“Considering the views and the hair color of the 50 writers who had assembled for a quaint conference in Edinburgh, the congregation could have been called '50 Shades of Grey,'†Manu Joseph wrote in The International Herald Tribune. “But most of the writers agreed,†at the World Writers' Conference, that “they were repulsed by the lowbrow book that has probably outsold all their works put together,†he wrote.
“Speaking on the subject ‘Should Literature Be Political?', the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif, who writes in English, said of her own situation as a novelist from a nation in tumult: ‘Attempts at fiction right now would be too simple. The immediate truth is too glaring to allow a more subtle truth to take form,†Mr. Joseph wrote.
“For some reason,†Mr. Joseph wrote, “Indian English literature is far less political than Arab English literature.†He argu es:
Is it because the Arab region is more tumultuous than India? Or is it just that the Indian elite is a remote island within the republic that has protected itself from the country's realities, while the Arab elite has yet to destroy its bridges? Or is it because the Western literary market, the most powerful and lucrative market for novels in the world, demands Arab literature to be political, refusing to accept any other kind of stories emerging from the region, while sparing Indian novels such narrow expectations?
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