The acknowledged Arabic masterpiece ‘East of the Mediterranean’ has never been translated into English. Why not?

‘East of the Mediterranean’ was written in 1975 by Saudi Arabian writer Abdelrahman Munif. Some of his other novels had already been published to wide acclaim, even by fellow author Graham Greene. No other writer has had as deep an impact on changing my view of the world as  Abdelrahman Munif with the powerful novels in his ‘The Cities of Salt’ series. Yet ‘East of the Mediterranean’ is nowhere to be found.

Munif opened my eyes to how the real world operates. He was born a Saudi Arabian national in Jordan in the year 1933. He studied law in Baghdad and Egypt, and got his law degree from the Sorbonne and also got a doctorate in oil economics in Belgrade. In 1963, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship for his political activity and his opposition to the Saudi royal family. Forced into exile, he then moved to Syria to work as an economist in the oil ministry and also as an editor of ‘Oil and Development’ magazine. In the late 1970s, he quit working in the oil industry to concentrate on his fiction writing. He died in 2004 at the age of 71.

His novels deal with the history of the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, how the United States and British oil interests came in and propped up these authoritarian Saudi princes with unlimited money and resources, destroyed the environment with their oil drilling and devastated the lives of the common people living there. His work so offended the rulers of Saudi Arabia that many of his books were banned for their scathing criticism of the oil industry in the Middle East and of the elite Saudis who played along with the oil companies.

The ‘Cities of Salt’ trilogy tells a compelling story which had a profound effect on me. It has been translated into English and is there for us to read. The message of ‘the three ‘Cities of Salt’ trilogy novels is that in the Arab oil countries, the Arabs have been the victims of their rulers and the foreigners. It is a gripping disturbing work. However according to Arabic sources, Munif’s most celebrated work is ‘East of the Mediterranean’ which has never been translated into English. Why not?

According to Arabic sources, ‘East of the Mediterranean’ reveals in graphic detail the torture and abuse that prisoners suffered in Arab prisons and detention centers of which Munif had personal experience. It highlighted the fact that “a human being in the lands east of the Mediterranean is cheaper than anything and a cigarette stub has more value than him”.

‘East of the Mediterranean’ is a political prisoner novel to rival the classic ‘Darkness at Noon’ by Arthur Koestler, yet no publisher has felt the need to translate it into English. It has been translated into German. One can obviously see that it would be deeply embarrassing to the Saudi elite and probably to some of the oil interests in the United States and Great Britain too.

Yet we readers of English are being denied an acknowledged masterpiece, and the reasons for this have never been explained at least to me.

No other writer has had as deep an impact on changing my view of the world as Saudi Arabian writer Abdelrahman Munif with his powerful novels in ‘The Cities of Salt’ series. Abdelrahman Munif opened my eyes to how the real world operates. The two novels ‘Cities of Salt’ and ‘The Trench’ are masterpieces and are must-reads as far as I am concerned. They contain some of the most moving scenes I have encountered. I personally believe that Munif should have received the Nobel Prize for Literature before Egyptian author Naiguib Mahfouz, although I have read and treasured several of Mahfouz’s novels. Maybe they both should have gotten the Nobel Prize.

Munif wrote 15 novels, but all of his work has been banned in Arab countries and only a few of his novels have been translated into English. I was very lucky to discover Munif and read his novels.

First, some background on Abdelrahman Munif. He was born a Saudi Arabian national in Jordan in the year 1933. He studied law in Baghdad and Egypt, and got his law degree from the Sorbonne and also got a doctorate in oil economics in Belgrade. In 1963, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship for his political activity and his opposition to the Saudi royal family. Forced into exile, he then moved to Syria to work as an economist in the oil ministry and also as an editor of ‘Oil and Development’ magazine. In the late 1970s, he quit working in the oil industry to concentrate on his fiction writing. He died in 2004 at the age of 71.

What is the message of Munif’s novels? Through his fictional characters, Munif traces the shift over decades of Arab society from an almost egalitarian community into one dependent on oil and the shift from a spiritual Islamic society into a radically authoritarian Islamic state. These shifts occurred because of the rise of the oil industry and the resulting foreign, British and American, influence. The Arab people, except for the Saudi royal family and a ruling few, became “the subjects of injustice, deprivation and oppression”. The great majority of Arabs in the oil countries have become victims of their rulers and of the foreigners. With his oil background, Munif had a deep understanding and appreciation of the lives of the characters in his novels. Edward Said has said of ‘Cities of Salt’ that it is the “only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans, and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country”.

“The tragedy is not in our having the oil, but in the way we use the wealth it has created and in the future awaiting us after it has run out. Trees were cut down, people uprooted from their land, the earth dug up and oil finally pumped out only to turn people into a crowd of open mouths waiting for charity or a crowd of arms fighting over a piece of bread and building an illusory future…Oil could have been a road to the future, but what actually happened is nothing like that. As a result, we shall again have to face a sense of loss and estrangement, this time in complete poverty.” – Abdelrahman Munif

Munif was a dedicated foe of monarchy and dictatorships and the despots who control most of the Middle East’s oil. The Yemen conflict shows that the Middle East despotic crisis continues and only gets worse.

“Is the world now so depraved that a murderer’s victim is at fault, that a man is imprisoned for seeking his rights? Can a man take all this and remain silent?” – Abdelrahman Munif

In his writings he exposed the complicity between the oil companies and the brutal repressions inflicted on the Arab people by undemocratic, unpopular, oil empowered regimes that he calls “genocide by environmental means.”

But if Munif’s novels were only political diatribes, I would not have liked them so much if at all. Abdelrahman Munif had the talent of a superior story teller and his characters come alive so that the reader cares what happens to them. He savagely ridicules the despotic rulers of these oil countries while his empathy clearly lies with the average people who are trying to make a go of it in these difficult circumstances.

Read ‘Cities of Salt’ and ‘The Trench’ and watch your view of the world change. If my words haven’t convinced you, perhaps these words from Graham Greene about ‘Cities of Salt’ will: “An Arab novel – and an excellent one at that.  It opens up new vistas for the imagination.”