The Qatari Forum for Authors discussed a novel entitled “Al-Zajaj Al-Maksoor” (The Broken Glass) by the Qatari writer Ahmed Bin Ibrahim Al-Muhannadi. The discussion has been held in a new session of the “Writer and Book” episodes held on a weekly basis. The session, which was broadcast on YouTube and social media platforms, was moderated by writer Aisha Saeed Al-Muraikhi. Al-Muhannadi said that his novel discusses an important issue for a large group of people in society, a group that has a private life and they have demands that live in exceptional situations in education, marriage, employment and sometimes in health. He added that the suffering has affected this group greatly and they have become searching for psychological stability, noting that the novel presented these topics in a dramatic form, with a narrative plot, emotional dimensions and a mix of reality and imagination in more than two hundred pages that make everyone who experienced the lines of the novel find something from his personal experience. He also added that the novel opens several gates for the reader at several levels, whether in the aesthetic, fictional or even linguistic dimension, as all those who read this work agreed that it is a deep, meaningful and creative integrated work at the same time.
Al-Muhannadi expressed his hope to turn his book into a TV production, stressing that he deliberately did not specify the location of the events and that the suffering is not limited to a specific category or a specific country, but to all Gulf countries. Al-Muhanadi also noted that he was one of the first people to highlight the issue of nationality in local newspapers since the 1990s, and his writings caused an immense discussion between supporters and opponents, and were eventually partly dealt with by the TV works in Qatar. He also explained that he intended to publish his novel outside the State of Qatar, but he faced many difficulties and rejection; while he was allowed to publish it in Qatar and it has received a good welcome since its publication due to its clear handling of the nationality issue. Al-Muhanadi, furthermore, believes his novel can be considered a complete scenario and dialog transferable into a TV script that benefits many because it is a mainly humanitarian topic.
Finally, in a related context, the guest of the Forum spoke about his previous published work, “Sabah Al-Kheir” (Good Morning), a documentary book aimed at compiling and archiving his more than 600 articles in local newspapers, and said that his selection of articles was random due to lack of time.