Riyadh Newspaper | Pochoholics

On the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Reading Club “Bocholics” for its founder, the cultural activist Hoda Marmar, readers celebrated the novel “Mr. Noun” by the Lebanese writer Najwa Barakat, taking advantage of the writer’s presence in Beirut on a short vacation before her return to Paris.

And because the meeting was more beautiful than all expectations, it exceeded the time allotted for it by two and a half hours. He began by commenting on the amazing details in the novel about the strange central character, Mr. Noun, around whom the writer built her beautiful narrative architecture surrounded by characters that often resemble reality and differ from it at the same time. All possibilities are allowed in the desired imagination.. The discussion ended with a presentation of the novelist’s history from its beginnings to the establishment of her own creative profession, which produced good novelists over these years.

The writer also referred to the period of silence that she lived in and stopped publishing any novelistic production for fifteen years, which was not a waste of time, as it yielded this beautiful and rich novel, giving strong hope to those who suffer from the “literary lock” that sometimes extends from a period of days to long years. , for many reasons that may be related to the author himself or his circumstances.

Over the course of this exceptional session, the readers revealed that they were affected by the spatio-temporal aesthetics in the novel. The linguistic object proved once again that it is the best guide for traveling to difficult places and times. Bourj Hammoud Street and Armenia Street have always been a link to Mar Mikhael Street among the mysterious map of Beirut. There is no separation between the bustling life in the bustling Mar Mikhael Street, and the nearby nightlife venues in Gemmayzeh, and Burj Hammoud, which shelters a strange group of people coming from all sides, starting with the Lebanese of several sects, to the Armenian community that is predominant in its presence, to the poorest classes of Kurdish workers Syrians, Iraqis, and female workers brought from Asian and African countries and refused to leave Lebanon after the expiration of their residency permits.

The sumptuous language of Najwa Barakat plays a major role in giving these intense scenes to her novel a very important weight, and it raises the issue of violence that is born in a city in love like Beirut. Where does all this unimaginable violence come from? On a daily basis, we only see people who love life, and who valiantly resist by inventing the means of survival.

The novel was published in 2019, but it is like a strange crystal that predicted the catastrophe that struck Beirut, and it has recently been translated into English and French. The attendees were keen to dwell at length on the role of literature in seeing the invisible from what events go to, and its ability to read the past and the present and draw their inevitable results.

Book No. 171 of the Pochoholics holds more than an answer about a person who is lost between himself and his reality, and about the ability of writing to save him, dead or alive.

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