The Sieve - New Edition

Hachette Antoine, under the Naufal imprint, is proud to present the towering works of Mikhail Naimy, one of the most prominent contemporary Arab writers and a leading figure among Lebanese diaspora writers. His writing is distinguished by its attempts to purify Arabic literature of embellishment and superfluous language, striving instead for a more realistic portrayal of things and events. His style is characterized by simplicity, clarity, and directness, and by its avoidance of affectation, particularly in description, narration, and imagery. His language sometimes borders on colloquial Arabic, further attracting readers from all walks of life to his books. This edition of his work, "Al-Ghirbal" (The Sieve), marks his ninetieth birthday. Yet, unlike the passage of time, it has only grown younger. Since its initial publication in 1923, it remains one of Naimy's thirty-three works, among the most widely read and popular.
The most likely explanation for this is that this book, in the field of literary criticism and critical theory, was not merely a book upon its publication, but also an event. It represents a pivotal turning point in Arab Renaissance literature since the beginning of the nineteenth century, between two distinct eras: the dominant neoclassical approach, whose practitioners, both poets and prose writers, relied on a return to the past, producing works that were essentially imitations of a purely imitative literature—a form without a soul, or a body without a soul; and another approach, that of the modernists, who embraced the West's intellectual flourishes, thus becoming the vanguard of generations that not only broke free from the shackles of their past but also actively engaged with their own present—a past that is forever linked to a new present.
This book was, and remains, a constitution of literary modernity, and especially of poetry. It can be said that there is no Arab publisher or poet of any relevance who does not, in some corner of their cultural repertoire, bear some trace of this sifting.