Memory, belonging and the power of storytelling

Kuwait Times

01-06-2025

In a literary landscape often dominated by narratives from elsewhere, Mai Al-Nakib has emerged as a distinctly original and resonant voice from the Gulf. A Kuwaiti writer and academic, Al-Nakib bridges the personal and the political, the local and the global, with rare finesse. With a PhD in postcolonial studies from Brown University and two decades of teaching English and comparative literature at Kuwait University, her scholarly foundation is as formidable as her creative one.
Her debut short story collection, 'The Hidden Light of Objects', earned international acclaim and won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award. Her novel, 'An Unlasting Home', is an ambitious and layered exploration of identity, memory and the impermanence of belonging — an urgent meditation in today's increasingly fragmented world.
In this interview with Kuwait Times, Al-Nakib opens up about her early discovery of storytelling, the intellectual traditions that shaped her voice and the creative architecture behind her fiction. As she prepares to reintroduce 'The Hidden Light of Objects' to a new generation of readers, we delve into the themes that define her work: Displacement, legacy, language and the ever-elusive idea of home.
Kuwait Times: When did you first realize you wanted to become a writer?
Mai Al-Nakib: I've always been a voracious reader, and there came a point — around the age of nine — when I realized that I, too, could make words do interesting, unusual, even powerful things. I started keeping a diary, writing everything down. But more than simply recording daily events, I began narrating them — turning them into first-person tales, with dialogue, description and plot. That was the start of my writing life, and it never stopped.
Mai Al-Nakib
KT: Why did you choose fiction — specifically short stories and novels — as your medium of expression?
Al-Nakib: Fiction allows writers to invent and imagine alternatives to the present and makes it possible for readers to inhabit versions of life other than their own. This experience can remind us of our shared humanity. Short stories and novels each do this differently, but both offer powerful ways to experiment with possibilities and connect with others.
KT: Which writers or thinkers have most influenced your voice and worldview as a storyteller?
Al-Nakib: Literary writers who shaped me early on include Kundera, Kafka, Anais Nin, Rushdie, Joyce and Marquez. In my early twenties, it was Woolf, Beckett, Proust, Assia Djebar and Kanafani. Philosophers and intellectuals who influenced me include Bergson, Deleuze, Barthes, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Benjamin and Edward Said. These — and many others — have made me the person I am.
KT: What does home mean to you? Do you feel rooted in a particular place, or does your sense of belonging shift with time and context?
Al-Nakib: I recently wrote an essay on exactly this question titled 'Home Is Elsewhere: On the Fictions of Return', published in The Markaz Review. For some of us, the notion of home is a moving target, changing over time. For far too many, the physical persistence of home is not guaranteed. It can disappear overnight. How we respond in the face of such precarity determines our sense of home. For me, home has to do with the people I love and my sense of care for others and for our planet. What else is there?
KT: How does 'An Unlasting Home' explore the idea of belonging through family, memory and identity?
Al-Nakib: As the title suggests — and as is the case for most of the characters in the novel — homes can sometimes be unlasting. As a result, we may be forced to reckon with a sense of displacement and not belonging. There can be value in this, difficult as it is. The protagonist, Sara, is who she is because of the women who came before her. Their pasts are mirrored in her present. In her quest to reconnect with her geographical and genetic inheritance, Sara weaves their memories and experiences together and comes to better understand her own fraught relationship to home.
KT: What were the biggest challenges you faced — creatively and logistically — when writing and publishing this novel, especially considering its themes and scope?
Al-Nakib: The biggest challenge in writing 'An Unlasting Home' was figuring out the best form to accommodate the sprawl of the story: Seven women, many family lines, various places, different historical periods and so on. Once I decided to divide the novel into three parts, narrated polyphonically and shifting between past and present, I had found the solution. In terms of publication, I was lucky to have interest from publishers in the US and UK.
KT: You're republishing 'The Hidden Light of Objects' — can you share the story behind its original creation and why you decided to bring it back now?
Al-Nakib: 'The Hidden Light of Objects' was published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation in 2014. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award that year. After Bloomsbury UK and Qatar Foundation dissolved their publishing agreement, my book went out of print. Happily, Saqi Books — who also published 'An Unlasting Home' in the UK — decided to republish 'The Hidden Light of Objects'. It will be released on June 5th with a beautiful new cover. I'm thrilled to have this book out in the world again. The stories — set mainly in the Middle East and focused on quiet, overlooked moments in a region often overwhelmed by geopolitics — remain timely.