This dialogue leads us with the creative storyteller and young novelist Muhammad al-Naas, who recounted his novel “Bread at Uncle Milad’s Table” after all the memories that formed her creative idea, as if it came from the memory hall.
And from those secret cracks, to establish the obsession that Leroy had, so he learned how to bake Leroy, and how to ask questions with their imaginary potentials to answer, and how to enter into the soul of every crushed human being to establish his existence, until the unknown was imagined to narrate from the lived reality, so what does he say about his novel that he wrote, and about The next work, and about his country, Libya… The “statement” had the following dialogue with him:
Your wonderful novel “Bread at Uncle Milad’s Table”, winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2022, tell us about it, how did it start with you and how did it end?
The story began at the moment of the manifestation of a popular proverb that says, “A family and its uncle is Milad.” I heard it repeatedly without looking into it. That night in the winter of 2018, the proverb came to me alone, and for the first time I thought about the central character that revolves around it, and from that moment a journey of repeated failures began with the novel until I learned to bake, the moment I started baking my first loaf, the character and the whole world of the novel opened up to me, and it became easy.
I didn’t stop until I finished it. As for how it ended? I do not know the truth, but I might answer with another question: Does the writer really finish writing a work for him? Even today I think of anecdotes and details I should have added to the novel.
After winning and spreading the novel, some accused you of shocking society, although it is a deep novel in my opinion, so how do you see that?
My opinion is that a fictional work that does not have a single scene that does not shake the reader’s feelings in any way is an incomplete work, just as reality, in most cases, is more clashing than fiction.
The novel came as a shock to some, or many, only because it conveyed a reality, a reality that some readers may not like to have on the pages of a book, which is their right, of course. We have to understand that a book is like music, it is just a work of art that may appeal to some people and not to others.
What is your share of your autobiography in the body of your novels?
The brave writer is the one who writes his autobiography with all sincerity without embellishment, as Muhammad Shukri and others did. As for the fearful writer, he is the one who uses imagination. My autobiography is distributed in the novel to all the characters, not to Milad himself, but to Abd al-Salam and the Madonna as well, as all the characters are drawn by the writer through what he lived, even if that character was a frog.
Are you the type to ask questions in your narrative, or do you already have the convincing answer?
Usually, I do not search for the answer when I write any text, but I search for the question. The novel “Bread at Uncle Milad’s Table” does not have any answer to any issue, but rather raises a set of questions, and the reader in the end has his own interpretation that generates the answers.
Homeland as an unparalleled love, how did it become evident to you in the novel you wrote? And what’s the next project?
I am obsessed with Libya, not only as a homeland, but as a place that has shaped my personal history, beliefs, way of thinking, and worldview; That is why when I write, I make it the main focus of the worlds of my projects, so that I understand how the Libyan person came to be, including how I became .. I am what he is.
My next project is another novel that takes place in the same world in which the events of “Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table” took place. Its absentee present hero will be the director “Lutfi Al-Malawi”, the son of aunt Abdul Salam, and his return to the homeland.
When and where do you write? Or let’s say: When do you listen to your solitude, your victories and your losses? Tell us about the writing ritual.
I always try to write daily, I feel that the time is not enough to write everything I want to write, and that is why I sit down every day to write, even for ten minutes. This training undermines the need for isolation and rituals, as it forces you to create your isolation. Of course, it does not always work. There are many failures such as To keep checking the white screen in front of you without letting out a word from your hands.
But the important thing is to keep your eyes on the screen. It should be noted that Muhammad al-Naas (31 years old) is a Libyan writer who writes in the Arab and international press. Among his most important works are: a short collection entitled: “Blue Blood” 2019, the novel “Bread at the Table of Uncle Milad” 2021, and a collection of short stories entitled: “A place that you do not roam.” Dogs” 2023. He won the International Arab Novel Award 2022 for his novel “Bread at Uncle Milad’s Table.”
