Recently Published Books

— Toward a Simplified Arabic — Dr. Anis Frayha — Whatever the opinion of those who hold fast to Arabic as it came down to them, and who look upon the language as they look upon sanctities that may not be touched, they will not deny the flexibility that lies in language — every language — nor the close bond between a language's development and the people who speak it and the thought it carries.

With this sense of development, of keeping company with life in its ever-renewed course, Dr. Frayha's effort takes its stand, to express a luminous, radiant mind and a desire to make the language easy to handle, pure in expression, its phrasing springing from the very heart of the people — the language being nothing but a reflection of that people's spirit, thinking, and feelings.

The simplified language Dr. Frayha wants is a reflecting mirror, not a picture at a remove from the original from which it is copied — thought.

For the sake of all this the great teacher draws general lines for easing the language and making it capable of expressing the people in all their conditions and their ways of thinking.

It may appear, even to the seekers of renewal and development and those who labor for it, that Dr. Frayha has carried his view to the farthest limit, which brings the realization of his theories close to the impossible. But we can profit from many of the valuable opinions the author has set down for developing our language and renewing it in keeping with the demands and needs of our age.

As for the other part — history, the history of thought and language, will pass its verdict, one that may not overtake us, the children of this generation.

— Zawaya — a collection of stories published by Dar al-Ma'arif in Egypt, by Mrs. Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari — engaging pictures drawn from the faces of Syrian society, old and new, painted with the brush of an artist woman whose delicate sensibility has been wounded by the traditional and superstitious plagues in which our social circles flounder. Success keeps company with the author when she speaks of woman's feelings and her emotional struggle, hemmed in by the acknowledged traditions; she points to them gently and with understanding, without excess of preaching, after the manner of certain social storytellers.

Zawaya — by Salma al-Haffar al-Kuzbari: tales of the old-rooted family — the grandmother's tales, which never grow old, and of which the ears of the little ones never tire... nor those of the grown-ups.

— 4 Women — by Miss Najia Hamdi — In the new literature of Iraq there are luminous flashes which, with certain writers, have turned into a dawn that grows and glows with the sweetly delightful and the profoundly useful; and in Najia Hamdi's book are some flashes that have not become dawn...

I fancy she was influenced by the Thousand and One Nights, so that she began her book with digressions that made of a single story a collection of stories — more than the breath of the short tale can bear —

It is as though the author were trying to make of these stories an instrument for conveying ideas that trouble her or that she believes in, or scientific and educational theories, through which she looked out upon a society shackled in superstitions. All this is good — unless it stands out in the story until it overwhelms the storyteller's art, which rests upon artistic construction — narration, portrayal, and feeling — no one of which may be allowed to overwhelm the others.

— The Great Shadow — And this is a collection of stories just brought out to us by Dar al-Sharq al-Jadid, by Miss Samira Azzam.

The stories of the collection are distinguished by brilliant psychological analysis, by way of dialogue and inward self-questioning, and by attention to the fine, telling details that throw over the characters a true garment taken from our everyday life.

In most of the stories the humane bent shines forth, breathed into them by the tender heart of a woman and her being moved by certain spectacles of misery — all this in a graceful phrasing that forms a narrative style which has attained a distinguished rank of excellence and artistic maturity.

"The Great Shadow" — a sweet necklace for our Arabic library.