Dar Kitab Publishing held popular books signing ceremony at DIBF

Cairo-based Dar Kitab Publishing and Distribution Pavilion organised a signing ceremony for three books on Tuesday at the 33rd Doha International Book Fair (DIBF), being held at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre until May 18, under the slogan, 'With knowledge, civilisations are built'.

Manager Tarek Ramadan, manager of Dar Kitab said that “our publications range from literature, to law, business and Human development skills, to children’s books.”

The authors, Hassan Ali al-Anwari together with playwright Talib al-Dous, and journalist writer Nancy Osama gave an exclusive interview to Gulf Times on this occasion.

Hassan Ali al-Anwari, marketing and advertisement director of Arrayah newspaper, said: “Naria” is an Arab political and symbolic novel. It is originally based on eastern mythology. It addresses the issue of exploiting religious beliefs to control people, draw their destiny, forge bloody wars in the name of supporting God. How superstitious beliefs control regimes in those religious countries, ruled by clergymen.”

He added: “The name Naria is a symbolic name that does not represent any city or civilization, but it is rather a symbolic projections of the present time, in which we criticize many parties. I was keen to have the novel translated into English to increase its popularity, and it will also be translated into French, Spanish, and Persian in the future. There are more than 10 critical studies and literary readings on the Arabic version of the novel, which received much praise from a number of Arab critics and reviewers.”

About his future projects, Al-Anwari said: “I wrote a second novel, which is currently in its second edition titled “I Loved the Weeping Woman,” and I am preparing a historical novel for publication in the future.” Al-Anwari added.

Qatari playwright Talib al-Dous who signed his collection of plays titled “Tears in the joy of a brush” said: “I wrote my first play “Souls and money” in 1985 and continued with my contributions in drama, for the theatre and TV, radio and cinema, and through my work with MBC channel with a 240 episode drama.” Some of his works won in many local festivals as the best theatrical script.

Al-Dous commented: “This is a collection of plays that I have presented throughout the years, most of them represented Qatar in numerous official festivals. “Tears in the joy of a brush” is one of the plays which was presented during Qatar Theatre Festival, also in Bejaia Festival in Algeria. And the new play titled “Between two hearts” is going to be presented in the forthcoming Qatar Theatre Festival. All of these plays are made of one act which are usually presented at festivals only. I put them in one collection so that the Arab reader gets introduced to this genre which is rare in our region. Our goal is not only the audience who attend the play but we want the one act play to get to a wider number of play readers also.” Al-Dous said.

Writer and journalist Nancy Osama signed her first novel titled “Norissa Noon (Arabic for the letter N) Stories” said: “It is an eight short story collection, Norissa is the title of a story which events take place in Greece, about an enamoured girl with Greek literature. She has a personal crisis, which is the borderline personality. Another story about migration from Syria to Germany and I reported in journalistic style and it is based on a true story. Another story about an Egyptian young man who migrated to the US and his experience is completely different from the Syrian man. There is another story about migration between Zanzibar and the Gulf countries. Most of the heroes names begin with the letter “N” and all the stories are based on duo-drama between a man and a woman. I hope that it will be appreciated by the readers.” Nancy concluded.