Why novel and power? Usually whenever reading the word « Power», it links immediately with «Political Power» directly. Afterward, it is followed by the possibilities of other powers and their forms: social, historical, religious, or even economic. In our event (Narrative and Power) we highlight other forms of power, including: Social and its impact on the novelistic genre. Historicism and the writer›s ability to deal with its past restrictions. On the other hand, there is the power of the present that is not only related to its processes. Let alone the power of time and place and the authority of art itself and its past conditions, time has its influence and power in shaping the nature of the primary novel. Then how about writing a novel without thinking about the reader’s power who has been establishing a new genre more than other writing arts resulting in the decline of other leading genres?
The reader’s power is linked to the market power that governs publishing policies, determines what readers demand from writing, and brings it to the forefront, defining another form of authority represented by the authority of the publisher. Then what about the power of reality and the imaginary and the bridges between them in an essentially imaginative writing art that only takes from reality what gives it the horizon of its departure? Can we separate this from the power of the translator, who forms a bridge towards others, and whose effective choices in what he translates from the literature of others become another power that lets the reader with limited knowledge about other languages unless believes in? Didn’t literary awards create a power that decides the direction of reading, and directs the attention of readers to this or that work? What about the absent authority – as this is the case at all times - represented by the authority of criticism, which was never at its best? We may ask about the imagined power; authority, which only exists in minds, grew up with infinite forms of authority and began to assume them before encountering them. All of these questions will be the subject of discussion in the seminars of the Bait Al Zubair Narrative Days in mid-January of 2024 in the presence of an elite group of international, Arab, and Omani novelists over a period of five days, accompanied by a number of novel writing workshops presented by experienced writers, book fair that publishing houses and libraries participate in, and calligraphy exhibition.
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