Those girls of Riyadh!

A few weeks ago Gamal Al Ghitany (the novelist and editor of Akhbar Al Adab) wrote a column about Arabic best-sellers. He was talking about a general trend, but he focused on the novel “Banaat Riyadh” (“Girls of Riyadh”) which has been a best-seller in the Arab world and has recently come out in English. Al Ghitany talks about how Arabic literature, after 9/11, has become of interest to the West, and how Arab writers have (consciously or unconsciously) met a prospective Western audience’s particular demands. “What is required?” he writes. “What’s required is a peek into this society which seems closed to Westerners, and in which women occupy a particular place…” Al Ghitany describes “Banaat Riyadh” as “a modest, ordinary work from an artistic point of view” but he says, according to the “new literary standards” it’s a “treasure trove, starting with the title.” Al Ghitany wouldn’t mind the work’s commercial success if it weren’t taken for a direct indication of its literary value so that, he writes, a British newspaper mentioned the work among a list of “six essential works to understanding Arabic literature.” 

 

While I share Al Ghitany’s frustration with voyeurism and sensationalism, and with the generally quite superficial and misinformed Western coverage of Arab culture, I’ve actually heard some pretty good things about “Banaat Riyadh.” No one says it’s a masterpiece, but three women friends whose taste in books I trust have told me they greatly enjoyed it. I haven’t read it yet (it’s part of a big pile of books on my shelf that I often eye with guilt) but based on what I’ve read about it, it sounds like the author exploits the desire to see into the life of women in Saudi Arabia in conscious, funny and perhaps subversive ways. And she seems to use different dialects, registers, and languages to great effect. 

 

Anyway, this column reminded me of the controversy that has surrounded Marilyn Booth’s translation of “Banaat Riyadh” into English. Booth has written at length about the ways the author and publisher changed her translation without consulting her. She gives many examples in this article in Translation Studies (unfortunately not free to the public) of the kinds of changes that were made. I have to say that based on the examples she gives it certainly looks as if the changes flattened the narrative voice she’d created into something more formal and less charming.

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