Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Censorship in Twentieth-Century Literature - Roger Allen (essay date March-June 1995)

Roger Allen (essay date March-June 1995)

SOURCE: Allen, Roger. “Arabic Fiction and the Quest for Freedom.” Journal of Arabic Literature 26, no. 1-2 (March-June 1995): 37-49.

[In the following essay, Allen compares the religious and political censorship of Arabic literature to the censorship of Western literature, discussing the treatment of writers in Arabic-speaking countries and how writers of Arabic literature confront and resist censorship in their work.]

I laugh in the dark,
I cry in the dark;
in the dark I also write
till I no longer distinguish pen from finger.
Every knock at the door, every rustle of the curtain,
I cover my papers with my hand
like a cheap tart in a police raid.
From whom have I inherited this error,
this blood as skittish as the mountain panther?
No sooner do I spot an official form on the threshold
or a helmet through a crack in the door
than my bones and tears start to shudder,
my blood scatters to the...

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