Ahwal Al-Marifa – Special

Saudi critic Dr. Mounira Al-Ghadir, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophical Theories at Harvard University, has released a new paper edition of her book: "Voices of the Desert: Poetry of Bedouin Women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia." The author, whose book cover was designed by Saudi artist Shadia Alem, believes that the Bedouins or "desert dwellers" enjoy a rich cultural heritage often expressed through music and poetry. Here, Mounira Al-Ghadir presents the first comparative reading of women's oral poetry from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, examining words of love, desire, mourning, and female complaint. She brings us to understand Bedouin customs and, most importantly, the unique description of the desert, which is always seen as free, evocative, stimulating, and eternal. The book provides the first English translation and analysis of this poetry, serving as a gesture to preserve the oral poetic tradition of Bedouin women and a radical critique addressing the exclusion of their poetry from current academic literary studies. It offers material for reflection on debates about oral culture and women's poetic composition while critically examining this literary genre that opens Arabic poetry and literature to contemporary theory and criticism. The table of contents includes: Reading Bedouin Voices, Exclusion of Women's Poetry, Bedouin Voices, Rhetoric of Love, Melancholy Desire, Melancholy from Europe to Arabia and Back, Mourning and Grievance over Type, The Disease of Sadness, Mourning like Desert Animals, A Lost Desert, Three Persuasive Metaphors: Face and Voice Imagination, Technology and Post-colonialism: Algeria and Arabia, Paradox and Radio Voice, Mechanical Technology: Conflict and Imagination, Desire to Travel in the Car, Desire and Technology, Translatability of the Nomadic Text, The Bedouin Spirit and the Untranslatable, Translation and the Metaphor of Modernity. Dr. Hatoun Al-Fassi says of her: Dr. Mounira Al-Ghadir is an associate professor in Comparative Literature and was head of the English Department at Qatar University after twenty years in US universities. International Saudi novelist Raja Alem says: Dr. Mounira Al-Ghadir is a researcher in a state of constant cultural movement. The first edition of "Voices of the Desert" was published in English by the American University in Cairo Press in 2009.