When I first moved to Amman in 2016, I remember asking a new friend—a filmmaker—about the literary scene in Jordan. To my disappointment, he told me the future was in pictures, not books. No one read anymore; they were too impatient even to sit through full movies. He didn’t have many connections in the literary community because he wasn’t convinced there was much of one.

Happily—though he might’ve been right about our shrinking attention spans—he was wrong about that. Jordanian literature is rich and varied and constantly evolving. Still, it is little known in English. Its geographical neighbors make headlines in the Anglosphere, more often than not for tragic reasons, and publishers, ever attuned to their market, respond by publishing literature from those countries. Jordan, where rumblings of the Arab Spring were swiftly quashed, is positioned in the region as the more stable big sister, the peacekeeper, the nurturer; it has been the (relatively) quiet eye of the storm for much of its existence. As a result, it is often overlooked in discussions of Arab literature.

And yet, even during its years as the Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946), it provided fertile soil for writers; the court of Prince Abdullah, who later became Jordan’s first king, was known for attracting artists and writers, including ‘Arrar, who has been called the father of modern Jordanian poetry. Since that time, Jordan’s role among its neighbors means that the kingdom has welcomed wave after wave of refugees¹—Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, Iraqis in 2003, Syrians from 2011 on—and is home to seemingly countless NGOs that operate in the larger region. The country’s general calm also makes it a prime location for foreign students of Arabic, who flock to the country for stays ranging from two weeks to several years. All of this makes for a melting pot that contributes to a diverse culture with varied influences and an unsurprisingly vital literature as a result. This literature includes everything from oral Bedouin poetry to meditations on identity and home by Palestinian Jordanians such as Ibrahim Nasrallah and Omar Khalifah to literature by Jordanians abroad, such as the poet, journalist, and travel writer Amjad Nasser. It includes powerful novels by women such as Samiha Khrais and Laila al-Atrash, prizewinners² the likes of Ibrahim Nasrallah and Jalal Barjas (winners of the International Prize for Arabic Fictionin 2018 and 2021, respectively), and experimental short stories by writers such as Basma Nsour³ and Ghalib Halasa.

Among the themes that recur in these texts are the conflict between tradition and modernity, the (sometimes corrupting) influence of Western values, and increasingly—though censorship is alive and well in Jordan—the failures of the state. The strain put on society by international expectations and internal division, as well as the humanitarian disasters in the greater region, can lead to exhaustion and disillusionment with both national and international politics. Much of the resulting literature is exasperated, preoccupied with fragmentation and collapse, and immersed in an inward search for meaning. As Samir al-Sharif so aptly writes in his foreword to the short story collection Snow in Amman (ed. Ibtihal Mahmood, trans. Ibtihal Mahmood and Alexander Haddad, Faraxa, 2015), the arrival of so many new groups “. . . into the heart of Jordanian society changed the way Jordanians conceived of space, culture, and identity . . ., turning its refugee-infused culture into a ferment of moral suffering and intellectual rigor.” Its literature is merely holding up the mirror.

The Jordanian Ministry of Culture (MoC) and other official bodies such as the Jordanian Writers Association (JWA) do offer support for writing; since the ’80s, the Jerash Festival of Culture and Arts, for example, has been held yearly in the Roman city north of Amman, and the MoC has published Afkar magazine since 1966, as well as more recent journals such as Sawt al-Geel, for younger writers. Authors can apply for publication support directly from the MoC, too, but this support can come with conditions, and it’s rare for a writer who overtly challenges the status quo to receive any. Whether due to force of habit or to nepotism, it is often the same voices that are heard over and over at official events, while newer writing (especially anything that touches on religion, sexuality, or politics) is swept to the side or censored due to political pressure or popular demand. The culture of literary criticism in Jordan could best be described as anemic, and the kind of debate that leads to acceptance of new art forms or topics is not encouraged; instead, the unfamiliar and taboo are met with suspicion, or even outrage, as with the Jordanian Netflix shows Jinn and AlRawabi School for Girls. As Haleemah Derbashi, a former vice president of the JWA, articulated the situation, with some frustration, “[To get published, you] have to be neutral; your writing mustn’t touch on power or current economic, political, or social issues. You write for enjoyment, not thought; entertainment, not criticism; for personal rather than public interests. You become a mouthpiece for the powers that be, not for the time, place, or people that are suffering” (translation mine). This encourages self-censorship, and a large part of what is published from Jordan is indeed safe, familiar, steeped comfortingly in religious sentiment, or escapist.

In this situation, more subversive voices can become a kind of underground literature—fighters and truth-tellers, their writing even more dramatically shot through with nightmarish elements and ennui. These writers are supported by individuals and private organizations that work to create a community for them (e.g. Hisham Bustani’s recent Writing the City workshop in conjunction with the MMAG Foundation, local book clubs that provide word-of-mouth publicity, the Shoman Foundation, private reading series, Elias Farkouh’s mentorship of young writers through his publishing house, Azminah), and they may go outside of Jordan to hone their craft or be published in the main literary centers of Beirut and Cairo (e.g. Fadi Zaghmout’s Laila, which deals with women’s sexuality—and was banned in Jordan). Some skip the Arabic publishing scene entirely and focus on blogs/social media or their translation into English, or, like Fadia Faqir and Madian Al Jazerah, even write directly in English. It’s no picnic, but talented writers are finding ways to be heard.

Translation trends in Arabic literature have historically, especially post-9/11, tended to focus on specific countries and themes (violence, extremism, etc.), often playing into orientalist narratives. In recent years, though, and thanks in large part to initiatives like ArabLit.org and the tireless efforts of the most generous group of translators I’ve ever met, the field is beginning to widen. That said, and despite the MoC’s occasional funding of translation projects,⁴ there are still limited translations available by Jordanian authors. In my preparation to write this introduction, I referenced Banipal’s 2003 issue on Jordanian literature, Stephen Morison Jr.’s 2012 article “Middle Eastern Rhythms: Report from Literary Jordan” in Poets & Writers, and the 2015 collection of Jordanian short stories Snow in Amman, edited by Ibtihal Rida Mahmood (all of which I recommend). For this feature, then, I tried my best to choose authors from a variety of backgrounds and walks of life, to give you an added taste of a wider literature. The writers in this issue comprise men and women, official fixtures and renegades, Jordanians whose roots trace back to immigration and others whose don’t, writers living both in Jordan and abroad.

The short-story writer and poet Hisham Bustani is among the most avant-garde writers living inJordan now, and he has been quite open about his experiences with censorship. In an interview for Columbia Global Centers in Amman, Ursula Lindsey called his writing “more like film than fiction,” and this cinematic quality is clear in his short story “Vertigo,” translated by Addie Leak. On the surface, it’s the braided tale of a recent college graduate trying to make his way in the world, but it quickly devolves into something more chilling. A dire portrait of Amman that features both Quranic echoes and pre-Islamic mythology, it’s also a mercilessly clear-sighted depiction of the world that awaits our youth.

Essayist and poet Lana al-Majali writes keenly observant prose poetry preoccupied by death, women’s struggles, childhood, and war. A prolific columnist for the cultural section of various Arabic-language newspapers, she collected many of these articles in a 2018 book, whose essays are simultaneously poetic and beautifully, meticulously researched, pulling in literature, philosophy, films, paintings, and more in the service of her points. Using sources that range from Aristotle to the Lebanese poet Ounsi el-Hajj to Jim Jarmusch and The Dead Poets Society, her essay “On the Outskirts of Utopia,” translated by Addie Leak, is a meditation on the state of poetry in the modern Arab world.

Zuhair Abu Shayeb⁵ is a Palestinian Jordanian poet and the 2012 winner of the Mahmoud Darwish Prize whose work began to take shape in the early ’90s, as Jordan became more politically liberal. His poetry has always been marked by a wide sphere of influence, including surrealism, which lends to his work a sort of delirium, its language condensed and its rhythms deeply imbued with emotion. The postcolonial identities imposed on Jordanian citizens are entrenched⁶, and Palestine—its past and its present catastrophes—is never far from Abu Shayeb’s thoughts. The poem “You Exist to Dream,” translated by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil, delves into this tension between his Jordanian and Palestinian selves.

Rema Hmoud⁷, also a Palestinian Jordanian author, lives and works in Kuwait, and her stories and novels center on the marginalized, often women dealing with intense social pressures. In her short story “Nameless,” translated by Ibrahim Fawzy, a mother-to-be awaits childbirth in the midst of her community, a place that should be warm and nurturing. But the story’s simple, resonant prose takes an unexpected turn, becoming an eerie echo of the ideological disputes tearing Arab societies apart.

Finally, Maha Alautoom⁸ is a prominent academic and poet in the taf’ila style established by the Iraqi poets Nazik al-Malaika and Badr Shakir as-Sayyab, so called Arabic “free verse.” Her work brims with vivid, tangible imagery that diverges from the traditional rhetoric used in Arabic poetry and adds a visual, almost theatrical element to the texts. “A Street or Less,” translated by Salma Harland, caps off this feature with a poem that is lyrical, full of love and longing—to counter the darkness, something more like hope.

^{1. Some statistics: according to the UNHCR, more than 760,000 Syrian refugees have relocated to Jordan since 2011, and UNRWA reports more than 2,300,000 Palestinian refugees registered in Jordan, most of whom now have full Jordanian citizenship. The total population in Jordan is 11.5 million.↩}

^{2. Samiha Khrais and Hisham Saleh Abdallah were both shortlisted for another major award for Arabic literature, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, in 2012, and multiple others have made the longlist for that prize, including Zuhair Abu Shayeb, whose poem “You Exist to Dream” is included in this feature. The Qatar-based Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel also has among its winners Laila al-Atrash (2019) and Ibrahim Nasrallah (2020, 2016).↩}

^{3. Four of her short stories published in English online are listed here, along with six other short stories by Jordanian women.↩}

^{4. Only two of the four books mentioned in this Jordan Times article have been published so far (by Michigan State University Press, not the University of Michigan Press): Samiha Khrais’s The Tree Stump (2019) and Ahmad Tarawneh’s Bread and Tea (2022), both translated by Nesreen Akhtarkhavari.↩}

^{5. His poetry can be found in English in Banipal 13 and A Bird Is Not a Stone (Freight Books, 2014); excerpts from the latter are quoted here.↩}

^{6. For a piece that directly deals with this divide, see Hisham Bustani’s “Faisaly and Wehdat” (trans. maia tabet), mentioned in his Barricade piece about censorship.↩}

^{7. Her short story “Glass,” also translated by Ibrahim Fawzy, was published in ArabLit Quarterly’s spring 2022 “Mirrors” issue.↩}

^{8. PEN/Opp published Alautoom’s essay on the Arabic prose poem after the Arab Spring here.↩}