Acclaimed Saudi novelist dies of cancer

Acclaimed Saudi novelist Abdul Rahman Munif has died in Syria following a long struggle with cancer, it was announced yesterday. He was 81.

Munif, born in Amman, Jordan, in 1923 for a Saudi father and an Iraqi mother, was "one of the great Arab novelists" in modern time, according to critics. He wrote such masterpieces as the five-part Cities of Salt, Trees, Endings and A World without Maps.

"His death is a great loss," Bahraini author Abdullah Al Madani told Gulf News. "He will always be remembered as the author who single-handedly revolutionised the Arab novel."

Munif's father had moved the family from Najd, in central Arabia, to work in Iraq and Syria before they settled in Jordan where the author was able to finish his secondary school.

He studied law in Iraq during the royal reign but he was deported from the country in 1955 for political reasons. He moved to Egypt and then Yugoslavia to study economics.

After a brief flirtation with politics in Lebanon, he moved to Syria again in 1964 to work for the ministry of oil. In 1975, he returned to Iraq where he was the editor of a government-run magazine, called Oil and Development. A few years later, he settled between Jordan and Syria dedicating himself to writing.

One of his early works, East of the Mediterranean has enraged Iraq's Baathist regime. It tells the story of a political prisoner tortured to death in a Baghdad intelligence prison.

However, Munif's literature mark will always be the heavy weight five series Cities of Salt, Al Madani said. "It is considered a turning point in the region's literature," he stressed.

The novel, which has topped the list of the best 100 Arab novels of all time issued by the Arab Union of Writers a few years ago, deals with the political and social changes in Saudi Arabia during the first half of the 20th century.

It had until recently been banned by the government in Saudi Arabia and most Gulf states for its critical view of the tribal and religious authorities.

"Munif's importance stems from the fact that he was masterfully able to use a literature work to underscore the shortcomings of our societies in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula with regard to freedoms and human rights. It was his way of saying what really went wrong," critic Hassan Maddan said. Munif even attempted years ago to form "an Arab intellectual democratic alliance" to address those shortcomings, he said.

For unknown reasons, the project didn't materialise.

"With his death, we lost another pioneer intellectual who took it upon himself to tackle important issues, particularly the renaissance of a nation," Al Madani said. Munif's death comes a few months after the death of yet another great author, Palestinian-born Edward Said.