The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC), part of the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi (DCT Abu Dhabi), has recently issued the Arabic edition of ‘Stranger Fictions: A History of the Novel in Arabic Translation’ by Rebecca C. Johnson, as part of its Kalima Translation Project.
The book is considered one of the most significant contributions to comparative literature studies, offering a radical re-examination of the history of the Arabic novel’s emergence from a perspective that moves beyond narrow nationalist conceptions.
Translated into Arabic by Hossam Nayel, the book opens by challenging the widely held assumption that the novel ‘Zaynab’, published in 1913, is the first “authentic” Arabic novel. It reveals the existence of hundreds of translated or adapted novels from English and French published during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which were excluded from official literary canons for being foreign, inauthentic, or compromised by translation.
The book, spanning 418 pages, repositions Arabic literature at the heart of world literature while offering a theoretical critique of concepts such as authenticity, translation, cultural exchange, and literary identity.
Johnson argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These practices ranged from poor translation, mistranslation, and pseudo translation to adaptation and appropriation.
The book shows that translation, as an interpretive and creative act, formed the basis of Arabic literary modernity, playing a role in shaping a new literary identity that negotiated with colonialism, modernity, and local traditions, rather than merely transmitting Western knowledge.
Johnsontraces translation and publishing practices in cities such as Beirut, Cairo, Malta, Paris, London, and New York, starting from the Arabic translation of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’, first published in 1835, to crime novels and romantic fiction in the Egyptian press, noting varying degrees of translation, adaptation, or plagiarism.
Through this, she reveals how Arab translators viewed the Arab world as an alternative centre within a globalised network. These translators did not merely translate French and English novels; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theories about the genre in the introductions to their “translations”.
These works, along with the reading practices they encouraged, formed the conceptual and practical foundations of Arabic literary modernity, demanding a radical rethinking of prevailing assumptions about translation, cultural exchange, and globalism.
