Since 2008, the International Prize for Arabic fiction, also known as the Arab Man Booker Prize, has been a reference in the literary scene. The long list for the 2012 prize was announced yesterday, and Jabbour Douaihy’s Chased away is in it!

She founded Raya Agency for Arabic Literature eight years ago. After long internships in publishing houses in New York and Paris, Jraissati realised at the 2004 Frankfurt Book Fair that ‘publishers interested in the Arab world couldn’t get their hands on interesting books because they can’t read them.’ Surely they often simply don’t want to, I say. She laughs. ‘That’s the other part of the story. I wanted them to be interested, so I had a mission… you can’t be interested if you don’t know anything about it, so I wanted to be some sort of medium.’

It is fascinating how religion acts as a shield against the tyranny of the family: the Quranic authority overthrows his father’s, releases him from the structure Zahi grew up with. Only gradually is this freedom limited again: It is for example forbidden to cheer during football matches, because only God can be honored and love for the team is blasphemy. The religious conversations are themselves increasingly darker: visions of hell take over the paradisiacal vistas, intimacy and contemplation is replaced by the aggressive proselytizing and moral campaigns.

She is known at home and abroad for her efforts against social and political taboos, and for her courageous books. Novels intimate only in appearance: the intertwined stories of relationships, often dramatic, hold a thousand references that tell more than many reportages, what it is like to live under dictatorship. As in “In her mirrors” an excellent translation from Elena Chiti, published in Beirut, and so far only distributed clandestinely in Syria.