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The importance of the topic of this article lies in the fact that it is so rarely explored in the context of the Arabic novel and almost never in that of the Saudi novel, except for passing references. The article aims to clarify the concept of the epistolary novel—that is, the novel based on letters—and its earliest roots. It seeks to establish a concept of the Saudi epistolary novel and its value in Arabic fiction, highlighting the earliest Saudi examples and their impact on the Arabic novel in general. It also discusses some of the functions that the letter plays in a novel and observes the recent development of the Saudi epistolary novel, which has facilitated its openness to the new literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

NMT systems encounter many challenges and problems when rendering Arabic idiomatic expressions into English. The current research tackled some examples selected from Arabic corpora and their English translations generated by the selected NMT systems and the English versions of the selected corpora. The research presents a qualitative analysis of the selected samples from three novels (The Season of Migration to the North, the Fall of the Imam and the Girls of Riyadh). The research is mainly focusing on the problems resulted when rendering Arabic idiomatic expressions into English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discipline of Translation Studies has been criticized for being limited to only Euro-American perspectives and cultures, and thus scholars have called for expanding the scope of study beyond the Western conceptualizations of translation. This paper attempts to fill that void in the knowledge of the translation archaeology of Arabic novels translated into English. It creates an up-to-date bibliography of Arabic novels translated into English published worldwide across three decades (1988–2018) by consulting the US Library of Congress global union library catalogue and Good­reads. The collected materials are presented across two major historical periods: the post-Nobel Prize phase (1988–August 2001) and the post-9/11 phase (September 2001–2018). The bibliography includes 277 translated Arabic novels. It identifies the main actors involved in the process of translation, namely the authors, translators, and publishers. In addition to the quantitative analysis of this bibliographical data, this study adopts a comprehensive model by Allen (1995) to apply qualitative analysis to identify the topics being selected for translation into English. The study reveals that an increase in the number of translated works does not necessarily correlate with a greater understanding of the source text culture. In fact, increased translation flows can signal a reinforcement of known cultural stereotypes in the target culture.

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Notions could be warriors in a battle, totally ready to fight against other notions, without shedding the blood of their utterers. Naguib Mahfouz’s two allegory-based novels Khufu’s Wisdom (1939) and Sons of Our Alley (1959) were banned when they were first published. The reason was that they symbolize some religious figures and that was interpreted as religious abuse. Accordingly, Mahfouz became a subject of an issued fatwa of death sentence that led to an unsuccessful assault in 1994. This paper attempts to prove that Mahfouz’s main target behind using religious symbols was to criticize and attack some political figures. Mahfouz’ aspirations of a classless society, a democratic system, freedom of speech and acceptance of diversity did not come true after the revolutions of 1919 and 1952. This paper tries to analyse the two novels neither through the allegorical nor the religious level, but through Greenblatt’s New Historicism and Foucault’s theory of Power. The two narratives display myriad types of counterpower that are able to challenge and defy coercion and oppression. The paper aims to find an answer to which extent the oppressed can stand out against the single power wielding and defeat the oppressors’ invincible coercion.

This essay grapples with the use of Christian symbols, especially the rock and the sea, in the poetry and prose of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, and their symbolic and evocative significance, based upon their use in the text within social and political contexts, after emptying them of their religious content. From a technical point of view, Jabra's texts are a good and effective example of Western Modernism influence, and they representing instances of openness, innovation and use of Christian symbols on a deep and broad level which lends to his literary work a Palestinian particularity, because the presence of Christian and mythical symbols in modern Arabic literature is a decidedly Jabra-esque feature. This essay focusses on the religious references in Jabra's fiction and their significance in the New Testament, as well as the identities of the characters that use them in their narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]