 | |
| Editor | Tawfiq Sayigh |
|---|---|
| Categories | Literary magazine |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Founder | Tawfiq Sayigh |
| Founded | 1962 |
| First issue | October 1962 |
| Final issue | March/April 1967 |
| Country | Lebanon |
| Based in | Beirut |
| Language | Arabic |
Hiwar (Arabic : حوار, lit. 'Discussion') was an Arabic magazine published in Beirut between 1962 and 1967. [1] [2] The magazine was established and financed by the CIA during the cultural Cold War, under the cover of a front organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom. [3] [4]
The first issue of Hiwar appeared in October 1962 (but was dated November 1962), and its final issue was dated March/April 1967. [5] Generous funding was provided by the CIA with the stipulation that it publish articles on the situation of Soviet Muslims. [6] Tawfiq Sayigh, a Palestinian poet based in Beirut, accepted an offer to edit the magazine, which he did for the duration of its existence.
A foreword in the inaugural issue of Hiwar laid out the magazine's putative mission, stressing its Arab identity and falsely claiming that "it is not a foreign magazine published in an Arab country, but rather an Arab magazine at its core." The foreword went on to emphasize the importance Hiwar would place on freedom of speech and cultural freedoms in the Arab world, and claimed that it would pay its contributors well. [7] In the same issue an article by Albert Hourani on Taha Hussein was featured which was later published in the magazines Cuadernos and Preuves . [1]
Hiwar was originally designed as a publication to improve modern Arabic poetry. [8] Hiwar frequently published works by prominent Arab authors, including a serialization of Tayeb Salih's classic novella Season of Migration to the North in 1966. Although Salih's book was banned in Egypt, copies of Hiwar were likely smuggled into Cairo, where critic Raja' al-Naqqash, after reading it, described Salih as a "genius of the Arabic novel." [9] Hiwar, like other magazines funded by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, republished interviews originally appearing in The Paris Review , whose co-founder Peter Matthiessen was a CIA operative as well as a novelist. For example, the May-June 1963 issue of Hiwar printed an interview with Henry Miller that was previously published in the September 1961 issue of The Paris Review. [10]
According to Issa J. Boullata, Hiwar raised suspicions in the Arab world about its provenance, due to the "generous payments to its contributing writers and its relatively low price despite excellent production and slick appearance." In light of these rumors, Egyptian novelist Yusuf Idris declined to accept a prize that Hiwar had awarded him in November 1965, in the amount of 10,000 Lebanese lira. [11] Hiwar drew skepticism even before it launched; Sayigh recounted that Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani attacked the planned magazine because of its foreign funding. [1]
The financial support of the magazine by the CIA was uncovered by The New York Times in April 1966, prompting the magazine to stop publishing the following year. [1] Sayigh left Lebanon as a result of this event, and moved to Berkeley, California.
In addition to Hiwar, the Congress for Cultural Freedom also targeted the Arab literary world by hosting conferences. In 1961, CCF sponsored a conference called "The Arab Writer and the Modern World" in Rome. The attendees included Syrian poets Adunis and Yusuf al-Khal as well as other luminaries such as Stephen Spender and Ignazio Silone. [12]
Tayeb Salih was a Sudanese writer, cultural journalist for the BBC Arabic programme as well as for Arabic journals, and a staff member of UNESCO. He is best known for his novel Season of Migration to the North, considered to be one of the most important novels in Arabic literature. His novels and short stories have been translated into English and more than a dozen other languages.
The Karkadann is a mythical creature said to have lived on the grassy plains of India and Persia.
Season of Migration to the North is a classic postcolonial Arabic novel by the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih, published in 1966 and for which he is best known. It was first published in the Beirut journal Hiwâr. The main concern of the novel is the impact of British colonialism and European modernity on rural African societies in general and Sudanese culture and identity in particular. The novel reflects the conflicts of modern Sudan and depicts the brutal history of European colonialism as shaping the reality of contemporary Sudanese society. Damascus-based Arab Literary Academy named it one of the best novels in Arabic of the 20th century. Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl is considered to be an important turning point in the development of postcolonial narratives that focus on the encounter between East and West.
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was an Iraqi-Palestinian author, artist and intellectual born in Adana in French-occupied Cilicia to a Syriac Orthodox Christian family. His family survived the Seyfo Genocide and fled to the British Mandate of Palestine in the early 1920s. Jabra was educated at government schools under the British-mandatory educational system in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, such as the Government Arab College, and won a scholarship from the British Council to study at the University of Cambridge. Following the events of 1948, Jabra fled Jerusalem and settled in Baghdad, where he found work teaching at the University of Baghdad. In 1952 he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities fellowship to study English literature at Harvard University. Over the course of his literary career, Jabra wrote novels, short stories, poetry, criticism, and a screenplay. He was a prolific translator of modern English and French literature into Arabic. Jabra was also an enthusiastic painter, and he pioneered the Hurufiyya movement, which sought to integrate traditional Islamic art within contemporary art through the decorative use of Arabic script.
Banipal is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three times a year. Since its inception, it has published works and interviews of numerous Arab authors and poets, many of them translated for the first time into English. It is also co-sponsor of the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab was an Iraqi poet, regarded as one of the most important contemporary Arab poets. Alongside Nazik Al Malaika, he is considered one of the founders of Arab free-verse poetry.
The Arab Writers Union is an association of Arab writers, founded in 1969, in Damascus, Syria, at the initiative of a group of Arab writers including Syrian novelist Hanna Mina. In 2008, the union was moved from Damascus to Cairo and in 2015 to Abu Dhabi. Its current president is Muhammad Al-Hourani.
Issa J. Boullata was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
AlHiwar is an Arabic language satellite TV channel broadcasting from London.
FORVM was an Austrian monthly cultural and political magazine, published in Vienna from 1954 to 1995, founded by Friedrich Hansen-Loeve, Felix Hubalek, Alexander Lernet-Holenia and Friedrich Torberg with the financial and logistical support of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). Torberg also edited the magazine from its start in 1954 to 1965. In 1965 Günther Nenning took over as editor and in 1986 Gerhard Oberschlick.
Galal Ahmad Amin was an award-winning professor of economics at the American University in Cairo and Egyptian economist and commentator. He was critical of the economic and cultural dependency of Egypt upon the West.
Ahmad Amin, (1954-1886) was an Egyptian historian and writer. He wrote a series of books on the history of the Islamic civilization (1928–1953), a famous autobiography, as well as an important dictionary of Egyptian folklore (1953).
Preuves was a French language monthly political and cultural magazine which existed between 1951 and 1975 and was headquartered in Paris, France. It was the first publication launched by the Congress for Cultural Freedom which later started other magazines, including Cuadernos, Encounter, Survey, Tempo Presente and Der Monat.
Cuadernos was a Spanish-language magazine that was published in Paris, France, in the period 1953–1965. Its full title was Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura. It was one of the publications of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Lotus was a trilingual political and cultural magazine which existed between 1968 and 1991. The magazine with three language editions was published in different countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and German Democratic Republic. It contained one of the early postcolonial literary criticisms employing non-Eurocentric modes.
Joseph Al-Sayegh born in Zahlé on 1928 AD and died in Paris on November 5 2020 AD, was a Lebanese poet and intellectual.
Shi'r was an avant-garde and modernist monthly literary magazine with a special reference to poetry. The magazine was published in Beirut, Lebanon, between 1957 and 1970 with a three-year interruption. The founders were two leading literary figures: Yusuf al-Khal and Adunis. It was named after Harriet Monroe’s Chicago-based magazine, Poetry.
Al Adab was an Arabic avant-garde existentialist literary print magazine published in Beirut, Lebanon, in the period 1953–2012. It was restarted in 2015 as an online-only publication. Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as one of the leading publications founded in the Arab countries in the latter half of the 20th century. Although the magazine was headquartered in Beirut, it was distributed all over the Arabic-speaking regions.
Tawfiq Sayigh was a Palestinian academic, writer and journalist. He was the editor of the controversial Hiwar magazine.
CIA activities in Lebanon refers to confirmed and alleged activities carried out in Lebanon by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Media related to Hiwar (magazine) at Wikimedia Commons