An interview with Khouloud Al-Falah on August 5th, 2023 for Al-Jazeera.net
Tahir Annour is a journalist and novelist from Chad. He won the Tawfiq Bikr Prize for Arabic Novel in Tunisia’s fourth edition in 2022 for the manuscript of his novel Goudala. His novels Ashes of the Roots, The Barbed Wire Farm, and Symphony of the South explore the social and political history of Chad.
His novels do not provide answers or explanations for the famines, displacement, and difficult periods his country has gone through. Rather, they aim to shed light on the lives of marginalized people who will never be mentioned in history books. The stories are set in a country proud of its Arab identity, dialects, and customs, yet not a member of the Arab League.
In this interview, novelist Tahir Annour discusses the difficulty of publishing for those who write in Arabic in his country. This challenge led him to publish his novel The Barbed Wire Farm in Algeria. He points out that the currently existing publishing houses “do not possess a serious intellectual or knowledge-based project,” and there is also a lack of attention to translation for Chadian writers who write in French.
Why has the number of novelists writing in Arabic in Chad declined?
Arabic, constitutionally equal to French, has been present in Chad since around the 2nd century AH. It is also unquestionably the language of the streets. These are obvious facts. However, what dominates among Chadian creatives is poetry, not prose. For long periods, poetry reigned supreme in creative expression. So when the novelistic narrative became popular, the literary scene remained loyal to its poetry and old poetic styles.
The first narrative text in Arabic was published only about two decades ago, whereas French narrative texts appeared three or four decades earlier. This delay is due to poetic traditions in the Saharan region and a scarcity of narrative awareness at the time, as well as political, ethical, and educational reasons that hindered the early emergence of this awareness.
What are the main challenges facing Chadian writers?
Any writer from a marginal region faces great struggles in making their voice heard. They howl and strain to raise their voice from the depths so that the center listens and pays attention.
Yet they feel neglected, ignored, and marginalized. Despite all this shouting and howling, the writer suffers even more if they hold a dual identity: culturally Eastern by virtue of speaking, studying, and writing in Arabic, but politically and regionally Western because of their country’s orientation.
So how can they break through these two powerful camps? And if they succeed, how can they silence the sharp voices that claim they come from the margin, from nothing?
On the other hand, they lack reference materials to support their writing, a library to help them develop their path, and a publishing house to adopt their work and bring it to readers.
Are there publishing houses in Chad interested in publishing literature and arts written in Arabic?
Recently, some institutions have established what could be called publishing houses, but in reality, they seem like offices affiliated with publishing houses in the Arab or Eastern world. They lack the capacity to run their affairs independently. So far, they have published only a handful of titles. I do not believe they have a serious project or large budgets—only a desperate attempt to escape the crisis of publishing.
