Yahoo: Ahlem Mosteghanemi Arab third most popular writer

Yahoo.com’s Arabic portal, Maktoub, did a survey recently to see which Arabic writers are the most popular.

Algerian writer Ahlam Mosteghanemi ranked Arab third most popular writer after the Egyptians, Nobel Peace Prize 1988 Naguib Mahfouz and former editor of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.

, Ahlam Mosteghanemi was designated before the Sudanese Tayeb Salih, the Palestinian-American Edward Said (dead), Egyptian Alaa Al Aswany, the Egyptian author Nawal Sa’adawi, Saudi Abdul Rahman Munif, Egyptian Youssef Zidan and finally the Lebanese Amin Maalouf.

Algerian novelist is the first Arab contemporary writer to sell hundreds of thousands of books and stay ahead of bestsellers for years in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Tunisia and UAE Arab Emirates.

The author’s Memory of the Flesh, published in English by AUC Press was voted by the Arab Writers Union as one of the top 100 books in Arabic in the last century.

Still, there is little debate about her popularity. Mosteghanemi’s Facebook page has more than 90,000 fans. A friend who used to work at the Abu Dhabi Book Fair said that the author was virtually mobbed at a recent appearance. And, in 2006, Forbes magazine cited Mosteghanemi as the world’s then-best-selling Arabic writer.

Nessyane.Com, Mosteghanemi’s latest title, is forthcoming in English next year from Bloomsbury-Qatar. According to BQFP, it is “a literary examination of male abuse of women in the Arab world. She advises Arab women on how they should/could forget Arab men who exploit them.

Below are the top 10 writers ranked in order of popularity:

1. Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian)

2. Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (Egyptian)

3. Ahlam Mosteghanemi (Algerian)

4. Al Tayeb Al Saleh (Sudanese)

5. Edward Said (Palestinian-American)

6. Alaa El Aswany (Egyptian)

7. Nawal Sa’adawi (Egyptian)

8. Abdul Rahman Munif (Saudi Arabia)

9. Youssef Zidan (Egyptian)

10. Amin Maalouf (Lebanese)