The problem of Arabic literature is a lack of readers rather than writers, Rasheed el-Enany, professor of modern Arabic literature at Exeter university, says in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper, al-Masri al-Youm.

Fiction is flourishing, often in unexpected places like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, "but I am pessimistic about how this talent goes unnoticed because there’s no readership – Arabs don’t read," he tells the paper. 

"We have 300 million people [in the Arab countries] and every writer could potentially have a significant readership across a wide geographical area. But this doesn’t happen.

"Writers don’t make any money out of their work and nobody reads what they write. And there’s no literary criticism either. The maximum is fleeting book reviews, which are often more advertisements than criticisms."

I have often wondered about Arab reading habits. While it's an exaggeration to say that nobody reads, Arabs certainly seem to read books less than many other people. The reasons are unclear, though, and somebody should do a study to find out why. Is it the price of books, the dearth of good bookshops and libraries, or are there factors in the home and everyday life that make book-reading less likely?

In the interview, Enany says censorship is "a huge problem" but social censorship is worse than government censorship. Social censorship "is much more ferocious, much more unpredictable and potentially much more violent then the measured censorship of the state." He continues:

The present kind of censorship by say, religious conservatives, is much more damaging and much more frightening for the writer because you don’t know exactly who you are offending, where the threat is coming from or what the possible punishment might be. When the state was exercising censorship, you knew: the book would be banned and you’d be stopped from writing for a while – maybe even go to prison for a little while if it was really bad. All this is awful, of course, but at least it's calculable.

But the current kind of censorship enforced now is the one that killed Farag Foda and almost killed Nagib Mahfouz. It’s real terror. It’s the kind that leads to a court case where a man is forced to divorce his wife, as in the case of Nasr Abu Zaid.
This is the worst thing that can happen and it leads to self-censorship. This means you try to anticipate all these horrible things and guard against it from the beginning. No Arabic writers can really write about religion, for instance.

People can write about politics, in some Arab countries anyway, and they can write about sex. But the fundamental question of faith, of belief, of the role of religion in society – this remains a hugely taboo area, one that I’m sure countless authors are really wary about expressing their views on.

This year's Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature was awarded last week to Khalil Sweileh, a Syrian author, for Warraq al-Hubb ("The Scribe of Love").

The shortlist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the "Arab Booker") was announced this week. The nominees are:

• Muhammad al-Mansi Qindeel (Egypt) – "A Cloudy Day on the West Side"

• Mansoura ez-Eldin (Egypt) – "Beyond Paradise"

• Rabee Jabir (Lebanon) – "America"

• Abdo Khal (Saudi Arabia) – "She Throws Sparks"

• Raba'i Madhoun (Palestine) – "The Lady from Tel Aviv"

• Jamal Naji (Jordan) – "When the Wolves Grow Old"