Our Oldest Human Arts
Cabinet of Curiosities (ca.1695) by Domenico Remps, held in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence. Credit from The Public Domain Review.
Sports and storytelling are two of the oldest human arts. Both flourished in different styles around the world: from stickball among the Algonquin people and falconry in ancient Mesopotamia to “mob football” in medieval England and the martial arts in China.
These sports also influenced local literary forms, as storytellers vied to tell tales of winners and losers.
Nowadays, to read a good sports story is to be transported to the scene: muscles tense as you cheer or flinch or shout advice at your favorite player. But in a great sports story, we find much more: explorations of the limits of the human body, thoughts about the nature of hierarchy, and diatribes on the essence of competition.
Here we bring together works of memoir, fiction, photos and journalism, in a series that focuses on the arts of boxing, football, horse racing, running, fencing, and much more.
Maan Abu Taleb’s 2016 novel, All the Battles, centers around a successful Amman-based marketing executive named Saed Habjouqa, who realizes at the age of 28 that he wants to be a boxer. Saed peels away the veneer of his contemporary officer-worker life to engage in the ancient sport. To Saed, boxing is a story “told in a language that predated language itself.” But Abu Taleb’s book is not just about the thrills and anxieties of whether Saed will win his next bout. It’s about masculinity, social class, contemporary media, and choice—a philosophical page-turner for bibliophiles and non-readers alike.
Farid Abdel Azim takes the sport of football and uses its suspense, pacing, and quick turns to create a narrative that feels like a high-stakes match. The story follows a young man’s dream of becoming a footballer—and the daily struggles with his father and other authority figures en route to fulfilling this dream. The “running man” of the title alludes to all those who run full-tilt after success.
This fast-paced horseracing novel, which was shortlisted for the 2024 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, is set in 1920s Cairo, mostly around a Heliopolis racetrack. Like many horseracing novels, the story transports readers to the heart of class and culture conflicts. Here, a poor boy named Fawzan finds himself forced to race in a contest spectated —and gambled on—by British and Egyptian royalty. When Fawzan’s horse unexpectedly wins, the novel’s main characters are thrown into a struggle for money, love, and power.
This book originated as a photo exhibition in Qatar in 2011 and features images and stories of 70 different Arab sportswomen. Featuring captivating photographs by Brigitte and Marian Lacombe, Hey’Ya tells the stories of extraordinary athletes from around the region. Athletes include Saudi equestrian Dalma Malhas, who won bronze in the Youth Olympics in Singapore in 2010; Tunisian fencer Sarra Besbes, a seven-time gold medalist at the African Fencing Championships; and the much-decorated women’s running team from Sudan.
This coming-of-age memoir tells the story of one woman’s unlikely journey in an even unlikelier sport. Growing up in New Jersey, Ibtihaj Muhammad fell in love with fencing. Since the 1700s, fencing has been an upper-class sport practiced by European royalty, and it still carried this air of exclusion into the 2000s. Yet, Ibtihaj persisted. And, in the 2016 Summer Olympics, she became the first hijabi American woman to compete in the Olympics, the first American Muslim woman to win an Olympic medal, and the first Black woman to win an Olympic medal in the sabre event. This book takes us through her journey with an easy charm.
In this book, longlisted for the 2021 Ondaatje Prize, Michael Crawley immerses himself in Ethiopian running culture, giving insights into the secrets of Ethiopian marathoners’ success. This deeply researched book looks at how runners eat, train, race, and more. Crawley particularly focuses on the ways in which Ethiopian long-distance running is seen as a communal sport, in which “to be changed you have to run with others.”
What sports related book have you read lately? Send us your thoughts on your recent book adventures to ithraeyat@ithra.com
To enjoy the borderless world of books, please visit Ithra library and the Arablit website.
