Omaima Al-Khamis; translated by Sarah Enanny
Winner of the 2018 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, The Book Smuggler by Omaima Al-Khamis, translated from the Arabic by Sarah Enany, recounts the adventures of Mazid Al-Hanafi as he journeys to various capitals in the Middle East and Spain in the 11th Century CE. His journey coincides with a time of transition when political and religious conflicts were ubiquitous in the Islamic world. Rivalry between the factions was rampant with different sects having the upper hand across the region.
Mazid leaves home with a thirst for learning and exploration. He is a bookseller with a passion for books at a time when certain books were considered blasphemous and could land a person in prison or dead were they to be found in his possession. Undeterred but cautious, Mazid devours books of Islamic thinkers and Greek philosophers, determined to preserve them for future generations. His travels take him to Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Granada, and Cordoba.
While in Baghdad, Mazid is initiated into a secret society of books smugglers, individuals who risk their lives to preserve and disseminate books containing scientific and philosophical knowledge. He is given a chest of books and tasked with distributing them on his travels to individuals who will benefit from and appreciate them. The work is dangerous. He approaches each city cautiously and does not reveal the controversial books until he has satisfied himself that the selected individual can be trusted and is worthy of receiving the precious gift. He also connects with other members of the secret society by using code words to identify himself.
Al-Khamis’ detailed and vivid description immerse the reader in the zeitgeist of 11th Century Islam. Mazid attends the mosques in each city to pray and to attend discussion circles of the various sheikhs. He learns about the politics of the city, which faction/sect is fermenting dissent, who is accusing whom of blasphemy, and the ubiquitous conspiracies at court. He becomes embroiled in political intrigue everywhere he goes and is obliged to make a hasty exit with his treasury of books.
The novel is steeped in the history of the time, perhaps more so than it needs to be. Although a table of historical figures, dynasties, people, and terms is included in the beginning of the novel, the amount of detail and references to various historical individuals, quotations, poems, tribes, caliphs, different sects, and who is fighting whom coalesce to bury the reader in a morass of confusing detail. It was hard to keep track of who, what, where, how, when, and why.
Mazid’s growth from a naïve young man to one intimately involved in the political and religious struggles of the day was compelling. His journeys on the caravans and his sojourns in various cities vividly immerse the reader in the sights, sounds, and smells of traveling through deserts and experiencing the atmosphere of a medieval Arab city. But the many references to religious and political individuals, the excessive detail of sectarian rifts and debates can be bewildering to someone with little more than a cursory knowledge of the historical intricacies of the period. Their presence clouds what would otherwise have been a much stronger novel.