitical crisis, likely to be the warmest year in recorded history”. That our planet is “shaped by the sheer, amazing force of human want” and space representing an “unbounded place with no wall or barrier visible from space, with all politics ‘an assault on its gentleness’, [the novel] is hopeful, timely and timeless”.

The New York Times quoted Edmund de Waal, an artist and the chair of this year’s panel of judges, calling Orbital a “beautiful, miraculous novel”. He added: “Harvey makes our world strange and new for us.”

In her acceptance speech, Harvey said she wanted to dedicate the Prize “to everybody who does speak for and not against the Earth; for and not against the dignity of other humans, other life; and all the humans who speak for and call for and work for peace”.

Around our region, what we cherish most is increasingly under threat. Take for example, the famed ruins at Baalbek. EPA

“I wanted to write about our human occupation of Low Earth orbit for the past quarter of a century – not as sci-fi but as realism. Could I evoke the beauty of that vantage point with the care of a nature writer? Could I write about amazement? Could I pull off a sort of space pastoral? These were the challenges I set myself,” she added.

This message could not be more appropriate today, particularly at a time when the problems of today seem to be far removed from any chance of solutions.

Meanwhile, on the ground, around our region, what we cherish most is increasingly under threat. Take for example, the famed ruins at Baalbek, which date back to the Roman Empire period and are among Lebanon’s most famous tourist attractions. This town hosts the world-renowned cultural festival called the Baalbek International Festival. However, it is now closed.

This is the result of daily air strikes being conducted by Israel. The ruins have stood for more than two millennia, but we cannot take its presence for granted. Nothing can be any more. Not with conflict and climate change being such overwhelming features of our lives.

So, what should we do to remain optimistic and hopeful about the future? One thing is that we keep telling, and listening to, our stories – no matter what.