Fatima Atfa (Abu Dhabi)
A new book entitled “Between the ordeal of Corona and the grant of reading” was published by the “Literary Forum” and the Virtual World, under the supervision of Asma Siddiq Al-Mutawa, the Literary Forum Foundation, edited and prepared by Dr. Ahmed Ammar, Dr. Azza Jalal Hashem, one of the “Dar Al-Adab” publications, Beirut.
And it comes at the forefront of the book, “Do Not Distract Them”: the word uttered by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the State, may God protect him, when he addressed the people of the Emirates and residents on its soil with this sentence that removed fear from everyone’s hearts from the danger of infection with the Corona epidemic, and it has Everyone adhered to the required prevention and protection that the UAE worked to provide with the finest and most successful means. During that pandemic, people did not stop their work, but rather turned it into work by remote methods and the use of modern technical means, and this is how the “Al-Multaqa” salon worked, as it continued its various cultural sessions remotely to present about 100 sessions that included poetry, novels, criticism and art, in addition to personal photos of the speaking authors. All of them were published in this volume, which includes five chapters: “At the Table of Literary Criticism,” “On the Paths of the Novel and the Story,” “On the Seas of Poetry,” “Between the Lines of the Book and the Article,” and “In the Garden of Art,” where he was a guest session. Criticism, thinker, critic, the late d. Salah Fadl, who spoke about his critical experience, which lasted nearly half a century, and what Arab criticism has come to in our contemporary time. In the same chapter, and during a virtual session entitled: “There is no such thing as the truth,” the book “Reading in Arab Cultural Formats” by the thinker and academic Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadami.
In the chapter “Roads of the Novel and the Story”, and when discussing Isabelle Allende’s novel “Eva Luna”, the dialogue session stressed that the novel shows the reader how Latin America was a haven for immigrants from Europe and some Arab countries, and the writer Allende is a distinguished writer, and this is the magic of literature on that continent Which we see in the works of some of its creators, such as Marquez, Asturias, and Amado, all of whom master the art of the novel and have formulated it with magical realism in the manner of Marquis.
The book also talked about the novel “Alleys of Memory” by the Brazilian writer and poet Conceicao Evaristo, who is one of the most influential writers in the postmodern movement in Brazil. She writes poetry, short stories and articles, and this fictional work confirms the work on man’s attachment to his land, as if the place is the body. For the spirit of its inhabitant and for the souls of all who are in it.
In discussing the novel “Gypsies Love Too” by the Algerian novelist Wasini Al-Araj, he said: There are hundreds of thousands of gypsies who were victims of Nazism, referring to disasters, wars and epidemics that we can also approximate with the sport of bullfighting and contemplate the duality between the bull and the wrestler in this dangerous game. In his intervention, the writer explained that the gypsy dance and dramatic singing is similar to this wrestling. The book also includes a presentation discussing the works of more than 70 writers, including thinkers, novelists, poets and visual artists.
