Texte intégral
1In the first half of the Twentieth century, imperial suzerainty arrangements in the Eastern Mediterranean witnessed dramatic changes with the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the progressive withdrawal of the British and French Empires. In the period considered, Greece, which had been formally independent since 1829, more than doubled its territorial size. Egypt, on the other hand, made advances on the path to self-rule, which was bookended by the 1919 and the 1952 Revolutions. In both cases, the official narrative was that the structures of the modern state and its legal system had firmly consolidated, while new openings for democratic governance were being explored.
- 1 Loïc Marcou recently translated Pavlos Nirvanas’s Το έγκλημα του Ψυχικού into French as Psychiko, w (...)
- 2 A first translation by Abba Eban into English of Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt nāʾib fī ʾl-aryāf was (...)
- 3 Al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt is quite a complex text. Elliott Colla claims that “most readers thought it wa (...)
2At the heart of this era, crime fiction – which was already widely available to both Greek and Egyptian readers in translation – was first vernacularised by two authors who experimented with the possibilities of the genre. Pavlos Nirvanas published Το έγκλημα του Ψυχικού [The Crime of Psychikó] in 1927,1 and ten years later, in 1937, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm published Yawmiyyāt nāʾib fī ʾl-aryāf [Diary of a Country Prosecutor].2 Neither of these works resulted in the establishment of crime fiction as a genre in Greek or Egyptian literature. Was this outcome due to the stalled development of the modern state and its democratic institutions in these contexts, or was it instead a reflection of the more troubled and conflicted relationship between the educated/effendiyya class and the modern state?3
3If a relation between the modern state (and its democratic institutions) and crime fiction as a genre exists, as it has been posited in the context of Britain and France, then the Eastern Mediterranean in the interbellum is a good testing ground to verify the hypothesis and consider how the relation may manifest at other latitudes. The parodies of the genre by Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm provide ample material for the testing, and they also grant privileged access to their authors’ reading of the official narrative of a modern state solidly constituted and some forms of democratic politics carrying the day in Greece and in Egypt.
4Interrogating, on the other hand, the class positioning of authors and readers of these early vernacularisations can shed light on the perceived illusions and dangers associated with a genre that was rapidly gaining popularity. Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm seem to caution their fellow members of the educated/effendiyya class against becoming entangled in—or even complicit with—the profound failures of the “modern” state and its democratic institutions, a model then taking root along the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean.
- 4 Due to the central questions of this special issue (and of this article specifically), the article (...)
5Drawing a relation between a literary genre and a political system is a subtle and complex operation.4 In the case of crime fiction, it seems as if the relation rests on bridging between two other, distinct relations: on the one side, the relation between crime fiction and (scientific) positivism, and on the other the relation between (legal) positivism and the modern state. Because scientific and legal positivism – the argument proceeds – are two inextricably linked phenomena that are both the cause and the effect of the emergence of the modern state, then there must be a relation between a literary genre defined by (scientific) positivism and a political system grounded in (legal) positivism.
- 5 The thesis was re-published in 2011 with a foreword by Claude Amoz and an afterword by François Gué (...)
- 6 Ibid., pp. 28-31.
- 7 Ibid., p. 31.
6At the core of the first prong of the argument is one of the early studies on crime fiction as a genre: Régis Messac’s doctoral thesis on comparative literatures defended in the late 1920s5. Working on the American and British “detective novel,” Messac identifies the process through which the mystery is solved as the core element of the genre. In Messac’s view it is the investigations that characterise the “detective novel” or roman policier, and that also differentiates it from the “mystery novel” or the Kriminalroman6. The very definition of the “detective novel” for him is « un récit consacré avant tout à la découverte méthodique et graduelle, par des moyens rationnels, des circonstances exactes d’un événement mystérieux » (a narrative devoted above all to the methodical and gradual discovery, by rational means, of the exact circumstances of a mysterious event)7.
- 8 Ibid., pp. 38-46. Messac curiously titles the chapter: Les arcanes de la firàsah, referencing the I (...)
7Messac opens his discussion with an amusing chapter investigating the origins of the “detective novel.” What is particularly interesting about this chapter—for the purposes of our analysis here—is that Messac starts from the work of one of the key references of the Enlightenment which Positivism would later build on: Voltaire’s Zadig [1747]. The novel’s main character, Zadig (an adaptation of the Hebrew tsaddīḳ, righteous), embraces a rationalist perspective, and frequently conflicts with other humans who hold irrational convictions. In the section credited as a proto-detective story, Zadig arrives at a description of the queen’s dog and the king’s horse based solely on the observation of their tracks (and other indirect evidence). For this “detective work,” Zadig will be arrested, upon suspicion of his involvement in the disappearance of the two animals. This is just one of the ironies of Zadig. The novel is set in ancient Babylon, but – by meticulously following some tracks – Messac arrives at identifying the sources of Zadig’s curious anecdotes in the very irrational Orient against which Zadig’s rationality is meant to stand out8.
- 9 Carlo Ginzburg, "Clues: Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes", in Umberto Eco and Thomas A Sebeok (e (...)
8Half a century later, in the late 1970s, a group of semioticians spearheaded by Umberto Eco and Thomas Sebeok returns to the matter of the methodology of the investigations in crime fiction. Carlo Ginzburg, in particular, identifies in the investigation of fictional detectives a conjectural paradigm (or semiotic model) that goes beyond the simplistic dichotomy “rational/irrational,” and has a longer and broader tradition than (scientific) positivism. Ginzburg himself, like Messac before him, returns to the firāsa as an early incarnation of the conjectural paradigm that he is describing. The “low intuition” of firāsa is what Ginzburg sees as the core of the paradigm, which is “rooted in the senses” and can be found anywhere “without geographic, historical, ethnic, gender, or class exception.” This distinguishes the conjectural paradigm from “any form of ‘superior’ knowledge restricted to an elite”9.
- 10 The key reference on this point is the 2009 Report by the United States’ National Academy of Scienc (...)
9The first prong of the argument is faltering, or is at least much less robust than predicated. In a way, Ginzburg’s analysis anticipates the critique of forensics as a pseudo-science that will come years and years later10. Forensics, as an incarnation of the conjectural paradigm, should not be discarded, but cannot be treated as meeting the standards set by (scientific) positivism. The semioticians’ critique suggests that the inability to establish a relationship between crime fiction and (scientific) positivism – because the model is “conjectural” rather than “scientific” – renders the second prong of the argument, namely the link between (legal) positivism and the modern state, irrelevant. Consequently, asserting a relationship between crime fiction and the modern state becomes significantly more challenging. If a connection does exist between this literary genre and this political system, it must rest on different grounds.
- 11 Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots : Une enquête à propos d’enquêtes, Gallimard, 2012, pp. 13-18. I (...)
10Four decades after the publication of the work of Ginzburg (and Eco, and Sebeok), in the early 2010s, the sociologist Luc Boltanski returns to the relation between crime fiction and the modern state11. He shifts the discussion of (scientific) positivism to the second prong, i.e. its relation with the state (instead than with crime fiction), and centres it around the concept of reality (« réalité »). Entirely posited by the modern state, this réalité is what the crime or mystery disturbs and the state thus needs to remedy through its agents.
- 12 Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots, op. cit., p. 40.
- 13 Ibid., p. 40.
- 14 Ibid., p. 40.
11Boltanski’s reading of reality as fashioned by the state demands that this operation (« cette forme, proprement démiurgique, du projet étatique ») be anchored in (positive) sciences thanks to their tight relation with the state, if any credibility is to be afforded (« [elle] n’aurait aucune vraisemblance si elle n’avait pris appui sur les sciences et sur leurs relations étroites avec l’État »12). This is a form of Foucauldian biopolitics, Boltanski acknowledges13. In Boltanski’s view, it is a convergence rather that a unidirectional movement that allows the establishment and stabilisation of this “reality” (« c’est la convergence entre le projet étatique et le projet scientifique qui permet d’établir et de stabiliser la réalité »14).
12When the emergence of the modern state and its determination and stabilisation of reality are well underway in the late 19th and early 20th century – Boltanski argues – crime fiction stages an inquietude (which, as a result, generates “suspense”) rooted in the potential for challenging the very nature of the state’s reality (« [le roman policier] « trouve bien son principe dans la possibilité d’une mise en question de la réalité de la réalité »15).
- 16 Sean McCann sees in North-American (hard-boiled) crime fiction a more complex appreciation of the s (...)
13Boltanski moves a step further, and explores the relation between crime fiction and a political system founded on democracy, where equality and freedom are valued. At first, the political orientations of the early British and French authors that he considers seem to suggest an anti-democratic bias in the genre, in line with its popular perception: detectives restore the order challenged by the crime, and thus actualise the state’s promise of guaranteeing law and order16. This “reactionary” reading of the genre, however, does not satisfy Boltanski, who goes on to further explore the critical relation of crime fiction to democracy.
- 17 Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots, op. cit., p. 50.
- 18 Ibid., p. 51.
- 19 Ibid., p. 51. Boltanski’s way of formulating the idea is, in and of itself, interesting, as it ties (...)
14In a very bold step, Boltanski argues that it is the political context forged by the democratic modern state that allows for the emergence of crime (and spy) fiction (Boltanski 50). And he provides two reasons for his claim. First, because these genres need a réalité stabilised by state institutions in order for an énigme/crime/mystery to stand out (« [pour que l’énigme puisse] devenir saillante »17). And second, because they need readers whose critical capabilities are not hindered by anything that would prevent them from enjoying the experience of probing the fragility of this réalité18. At the root of this second cause, Boltanski identifies two phenomena: the expansion of education and the development of the press—which started covering criminal investigations, and by doing so exposed readers to the possibility of a plurality of investigations19.
15Boltanski’s justifications lack persuasive efficacy. The expansion of education and the development of the press seem to be more tied to the emergence of the modern state, rather than any particular incarnation of democracy. Turning to our two cases at hand in the Eastern Mediterranean, both Greece and Egypt had widely expanded education and developed the press for well over a century before the first full-fledged vernacularisations of crime fiction appeared. Leaving his rather dubious justifications aside, is Boltanski’s claim about the relation between crime fiction and democracy still tenable?
- 20 Ibid., p. 51.
- 21 Ibid., p. 51
- 22 Ibid., p. 52.
- 23 Ibid., p. 52.
16To substantiate his position, Boltanski cites the “birthplaces” of crime fiction (France and Britain) as examples of countries who led the way in the formation of the modern state and the development of parliamentary democracy20. This is the first time that Boltanski brings the specific form of parliamentarism into his discussion of democracy. He does not pursue this point any further, as he rather turns to the authoritarian state, in an a contrario argument. The authoritarian state – Boltanski argues – cannot foster the flourishing of crime (or spy) fiction. This is due to its desire to shape reality and control its representation, which leaves little room to challenge this réalité in fiction; were the sparking of the public’s imagination not altogether prohibited, under threat of imprisonment or death21. In an authoritarian context – Boltanski doubles down – crime (and spy) fiction lose all interest, as readers know from the very start where the investigations are going to lead, since characters are distinctly categorised as heroes or villains, friends or foes of the regime22. This, according to Boltanski, is unconducive to suspense, one of the critical feature of crime (and spy) fiction23.
17There seems to be quite a distance between a context were education is expanding and the press is spreading and parliamentary democracy, on the one hand. But also between a parliamentary democracy and an authoritarian state as brutal as Boltanski’s. Perhaps it is now time to turn to our cases from Interwar Greece and Egypt, and interrogate them.
18At first glance, the current landscapes of crime fiction in Greece and Egypt appear quite disparate and incongruent. Yet, early vernacular manifestations of the genre emerged in both contexts around the same period, each adopting a similar approach by parodying the conventions of the genre. How do Nirvanas’s Έγκλημα (1927) and al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt (1937)—the two works under examination—relate to the broader genre of crime fiction in Greece and in Egypt, respectively? What might the close temporal proximity of their publication—only ten years apart—imply? And what does the authors’ decision to parody the crime fiction genre uncover, especially regarding the genre itself? Answering these questions may provide crucial insights for evaluating the connections between reading and writing practices within the genre, and for testing some of the hypotheses on the connections with a particular political system.
- 24 Philippos Philippou, Ιστορία της ελληνικής αστυνομικής λογοτεχνίας: O Γιάννης Μαρής και οι άλλοι, Π (...)
- 25 Thanassis Agathos, "Noir Backstage: Yannis Maris from Page to Screen", in Anna Poupou et al. (eds.) (...)
- 26 Unlike the novels of Yannis Maris, the novels of the most prominent (and, possibly, prolific) conte (...)
19The rise of modern Greek crime fiction is conventionally associated with the work of Yannis Maris (1916-1979), the “Georges Simenon of Greece,” and the publication in 1953 of his Έγκλημα στο Κολωνάκι [Crime in Kolonaki]24. His κοντόχοντρος (short and stocky) inspector Bekas has become part of the Greek imaginary—if not through his books, through its televisual and cinematic adaptations25. Since then, Greek crime fiction has grown and flourished26; its creators have formed an association, have started publishing a magazine, and have generally secured a dedicated section for their works in larger bookstores around the country.
- 27 Katia Ghosn and Benoît Tadié (eds.), Le Récit criminel arabe / Arabic Crime Fiction, Harrassowitz, (...)
- 28 Richard Jacquemond, "Un écrivain “pop” égyptien : Ahmad Murad", in Richard Jacquemond and Frédéric (...)
- 29 A first analysis of “detectives” in Egyptian television drama of the 2010s identified the popularit (...)
- 30 Of Aḥmad Murād’s works, only Vertigo seems to be available in a translation in English, published b (...)
- 31 Himself a former judge, al-ʿAshmāwī often references al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt. As in Bayt al-Qibṭiyya [ (...)
20The rise of modern Egyptian crime fiction is slightly more controversial27. The featuring of its most prolific and successful author, Aḥmad Murād (1978-), on the front cover of the magazine ʿĀlam al-kitāb in September 2020 stirred great controversy as many disputed the stature of the author and his work. And yet his books are immensely popular and so are their cinematic adaptations28. There is no inspector Bekas in Aḥmad Murād’s work, which can be considered a wider reflection of what I identify as the “Egyptian crime formula”29. Since Aḥmad Murād’s publication of Vertigo in 200730, the growth of Egyptian crime fiction seems to be accelerating, though, with new authors emerging, like Ašraf al-ʿAšmāwī (1966-)31.
21Significantly earlier than Yannis Maris and Aḥmad Murād, however, other writers in Greece and in Egypt had experimented with crime in their fiction writing. It is rather curious that these earlier experiments happened in both cases in the Interwar period, just as the rules of the genre were being codified in Van Dine’s Commandments (1928) and in Ronald Knox’s Decalogue (1929).
- 32 Philippos Philippou, op. cit., p. 32-34. Stratos Myrogiannis traces the origins of crime fiction in (...)
22In Greece, it was Pavlos Nirvanas (1886-1937) who in 1927 opened his satirical novel (σατιρικόν μυθιστόρημα) with the news in the morning newspapers of the discovery of the body of the “young and beautiful daughter of an aristocratic family” under a pile of stones in the affluent neighbourhood of Athens known as Psychikó32.
23In Egypt, it was Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm (1898-1987) who in 1937 opened the journal of his overworked and exhausted prosecutor with the news of a shooting which resulted in the severe injury of a peasant in the fields of a remote village in the Delta.
24Both novels start with a crime, follow the investigations, and close with a solution (or maybe not?). There is little doubt that the two authors were well aware of the conventions of the genre, and intended to play with them – could they do so because their readers were well aware of the conventions of the genre as well?
- 33 The very year in which Yawmiyyāt was serialised in al-Riwāya, another Egyptian literary weekly, al- (...)
- 34 Samah Selim, Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt, Springer, 2019, pp. 21-46.
- 35 Op. cit., p. 27-32.
- 36 Ibid., p. 29.
25Readers of Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm must have been quite familiar with the narrative structure followed in both Έγκλημα and Yawmiyyāt; well before these two authors, crime fiction had become available to the Greek and the Egyptian reader in translations and/or cinematic adaptations of foreign crime fiction33. As Samah Selim shows in her Popular Fiction, Translation, and the Nahda in Egypt, crime fiction in translation was widely featured in Egyptian magazines since the late 19th century34. The same can be said of Greece, as Philippos Philippou shows in his Ιστορία της ελληνικής αστυνομικής λογοτεχνίας35; some translations into Greek were even published in Alexandria by the thriving Greek community of Egypt, as is the case of Émile Gaboriau’s L’Affaire Lerouge [Η υπόθεση Λερούζ, 1889]36. Nirvanas himself describes the lead character of Έγκλημα as a profligate, medical-school drop-out who liked to go to the cinema, “where he was particularly drawn to crime films” (όπου τον τραβούσαν ιδιαιτέρως τα αστυνομικά έργα, revealing the existence of a generic label—αστυνομικά (έργα), calqued on the French policier—which is still in use today). A rather strange description for the “first work of Greek crime fiction.”
- 37 Christian Metz, Langage et cinéma, Librairie Larousse, 1971, p. 140-155.
26Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm can thus play with the rules of a genre that is known to readers, even if not in a vernacularised version. If we were to use the genre stages proposed by Christian Metz for films37, the novels of Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm display at once elements of the experimental stage of “local” crime fiction, just as elements of the parody and of the deconstruction stages of “foreign” classical crime fiction.
27The contrasting contemporary landscapes of crime fiction in Greece and in Egypt appear to support Boltanski’s hypothesis: crime fiction thrives in democratic contexts but falters in non-democratic ones. Early vernacularisations of the genre, however, suggest a more complex set of relations. When they appeared, in the Interwar period, consumption of crime fiction in both countries was relatively similar, with large amounts of foreign crime fiction being translated and published – mostly in (literary) magazines. Έγκλημα and Yawmiyyāt were also published in (literary) magazines, and could play with the conventions of the genre. Perhaps, then, a discussion of the relation of the genre with a particular (scientific-philosophical approach and/or) political system should take into consideration the class dimension of both readership and authorship of the genre.
28With the educated/effendiyya class in mind (both in terms of readership and authorship), one could then read the two early vernacularisations of the genre, and explore the imaginaries of crime and its investigation, and what they can reveal about that specific social class in its relation to the political system.
- 38 Nirvanas also composed a three-act theatrical version of the novel, which is currently listed among (...)
29Nirvanas’s Έγκλημα was published in instalments in the weekly Θεατής in 192738. The first instalment presents the details of the crime and the initial investigations as a newspaper article with some commentary by the narrator. After this prologue, however, Nirvanas introduces readers to someone who has nothing to do with the crime, and yet will become the lead character. Nikos Molochanthis is a young man with no life direction and whose only aspiration is fame. In the murder of the young aristocratic woman, he sees an opportunity to become famous. The stalling of the investigations allows him to develop and execute a plan to take responsibility for the murder, and fame actually ensues. The plot thickens when he tries to prove his innocence and undo his witty plan. The murder has completely disappeared from the horizon, and Nirvanas seems to be interested in exploring the psychology of the various characters, from the unfaithful friend who runs with the money to the latter’s sister who is deeply in love with Nikos and stands by him, from the inmates and prison staff and their opportunism to the group of female fans who first support and then reject him.
- 39 Malcolm Scott, Bernanos : Journal d’un Curé de Campagne, Grant & Cutler, 1997, p. 9.
30Al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt was also published in instalments, but in the Egyptian weekly al-Riwāya, and ten years later, in 1937. The Diary does indeed open with the prosecutor journaling about how he was woken up in the middle of the night to be informed of a crime and closes eleven days later with the closing of the investigations. The first journal entry describes the beginning of the investigations into the shooting of the peasant, but al-Ḥakīm uses the Diary to illustrate the nonsensical daily grind of a prosecutor, including devoting three full journal entries to pre-trial and trial hearings in court. Besides the courtroom, the prosecutor is engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic activities, from inspections to electoral supervision. The crime and its investigation are thus pushed to the background. And yet their choice is not casual. The previous year, Georges Bernanos’s novel Journal d’un curé de campagne [Diary of a Country Priest] was awarded the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie francaise, and it is quite telling that al-Ḥakīm used a very similar format to narrate his own personal experience of working as public prosecutor in the Delta, to which he injected the crime element. Georges Bernanos himself had decided on the contrary to put on hold his Journal to write some crime fiction in order to achieve some financial stability39.
31If crime seems to merely function as a plot device for both Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm, the investigations is where the authors stage their most vicious parody of the genre, or, in other words, articulate their most radical critique of the institutions tasked with guaranteeing law and order. They do so in opposite ways. While investigations in Έγκλημα are almost absent, in Yawmiyyāt the story revolves around the prosecutor in charge of the investigations. In both cases, however, the reputation of law enforcement comes out fairly tarnished.
32In Έγκλημα, investigators are not able to solve the case, are played by the fame chaser, are unable to prevent muggers from attacking him, interact with citizens in rather brutal ways, believe a random knife dipped in the blood of some beef lung to be the murder weapon, and the list could go on. The chapter where the fame chaser finally manages to get arrested is titled by Nirvanas as: “a great success for the police” (μια μεγάλη αστυνομική επιτυχία).
- 40 Yawmiyyāt’s cinematic adaptation further reinforced these points in the collective visual imaginary (...)
33In Yawmiyyāt, the prosecutor is obsessed with the bureaucratic side of the investigations. The report is his highest concern; and even amusingly recounts that once the overriding concern with details in filling in the report of a poisoning led to the death of the victim. His own “urban” bias also affects the investigations as he fails to seek out the victim’s relatives, certain that they will not collaborate so as to take justice into their own hands40.
34The idea that investigations can lead to a mending of the wound to the réalité de la réalité – to use Boltanski’s expression – that crime has brought to the world seems to be rejected by both Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm. Not only that, but also the method of the investigations that they stage is very far from the great promises of positivism triumphant.
35In Έγκλημα, the fame chaser is on his way to execution even if unable to credibly identify his victim—whom he has obviously never met. When the mother of the victim, having recognised her daughter in the picture of a newspaper used to wrap some groceries in a distant village, makes all her way to Athens to obtain information about her daughter’s whereabouts, the prosecutor – Nirvanas tells the readers – still has no doubt that the fame chaser is the murderer. Only the confession of the victim’s fiancé will convince him, and the fame chaser will be released after a psychiatric report acknowledging that he is a lunatic (ανισόρροπο(ς)) who had read too many crime reports and novels, and had watched too many crime films (από επίμονα διαβάσματα εγκληματικών χρονικών και μυθιστορημάτων και τη συστηματική παρακολούθηση αστυνομικών ταινιών στον κινηματογράφο).
- 41 In Greek crime fiction, a similar belief is attributed to Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the famou (...)
36In Yawmiyyāt, the police commissioner (al-maʾmūr) insists on taking along with them on the investigations an eccentric shaikh, Shaykh ʿAṣfūr. When the prosecutor protests, the commissioner insists: “the shaikh is blessed with divine favour” (kulluh baraka), implying that he can access truth, and gives an example of that: “once he helped us locate a murder weapon at the bottom of a canal.” The prosecutor keeps objecting and carries out his useless, bureaucratic box-ticking exercises, only to heed a little later to the hint that Shaykh ʿAṣfūr offers in his rhymed singing: “scope out the women, and you’ll know the reason of sorrows” (fattiš ʿan al-niswān, taʿrif sabab al-aḥzān)41. Investigations indeed turn to the victim’s sister in law, but the police commissioner and the prosecutor cannot move past her beauty, and start competing for her.
37The fact that investigations result in a fortuitous discovery of truth in Έγκλημα and in an unresolved case in Yawmiyyāt should not distract from the scathing critique that characterises both works.
- 42 Simone Celani, "Introduzione", Il Caso Vargas di Fernando Pessoa, Il Filo, 2006, pp. 5–28.
- 43 Ironically, Pessoa’s unfinished novelas policiais were first published in the mid-1950s, two decade (...)
38Before drawing some conclusions, allow me a further word of caution against determinism in this discussion of the relation between the modern state (and its democratic institutions) and crime fiction as a genre. In the same years, on another corner of Southern Europe, with institutional fortunes that weren’t proving particularly more auspicious, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) was creating a case-solver, “Abilio Quaresma, decifrador,” able to complement with his superior rational skills the shortcomings of law enforcement agencies42. Were it not for his untimely death, Pessoa would have had Abilio Quaresma as his alter ego open the collection of his own works, his opera omnia – in prose. Even if Pessoa’s belief in the effective functioning of law enforcement seemed rather fragile, his belief in the promises of positivism was on the other hand deeply ingrained43. Something that can be hardly said for Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm.
39State formation in Greece and Egypt followed similar trajectories in the 19th and early 20th century, even if historical events followed very different patterns – with a more traumatic detachment from the Ottoman Empire for Greece and a more progressive disentanglement for Egypt. Certainly, democratic governance was also constantly renegotiated in the two contexts, with periods of ebb and flow in each. Undoubtedly, both witnessed a significant expansion of education and the development of the press – the two main criteria that Boltanski takes as markers of democracy that are conducive to the flourishing of crime fiction. In many respects, both Greece and Egypt even experienced parliamentary democracy, or a parliament functioning under constitutional rules. Yet, the two early vernacularisations of crime fiction in Greece and Egypt manifested their authors’ use of the crime archetype to address distinctive features of the modern state and its hollow pretence to either guarantee law and order or to restore it when crime pierces its réalité.
40In the Interwar period, Nirvanas in Greece and al-Ḥakīm in Egypt experimented with the globally triumphant genre in quite distinct ways, yet they seem to share a parodical approach to the larger claims of the modern state. Both Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm were celebrated playwrights whose attention to the human psyche and to the well-roundedness of their characters translated also in linguistic choices that favoured vernacular expressions away from the official dogma of linguistic purity sponsored by state institutions – in itself a democratic move. Nirvanas’s Έγκλημα and al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt offer through their parody of the genre a critique of the shortcomings of state formation in their post-Ottoman lands, but there seems to be more than that.
- 44 Or, in other words, how they build a “grounded theory” of law; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, (...)
- 45 Andrew Pepper, Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State, University Press, 2016, pp. 1-18(...)
- 46 Al-Ḥakīm himself worked as a young aide to a public prosecutor in a remote village in the Delta, an (...)
- 47 In this sense, the prosecutor’s “conscription” seems to be way more “complete” than Emily Drumsta s (...)
41Rather than looking at how these works reflect a certain context, it is probably more useful to consider how they draw from, and contribute to, a certain imaginary (of a certain social class)44. Perhaps, then, the analysis should be complemented with considerations of class. The educated/effendiyya class to which Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm belonged, had been drafted (and perhaps even created) to uphold the modern state, and guarantee its functioning. In their novels, however, the two authors expose and critique the malfunctioning of the state. Is the educated/effendiyya class the “unwilling executioner”45? In Yawmiyyāt, al-Ḥakīm actually stages multiple modalities in which the educated/effendiyya class operate (the prosecutor, his young aide, the “quick” judge, the “scrupulous” judge,..); among them, the prosecutor’s young aide alone seems to embody a reasonable, ethical refusal of a blind enforcement of the modern (and senseless) law on unwilling subjects by a member of the educated/effendiyya class46. Members of the educated/effendiyya class can however choose to operate as the prosecutor, the “quick” judge, or the “scrupulous” judge; and readers (belonging to the very same class) are shown how ridiculous their behaviour can be47.
42The origins of crime fiction in the Eastern Mediterranean suggest a more nuanced relationship with democracy than the one posited by Boltanski and other scholars working on Euro-American contexts. The delay in the development of a homegrown crime fiction in both Greece and Egypt and their parodic origins seem to be less a function of their supposed democratic deficit and more a radical critique of the brutality of the state and its law enforcement agencies, which is not even balanced by an ability to deliver on the state’s promise of law and order. Nirvanas and al-Ḥakīm seem to caution their readers—fellow members of the educated/effendiyya class – against aligning themselves with the harsh violence of the modern state in pursuit of an illusory law and order.
Haut de page
Bibliographie
ABU SARAH, Christiane-Marie. "Golden Age of Crime". ArabLit Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 2, Summer 2020, p. 6.
AGATHOS, Thanassis. "Noir Backstage: Yannis Maris from Page to Screen". Greek Film Noir, edited by Anna Poupou et al., Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 81-102.
AL-ḤAKĪM, Tawfīq. Diary of a Country Prosecutor, Saqi, 1989.
---. Maze of Justice. Translated by Abba Eban, Harvill Press, 1947.
---. Un substitut de campagne en Égypte : Journal d’un substitut de procureur égyptien. Translated by Gaston Wiet and Zaki Hassan, Plon, 1974.
AL-SĀWIRĪ, Būshuʿayb. "Mufāraqat al-intāj wa-l-talaqqī fī ʾl-riwāya al-būlīsiyya al-ʿarabiyya". Fuṣūl, vol. 76, 2009, pp. 69-81.
AL-ʿASHMĀWĪ, Ashraf. Bayt al-qibṭiyya. al-Dār al-miṣriyya al-lubnāniyya, 2019.
ARISTODEMOU, Maria, et al., editors. Crime Fiction and the Law, Routledge, 2017.
BOLTANSKI, Luc. Énigmes et complots : Une enquête à propos d’enquêtes, Gallimard, 2012.
BURQĀN, Niḍāl. "al-Adab al-būlīsī al-ʿarabī.. ghurba murakkaba". Afkār, Apr. 2018, pp. 33-38.
CELANI, Simone. "Introduzione". Il Caso Vargas di Fernando Pessoa, Il Filo, 2006, pp. 5-28.
COLLA, Elliott. "Anxious Advocacy: The Novel, the Law, and Extrajudicial Appeals in Egypt", Public Culture, vol. 17, no. 3, 2005, pp. 417-43.
COMAROFF, Jean, and John L. COMAROFF. Theory from the South, or, How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa. Paradigm Publishers, 2012.
DRUMSTA, Emily. Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation, University of California Press, 2024.
GHOSN, Katia, and Benoît TADIÉ, editors. Le Récit criminel arabe / Arabic Crime Fiction, Harrassowitz, 2021.
GINZBURG, Carlo. "Clues: Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes". The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce, edited by Umberto Eco and Thomas A Sebeok, Indiana University Press, 1984, pp. 81-118.
JACQUEMOND, Richard. "Un écrivain “pop” égyptien : Ahmad Murad". Culture pop en Égypte. Entre mainstream commercial et contestation, edited by Richard Jacquemond and Frédéric Lagrange, Riveneuve, 2020, pp. 51-84.
LUSO SOARES, Fernando. "Notas para a criação da novela policial em Fernando Pessoa". Investigação. Revista mensal de ciência e literatura policial, vol. 1, May 1953, pp. 59-76.
MARIS, Yannis. L’énigme du peintre assassiné. Translated by Babette Dargent, ETP Books, 2017.
---. Murder in Athens. ETP Books, 2018.
MCCANN, Sean. Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism. Duke University Press, 2000.
MESSAC, Régis. Le "detective novel" et l’influence de la pensée scientifique. 2nd ed., Encrage, 2011.
METZ, Christian. Langage et cinéma, Librairie Larousse, 1971.
MOURAD, Ahmed. Vertigo. Bloomsbury USA, 2010.
MYROGIANNIS, Stratos. Από τις ιστορίες μυστηρίου στην αστυνομική πλοκή: Αναζητώντας την εμφάνιση ενός αινιγματικού είδους στον ελληνικό 19ο αιώνα. Alexandreia, 2012.
NIRVANAS, Pavlos. Psychiko. Translated by Loïc Marcou, Mirobole éditions, 2016.
---. Psychiko. Translated by Loïc Marcou, 10-18, 2017.
---. Psychiko. Translated by Loïc Marcou, Cambourakis, 2021.
PAROLIN, Gianluca. "Bunyat al-taḥqīq fī “Yawmiyyāt nāʾib fī ʾl-aryāf” bayna al-riwāya (1937) wa-l-fīlm (1969)". al-Iqtibās: Min al-adab ilá al-sīnimā, Maḥaṭṭāt fī tārīkh mushtarak, edited by Salmá Mubārak and Walīd al-Khashshāb, al-Marāyā, 2021, pp. 141-62.
---. "Enquêteurs (non) familiers : Qui mène les enquêtes dans les séries télévisées égyptiennes ?" Le récit criminel arabe / Arabic Crime Fiction, edited by Katia Ghosn and Benoît Tadié, Harrassowitz, 2021, p. 175-94.
---. "“Modern” Law and Its Subjects in Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937)". Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21, 2021, pp. 57-77.
PEPPER, Andrew. Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State, University Press, 2016.
PHILIPPOU, Philippos. Ιστορία της ελληνικής αστυνομικής λογοτεχνίας: O Γιάννης Μαρής και οι άλλοι. Πατάκης, 2018.
SCOTT, Malcolm. Bernanos : Journal d’un Curé de Campagne, Grant & Cutler, 1997.
SELIM, Samah. Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt, Springer, 2019.
"Taṭawwur al-qiṣṣa al-būlīsiyya". al-Risāla, no. 232, 13 Dec. 1937, p. 2039.
VALETAS, Giwrgos, editor. (Παύλου Νιρβάνα) Τα Άπαντα· Τα λογοτεχνικά και κριτικά με τα καλλίτερα χρονογραφήματα. Christos Yovanis, 1968.
VIZYENOS, Georgios. My Mother’s Sin and Other Stories. Translated by William Wyatt, University Press of New England, 1988.
Haut de page
Notes
Loïc Marcou recently translated Pavlos Nirvanas’s Το έγκλημα του Ψυχικού into French as Psychiko, which was published in three different editions: Psychiko, Mirobole éditions, 2016, Psychiko, 10-18, 2017, Psychiko, Cambourakis. 2021, with the subtitle: « Aux origines du polar grec »).
A first translation by Abba Eban into English of Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt nāʾib fī ʾl-aryāf was published as early as 1947, under the title Maze of Justice, Harvill Press, 1947. More recently, it has been re-published under the title Diary of a Country Prosecutor, Saqi, 1989. A first translation by Gaston Wiet and Zaki Hassan into French appeared in instalments in La Revue du Caire immediately after the original publication in Arabic [1938-1939], and in book format since 1974 with a new preface by the author (al-Ḥakīm, Un Substitut de campagne en Égypte, Plon, 1974). See Parolin, "“Modern” Law and Its Subjects in Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm’s Diary of a Country Prosecutor (1937)", Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 21, 2021, pp. 57–77, p. 62).
Al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt is quite a complex text. Elliott Colla claims that “most readers thought it was a detective novel” when it first appeared in 1937; see Elliott Colla, "Anxious Advocacy: The Novel, the Law, and Extrajudicial Appeals in Egypt". Public Culture, vol. 17, n° 3, 2005 (pp. 417–43), p. 417–18 and p. 433–36. The evidence presented appears to be insufficient to fully substantiate the claim, and while there is undoubtedly a plotline centred on the investigations of a crime, the Yawmiyyāt are a much more layered text (Parolin, "“Modern” Law and Its Subjects’, op. cit., p. 59–62).
Due to the central questions of this special issue (and of this article specifically), the article engages with scholarship across the broader humanities and social sciences rather than examining crime fiction through the lens of legal studies. For those interested in the types of questions raised about law and crime fiction in the Global North, an essential resource is the volume edited by Maria Aristodemou, Fiona Macmillan, and Patricia Tuitt: Maria Aristodemou et al. (eds), Crime Fiction and the Law, Routledge, 2017. In the introduction, Aristodemou skillfully traces the trajectory of critical reflections within this field. (pp. 1–14)
The thesis was re-published in 2011 with a foreword by Claude Amoz and an afterword by François Guérif. Régis Messac, Le "detective novel" et l’influence de la pensée scientifique, Encrage, 2011 (2nd ed.).
Ibid., pp. 28-31.
Ibid., p. 31.
Ibid., pp. 38-46. Messac curiously titles the chapter: Les arcanes de la firàsah, referencing the Islamic science defined by Faḫr al-dīn al-Rāzī as: “a technique of inductive divination which permits the foretelling of moral conditions and psychological behaviour from external indications and physical states” (transl. by Toufic Fahd in EI).
Carlo Ginzburg, "Clues: Morelli, Freud, and Sherlock Holmes", in Umberto Eco and Thomas A Sebeok (eds.), The Sign of Three: Dupin, Holmes, Peirce, Indiana University Press, 1984 (pp. 81–118), p. 110.
The key reference on this point is the 2009 Report by the United States’ National Academy of Sciences (NAS) titled: “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward.”
Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots : Une enquête à propos d’enquêtes, Gallimard, 2012, pp. 13-18. I am very grateful to Ziad Bou Akl, a dear friend and a reference on Ibn Rushd’s philosophy (of law), for mentioning Boltanski’s Énigmes et Complots—which happened in a conversation over dinner, as I was sharing my initial musings on patterns of crime and its investigation in Egyptian television drama of the 2010s. This was one of the many highlights of my stay at EHESS at the Institut d’études de l’Islam et des sociétés du monde musulman (IISMM) in 2018. Since then, I’ve kept returning to Boltanski’s work, along with the works of the likes of Régis Messac, Carlo Ginzburg, Umberto Eco & Thomas Sebeok, Siegfried Kracauer, Fernando Savater, or John Cawelti, trying to test if and how these readings function beyond their geographical confines, and musing on how to connect my little dots on the cultural map of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots, op. cit., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 40.
Ibid., p. 41
Sean McCann sees in North-American (hard-boiled) crime fiction a more complex appreciation of the state and its legal system: one in which the state’s role is much more duplicitous in upholding social justice and perpetuating social inequity (Sean McCann, Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism, Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 1–38).
Luc Boltanski, Énigmes et complots, op. cit., p. 50.
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 51. Boltanski’s way of formulating the idea is, in and of itself, interesting, as it ties in the expansion of education and the development of the press. He writes: « La presse, dans laquelle paraissent les premiers récits policiers, offre alors à un public de plus en plus large non seulement une diversité de points de vue, mais surtout les résultats d’une pluralité d’enquêtes ou, plus généralement, de tableaux de la réalité, dont un grand nombre se présentent sous une forme littéraire » (p. 51).
Ibid., p. 51.
Ibid., p. 51
Ibid., p. 52.
Ibid., p. 52.
Philippos Philippou, Ιστορία της ελληνικής αστυνομικής λογοτεχνίας: O Γιάννης Μαρής και οι άλλοι, Πατάκης, 2018. The works of Yannis Maris are not widely available in translation. Έγκλημα στο Κολωνάκι has been recently translated into French in 2017 as L'énigme du peintre assassiné (Yannis Maris, L’énigme Du Peintre Assassiné, ETP Books, 2017) and into English in 2018 as Murder in Athens (Yannis Maris, Murder in Athens, ETP Books, 2018) by a Greek publisher, ETP Books.
Thanassis Agathos, "Noir Backstage: Yannis Maris from Page to Screen", in Anna Poupou et al. (eds.), Greek Film Noir, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 81-102.
Unlike the novels of Yannis Maris, the novels of the most prominent (and, possibly, prolific) contemporary author of crime fiction in Greek, Petros Markaris, are widely translated. Most of Markaris’s works are published in French by Points, and in English by Vintage.
Katia Ghosn and Benoît Tadié (eds.), Le Récit criminel arabe / Arabic Crime Fiction, Harrassowitz, 2021, pp. 1-16. Two special issues of Arab literary magazines have been dedicated to the thorny issue of crime fiction (al-adab al-būlīsī) in the region in the last two decades: the Egyptian Fuṣūl 76 in 2009 and the Jordanian Afkār in April 2018. See, in particular, Būshuʿayb al-Sāwirī’s piece on the gap between production and consumption in Fuṣūl (Būshuʿayb al-Sāwirī, "Mufāraqat al-intāj wa-l-talaqqī fī ʾl-riwāya al-būlīsiyya al-ʿarabiyya", Fuṣūl, vol. 76, 2009, pp. 69-81), and Niḍāl Burqān’s interviews in Afkār (Niḍāl Burqān, "al-Adab al-būlīsī al-ʿarabī.. ghurba murakkaba", Afkār, Apr. 2018, pp. 33-38). In a very short article in an ArabLit Quarterly issue dedicated to crime fiction, Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah calls the 1940s and 1950s the “Golden Age of Crime” in Egypt, but also admits that the “movement was later forgotten” (Christiane-Marie Abu Sarah, "Golden Age of Crime", ArabLit Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 2, Summer 2020, p. 6.).
Richard Jacquemond, "Un écrivain “pop” égyptien : Ahmad Murad", in Richard Jacquemond and Frédéric Lagrange (eds.), Culture pop en Égypte. Entre mainstream commercial et contestation, Riveneuve, 2020, pp. 51–84.
A first analysis of “detectives” in Egyptian television drama of the 2010s identified the popularity of the ordinary citizen in quest for justice at the heart of the crime formula. Gianluca Parolin, "Enquêteurs (non) familiers : Qui mène les enquêtes dans les séries télévisées égyptiennes ?", in Katia Ghosn and Benoît Tadié (eds.), Le récit criminel arabe / Arabic Crime Fiction, op. cit., pp. 175-94.
Of Aḥmad Murād’s works, only Vertigo seems to be available in a translation in English, published by Bloomsbury Qatar in 2010 with the subtitle: “A Cairo Political Thriller” (Ahmed Mourad, Vertigo. Bloomsbury USA, 2010.).
Himself a former judge, al-ʿAshmāwī often references al-Ḥakīm’s Yawmiyyāt. As in Bayt al-Qibṭiyya [The House of the Coptic Woman, 2019], where the prosecutor finds a copy of Yawmiyyāt, and takes it as a sign of things to come (Ashraf al-ʿAshmāwī, Bayt al-qibṭiyya, al-Dār al-miṣriyya al-lubnāniyya, 2019, p. 10).
Philippos Philippou, op. cit., p. 32-34. Stratos Myrogiannis traces the origins of crime fiction in Modern Greek literature in the “mystery genre” of 19th century authors, and sees in Georgios Vizyinos’s Ποίος ήτον ο φονεύς του αδελφού μου [Who Was My Brother’s Killer?] the first crime short story of Modern Greek literature (αστυνομικό διήγημα της νεοελληνικής λογοτεχνίας) (Stratos Myrogiannis, Από τις ιστορίες μυστηρίου στην αστυνομική πλοκή: Αναζητώντας την εμφάνιση ενός αινιγματικού είδους στον ελληνικό 19ο αιώνα, Alexandreia, 2012, p. 16). Vizyinos’s short story is available in a 1988 English translation (Georgios Vizyenos, My Mother’s Sin and Other Stories, University Press of New England, 1988, translated by William Wyatt).
The very year in which Yawmiyyāt was serialised in al-Riwāya, another Egyptian literary weekly, al-Risāla, published a news piece titled: “Taṭawwur al-qiṣṣa al-būlīsiyya” [The Development of Crime Fiction, 1937], in which it declared crime fiction to be the most common form of contemporary narrative, and the most popular, particularly among young readers. All the authors cited and their famous detectives are the foreign “classics”: Victor Hugo, Émile Gaboriau, Arthur Conan Doyle, Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail, and Maurice Leblanc. (‘Taṭawwur’ 2039).
Samah Selim, Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt, Springer, 2019, pp. 21-46.
Op. cit., p. 27-32.
Ibid., p. 29.
Christian Metz, Langage et cinéma, Librairie Larousse, 1971, p. 140-155.
Nirvanas also composed a three-act theatrical version of the novel, which is currently listed among the lost works in his complete collection of works. Apparently, he destroyed the adaptation after the lukewarm reaction of Spyros Melas (1882-1966), the intellectual who is also thought to have been a key opponent of awarding the Nobel Prize in Literature to Nikos Kazantzakis (Giwrgos Valetas (ed.), (Παύλου Νιρβάνα) Τα Άπαντα· Τα λογοτεχνικά και κριτικά με τα καλλίτερα χρονογραφήματα, Christos Yovanis, 1968, p. 89.)
Malcolm Scott, Bernanos : Journal d’un Curé de Campagne, Grant & Cutler, 1997, p. 9.
Yawmiyyāt’s cinematic adaptation further reinforced these points in the collective visual imaginary "Bunyat al-taḥqīq fī “Yawmiyyāt nāʾib fī ʾl-aryāf” bayna al-riwāya (1937) wa-l-fīlm (1969)", in Salmá Mubārak and Walīd al-Khashshāb, al-Marāyā (eds.), al-Iqtibās: Min al-adab ilá al-sīnimā, Maḥaṭṭāt fī tārīkh mushtarak, 2021, pp. 141-62.
In Greek crime fiction, a similar belief is attributed to Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), the famous French police officer who developed anthropometric techniques. Citing Dimitrios Kapsaskis, Philippou claims that, in a speech to his aides, Bertillon would have recommended to look for women first, as in ninety percent of cases they are the culprits. This was the rule of Ζητήσατε τη γυναίκα! (Scope out the woman!). Philippos Philippou, op. cit., p. 21.
Simone Celani, "Introduzione", Il Caso Vargas di Fernando Pessoa, Il Filo, 2006, pp. 5–28.
Ironically, Pessoa’s unfinished novelas policiais were first published in the mid-1950s, two decades after his death, at the height of the Salazar regime known as Estado Novo (1933-1974). They started being featured in Investigação, a magazine dedicated to “crime science and literature” (Revista mensal de ciência e literatura policial). Twelve issues of the magazine were published between 1953 and 1958 by Fernando Luso Soares. Fernando Luso Soares, "Notas para a criação da novela policial em Fernando Pessoa", Investigação. Revista mensal de ciência e literatura policial, vol. 1, May 1953, pp. 59-76.
Or, in other words, how they build a “grounded theory” of law; Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, Theory from the South, or, How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa, Paradigm Publishers, 2012, pp. 48-49.
Andrew Pepper, Unwilling Executioner: Crime Fiction and the State, University Press, 2016, pp. 1-18.
Al-Ḥakīm himself worked as a young aide to a public prosecutor in a remote village in the Delta, and never concealed how much he loathed that period (Gianluca Parolin, ‘“Modern” Law and Its Subjects’, art. cit., pp. 67-68).
In this sense, the prosecutor’s “conscription” seems to be way more “complete” than Emily Drumsta seems to suggest (Emily Drumsta, Ways of Seeking: The Arabic Novel and the Poetics of Investigation, University of California Press, 2024, pp. 32–39). This is probably a function of considering the prosecutor in isolation and treating Yawmiyyāt as a crime/detective novel (only).
Haut de page
Flux RSS
