The Proof of the Honey

By Salwa Al Neimi and Salwa Al Neimi

Book Overview

A bestseller throughout the Arab world, a tribute to sex, eroticism, language and liberty, The Proof of the Honey is a superb celebration of female pleasure. A Syrian scholar working in Paris is invited to contribute to a conference on the subject of classic erotic literature in Arabic. The invitation provides occasion for her to evoke memories from her own life, to exult in her personal liberty, her lovers, her desires, and to revisit moments of shared intimacy with other women as they discuss life, love, and sexual desire. Far more than an erotic novel, The Proof of the Honey is a surprising and illuminating voyage into the history of Arabic literature. Borrowing inspiration from The Thousand and One Nights , erudite asides are woven into the fabric of the protagonist's story and the stories of her lovers. Affirming that "Arabic is the language of sex," and making desire the source of her own personal liberty, Al Neimi has written a stirring novel about the place afforded sex in modern Arabic society and its relationship to the long, rich tradition of Arabic erotica.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933372680
• ISBN13: 9781933372686
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Length: 141 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

different

I wont go into the plot details since it is well described above. This is a sensuous book which explores a womans sexuality and discovery. It is not your typical novel with a plot and conversation. the style is more abstract and lyrical. its is evocative and bold. the writing is not crass or vulgar like some erotic fiction. i personally found this book meaningful because i come a sexually repressed nation especially for women. the love her writing and the book follows the tone of her personality and sexuality. I would read it. its a different experience.

"In my life I have been addicted to beds and stories."

The nameless (and unreliable) narrator of The Proof of the Honey has studied the classical Arabic erotica of al-Suyuti and al-Nafzawi, as well the KAMA SUTRA and Western works by Casanova, Henry Miller, and Georges Bataille. She also at times claims to have taken numerous lovers of both genders. These then form the bases of her addictions to stories and beds. Her eleven chapters are "gates" she leads us through in latter-day Scheherazade style. Instead of a thousand stories, she boasts as many sexual partners. She tells us tales of an ancient mercury bed (to assist physical union) and the legalities of the temporary Shiite "marriage of pleasure". She quotes Arab songs, verses, and folk wisdom (" 'There are two kinds of women --lettuce women and women of embers' "). In free-love fashion she declares, "Some people conjure spirits. I conjure bodies. I have no knowledge of my soul or the soul of others. I know only my body and theirs." And one body she repeatedly encounters as she passes through her gates is that of the Thinker, the man whose sexual prowess caused her public and secret lives to converge. However, the Thinker is an illusive entity, a concoction, on whom this woman desires to hang her feelings and her thoughts on sex in the Arab world at large...and her in own. Syrian Salwa Al Neimi's novel (more correctly, novella) reportedly raised a sensation when it was published in Arabic. One can assume in Islamic culture it is a daring volume. One example: it's "Ninth Gate: Linguistics" dwells on a very course word for intercourse. The narrator's Arabic spell check program won't acknowledge the word, proving, she says, that it is "programmed for dissimulation." It has "castrated the language....castrated the computer....castrated me" she rants. Whether true freedom is dependent on the ability to spew the f-word at will is highly debatable, but it illustrates well that THE PROOF OF THE HONEY is intended as an Arab-circle provocation. It desires to poke the stick at the wasps' nest in a part of the world that remains relatively insular and circumspect about sexual matters. The author, through her narrator, propounds an extreme feminist view -- with curious spears of male chauvinism protruding in some passages. Using this short volume as a barometer, the sexual revolution that shook the Western world in the 1960's and '70's may be, for good or not, edging farther into the Muslim consciousness now. The sensual cover suggests a novella of refined eroticism and lyricism. One cannot, upon finishing the book, be entirely satisfied, however, because the thin plot is really veneer for mini essays, the thoughts are often confused and partial, and, although sexual honey and seductive lower backs are embedded (pun intended) in certain passages, for the most part, one needn't fan oneself from embarrassment. Much original English-language erotic literature is arguably far more developed and arousing than this translation. Despite its shortcomings as ficti