In the course of looking for something else on the internet, I happened to discover a list of “The Best 100 Arabic Books.” I always find such compilations fascinating to some degree because, beyond the intrinsic interest of the ranking, they always say something about the compilers themselves. In this case, the list was put together by the Arab Writers Union in 2010 and is quite wide-ranging, including works from Mauritania and Tunisia to Yemen and Bahrain. The list is posted in English (with a link to the original Arabic) at
https://arablit.org/2010/04/23/the-best-100-arabic-books-according-to-the-arab-writers-union-1-10/. "Arab Lit" is a blog on Arabic literature and translation by Marcia Lynx Qualey, a freelance journalist in Cairo, and has been around for a decade now; I’ve read things on it a number of times before and find it both quite even-handed and quite well-informed. In any event, she has not only translated the list, she has helpfully annotated it with both brief commentary and a note of which books she has found have been translated (not all have, despite their English titles). I find it an intriguing list and, though I am familiar with a majority of the authors, I am hardly an expert on the subject. Still, I have to agree with her that the ranking is peculiar in places, particularly the fact that Abdelrahman Munif’s
Cities of Salt trilogy only comes in at 105. In any event, the list:
1 Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt
2 In Search Of Walid Masoud, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Palestine
3 Honor, Sonallah Ibrahim, Egypt
4 War In The Land Of Egypt, Yusuf a-Qa'id, Egypt
5 Men In The Sun, Ghassan Kanafani, Palestine
6 Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist, Emile Habibi, Palestine
7 The Desolate Time, Haidar Haidar, Syria
8 Rama and the Dragon, Edward al Kharrat, Egypt
9 Thus Spoke Abu Huraira, Mahmoud Messadi, Tunisia
10 Beirut Nightmares, Ghada Samman, Syria
11 The Animists, Ibrahim al-Koni, Libya
12 Tattoo, Abdul Rahman Majeed al-Rubaie, Iraq
13 The Long Way Back, Fouad Al-Takarli, Iraq
14 The Sail and the Storm, Hanna Mina (sometimes Hanna Minah), Syria
15 Zayni Barakat, Gamal al-Ghitani, Egypt
16 I Shall Present You With Another City; These Are The Borders of My Kingdom; and A Tunnel Lit by A Woman (trilogy), Ahmad Ibrahim al-Faqih, Libya
17 I Live, Leila Baalbaki, Lebanon
18 No One Sleeps in Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, Egypt
19 Love in Exile, Bahaa Taher, Egypt
20 The Cycles of the East, Nabil Suleiman, Syria
21 The Epidemic, Hani al-Raheb, Syria
22 The Forbidden, Yusuf Idris, Egypt
23 The Night of Ten Years, Muhammad Salih al-Jabri, Tunisia
24 Season of Migration to the North, Tayeb Salih, Sudan
25 Memory in the Flesh, Ahlam Mosteghanemi, Algeria
26 For Bread Alone, Mohamed Choukri, Morocco
27 Legislation of Al Murr, Abdul-Karim Nassif, Syria
28 House of Pleasure, Walid Ikhlassi, Syria
29 Death in Beirut, Tawfiq Yousef Awad, Lebanon
30 The Elephants, Fathi Ghanem, Egypt
31 Najran Under Zero, Yaha Yakhlaf, Palestine
32 Lovers, Rashad Abu Shawar, Palestine
33 Recognition, Ali Abu Al-Rish, Emirat
34 The Palm and El-Jabran, Gha’ib Ti’ma Firman, Iraq
35 The Return of the Absent, Munther al-Qabbani, Saudi Arabia
36 The Lamp of Umm Hashim, Yahya Hakki, Egypt
37 Return to Exile, Abu El Maati Abu El Naga, Egypt
38 The Lodging House, Khairy Shalaby, Egypt
39 Contact, Aroussia Naluti, Tunisia
40 Sultanah, Ghalib Halasa, Jordan
41 The Heron, Ibrahim Aslan, Egypt
42 Gate of the Sun, Elias Khoury, Lebanon
43 Latin Quarter, Suhail Idriss, Lebanon
44 Return of the Soul, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egypt
45 The Hostage, Zayd Mutee Dammaj, Yemen
46 The Game of Forgetting, Mohammed Berrada, Morocco
47 Winter Wind, Mubarak Al-Rabih, Morocco
48 Return to Dar al-Basha, Hassan Nasrallah, Tunisia
49 The Windy City, Moussa Ould Ebnou, Mauritania
50 The Seven days of Man, Abdel-Hakim Qasim, Egypt
51 The Crane, Halim Barakat, Syria
52 The Story of Zahra, Hanan al-Shaykh, Lebanon
53 Wind from the South, Abdelhamid Ben Haddouka, Algeria
54 Crazy Paradise, Ahmed Youssef, Syria
55 Wasmiya Comes Out of the Sea, Laila al-Othman, Kuwait
56 Confessions of a Silencer, Mu’nis al-Razzaz, Jordan
57 Rubaiyyat Bahari, Mohamed Gibreel, Egypt
58 Sana’a: An Open City, Mohammed Abdul Wali, Yemen
59 Granada, Radwa Ashour, Egypt
60 The Call of the Curlew, Taha Hussein, Egypt’s
61 Seeds of Corruption, Sabri Moussa, Egypt
62 Al Saghamat, Yusuf al-Sibai, Egypt
63 The Emigration to the North of the Children of Hathoot, Majid Tubia, Egypt
64 After the Sunset, Mohamed Abdel-Halim Abdulla, Egypt
65 Hearts on a Wire, Abdel-Salam Ajili, Syria
66 Aisha, Al-Bashir bin Salamah, Tunisia
67 The Shadow and the Echo, Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar, Lebanon
68 Al-Daqqala in Arajenha, Al-Bashir Khareef, Tunisia
69 The Slaver, Salah al-Din Bujah, Tunisia
70 Door to the Courtyard, Sahar Khalifeh, Palestine
71 Seventh day of Creation, Abdel Khaliq al-Rikabi, Iraq
72 A Fragment of Fear, Tharwat Abaza, Egypt
73 The Ace, Tahar Wattar, Algeria
74 The Woman and the Rose, Mohamed Zafzaf, Morocco
75 A Thousand Years of Nostalgia, Rachid Boudjedra, Algeria
76 Unknown Grave, Ahmed Ould Abdel-Qader, Mauritania
77 Murder and Anger, Muwaffaq Khidr, Iraq
78 The Whirlpool, Qamar Kilani, Syria
79 The Blockade, Fawzia Rasheed, Bahrain
80 There Is a Man in our House, Ihsan Abdul Quddus, Egypt
81 Symbols of Modernity, Abdul Amir Khadir, Iraq
82 And My Share of the Horizon, Abdel Qader Ben Shaikh, Tunisia
83 The Theocrat, Bensalem Himmich, Morocco
84 Al-Khamasseya, Ismail Fahd Ismail, Kuwait
85 Wandering Wings, Jawad Al-Sidawi, Lebanon
86 The Days of Ashes, Mohammad Ezzeddine Tazi, Morocco
87 Ras Beirut, Yasin Rifa’ieh, Syria
88 Eye of the Sun, Khalifa Hussein Mustapha, Libya
89 Longa and the Ghoul, Zahwar Wanissi, Algeria
90 Clamor of the Lake, Mohammed El-Bisatie, Egypt
91 The Sleepwalkers, Sa’ad Makkawi, Egypt
92 1952, Jamil Atiyah Ibrahim, Egypt
93 Birds of September, Emily Nasrallah, Lebanon
94 The Conspiracy, Faraj Al-Huwar, Tunisia
95 Al-Mu’allim ‘Ala or The Scholar ‘Ala, Abdul Karim Ghalib, Morocco
96 Essential Pillars, Elias Farkouh, Jordan
97 Birds of The Dawn, Lily Osseiran, Lebanon
98 Jisr Banat Yacoub, Hassan Hamid, Palestine
99 Al Wasmiya, Abdel-aziz Mishri, Saudi Arabia
100 A Man from Bashmour, Salwa Bakr, Egypt
101 The Fallen Knight Alights, Elias al-Diri, Lebanon
102 The Berries of Murr, Mohamed Al Aroussi Al Matuie, Tunisia
103 Sound, Water and Fire, Abdulla Khalifa, Bahrain
104 The Open Door, Latifa Al-Zayat, Egypt
105 The Cities of Salt, Abdul Rahman Munif, Saudi Arabia