IT was the great writer and exasperated professor, the late W.G. Sebald, who gave me the idea of starting my first publishing project. He was tired of starting from scratch with every new intake of students of European literature, having to tell them why Franz Kafka, although born in Prague, wrote in German. ‘You should publish the Rowohlt monographs in English,’ he told me. For me these brilliant short biographies had been reliably helpful companions throughout my school days, preparing me for many an exam or giving me the easily accessible introductions into any chosen subject. If Professor Sebald thought there was nothing quite like them in English, this was a wonderful business opportunity. And so Haus Publishing, named after my mother, was born. I contacted Rowohlt, acquired the English language licence, commissioned the translations and published my first Life& Times biography in January 2003.

Haus from the start specialised in quality non-fiction and produced amongst others a series of short biographies on 20 British prime ministers of the 20th century. Although known for short biographies, I was approached by the publisher of Penguin India with a proposal for a rather big one. The proposal, however, was too good to pass up: the life of the Mahatma, written by his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi. This was the first in a series of collaborations with Penguin India and this spring Haus published the latest in this series: a biography of Shah Jahan by Fergus Nicoll, which Penguin India is bringing out later this year.

Three years back Haus added a list of literary travel writing, called the Armchair Traveller, which brought it critical acclaim and many more happy readers. It also gave me the idea to expand into fiction and to start Arabia Books. Launched at the 2008 London Book Fair, when the attention of the publishing world was focused on Arabic literature, Arabia Books presented its first title nine months later: Love in Exile by Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher, who was awarded the 2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the first ‘Arabic Booker’), as well as Gold Dust by the Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni, winner of the 2008 Zayed Creativity Award.

Arab women writers who were published in new Arabia Books editions included Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature recipients Hoda Barakat (The Tiller of Waters) from Lebanon, the Iraqi writer Alia Mamdouh (The Loved Ones), Algeria’s Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Memories of the Flesh), as well as Hala El Badry (A Certain Woman). Arabia Books also gave noted young writers like Ahmed Alaidy (Being Abbas el Abd) an opportunity to find an English language audience, published Cell Block Five by Fadhil al-Azzawi, the first Iraqi prison novel, and The Final Bet, the first Arabic detective novel in English, by the award-winning Moroccan screenwriter Abdelilah Hamdouchi.

 

I fell in love with writers from the Arab World when Haus published Rafik Schami’s Damascus: Taste of a City in our Armchair Traveller series. For me, Schami epitomises the great storytelling tradition of the Arab world. Rafik Schami paints with words; they are like stones in a mosaic. Arabia Books aims to be just such a mosaic. Each title is a little jewel, each different and beautiful. Together they hopefully make up a picture of this captivating region. The stories emulate life in all its variety. And by presenting them in English, Arabia Books might be a bridge as well, connecting the Arab world and the West.

So I was delighted and proud to be able to publish this spring Rafik Schami’s monumental work, The Dark Side of Love, translated from the German by Anthea Bell, a dazzling novel spanning a century of Syrian history and human torment, and a moving hymn to the power of love. ‘Life as well as the art of storytelling is like a carpet, in which individual destinies are intertwined like different coloured threads,’ writes Rafik Schami, ‘occurrences, forms and people woven together and untangled by time, by fate, by God, by unavoidable necessities, by crossing paths or fortune, experienced, appreciated or suffered together and passionately. My book... is no exotic, distant text, but a great poem about war, adventure, love, faith, disappointment and fate – it is a part of our world.’ The Dark Side of Love has been compared to War and Peace by the Guardian reviewer Robin Yassin-Kassab, who wondered if it was ‘the first great Syrian novel’.

Arabia Books is supported by an advisory board including award-winning translator Denys Johnson-Davies, Professor Rasheed El-Enany, Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, the editors of Banipal, Margaret Obank and Sam Shimon, as well as Mark Linz, Director of the American University in Cairo Press, the world’s leading publisher of modern Arabic literature in translation. Arabia Books will publish at least ten new fiction titles per year and distribute more than 50 additional titles of Arabic literary publications mainly acquired from the AUC Press and representing, the best new writing from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Algeria and other Arab countries.

 

The advisors are there to warn as well as encourage. From his long experience Denys Johnson-Davies contributed a telling story the other day about his first involvement in a venture publishing Arabic literature in English translation. ‘Heinemann had produced a successful African Authors series in the 1970s and invited Denys to be the consultant for a similar Arab Authors series,’ wrote his fellow translator Peter Clark about this venture. ‘In fact, Denys produced most of the translations. But the series did not match the commercial success of the African series. Many African authors write in English; so the problems and costs of translation were minimal and the African Authors series had huge English-reading markets in West and East Africa. Who by contrast was going to read Arabic literature? Arabs read their own literature in the original Arabic.’ When Heinemann told Denys that they were going to discontinue the series unless he could raise £10,000 from his friends in the Gulf, Denys couldn’t even raise half of that money.

 

How times have changed. Denys Johnson-Davies was the first recipient of the coveted Sheikh Zayed Book Award Cultural Personality of the Year in 2007, awarded for ‘significant contributions to Arabic culture’ and he told me that the cheque he received could have financed the venture abandoned all these years ago several times over. A year after Denys was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, the first ‘Arabic Booker’ or to give it its full and proper name, the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) was awarded to Bahaa Taher, an Arabia Books author. He was feted in the media and acquired a powerful literary agent – a sure sign that Arabic literature had arrived.

‘The panel of this year’s judges was international, academically high-powered and – to allay the possibility of lobbying or improper influence – secret until the shortlist was announced,’ writes Sam Leith in Prospect. The panel was in fact so secret that it was only at the moment of this announcement that I found out that Rasheed El-Enany, Arabia Books advisor and Haus author, was one of the judges. Professor El-Enany wrote our biography of Naguib Mahfouz, who was the first Arabic novelist to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988.

In his acceptance speech Mahfouz thanked the American University in Cairo Press for translating his works into English. If that had not been the case, he said, he would never have won the prize. The AUC Press has used the fame and the money made by representing Mahfouz internationally to further other authors, and annually awards a prize for a promising new piece of writing in Arabic. Connected with this prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Medal is the works’ translation into English and thereby international recognition. Arabia Books is very proud to take on the distribution of the formidable AUC Press fiction list.

 

It is and remains, however, also a huge challenge: although these well-endowed prizes have raised the profile of Arabic literature it is still very tough to turn translations into a commercial success: ‘This year’s IPAF was won by Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel (Beelzebub). It is by all accounts formidably accomplished,’ writes Sam Leith in Prospect, ‘but it’s not what you’d call commercial fiction. Its author is a manuscript scholar and expert on Sufi philosophy, and Azazeel is a dense, metatextual work about 5th century Coptic Christianity.’ Interviewed by the local paper, Ziedan himself said: ‘The novel wasn’t written for the average reader. I’m looking forward to Azazeel’s appearance in English, but I very much doubt we’ll be seeing it among the three-for-two’s in Waterstone’s.’

Arabia Books, however, needs to have its books in the three-for-two-promotions in order to sell enough to be able to afford the next translation. Only then will we live up to the expectations placed in us by the friends of Arabic literature in translation. And in order to do that we need to find and excite new readers of this genre. We need to convince more booksellers to take a punt on translated fiction. And we need to bring authors over to this country to open a conversation between them and their newly-found readers. As the Tunisian-born novelist Habib Selmi, talking about the importance of IPAF said, ‘The writer needs to feel that someone likes his work.’

And if the Prophet can’t come to the mountain, then the mountain has to come to the Prophet. We are, therefore, working on an idea of a virtual forum for all those interested in Arabic literature and with the help of authors, translators and other publishers we hope to build that bridge between the Arab and the rest of the world.

 

If you are, however, able to come to the mountain, then visit the book Haus. After working out of my upstairs room for five years, I have decided to acquire the lease of Jubilee House, 70 Cadogan Place, a beautiful corner shop which is over 200 years old. It was love at first sight. This building has so much character! And it was ideal to accommodate the growing publishing business as well as giving us the opportunity to display our books the way we think they look best. That’s how the idea of the bookHaus was born – a showroom for the books we publish. It is also hopefully going to become a destination for anybody interested in Middle Eastern culture and literature in translation, with many and varied events which pull in the neighbourhood as well as interested visitors from further afield. So come and see us when you are next in London!