Editor | |
---|---|
Categories |
|
Frequency | Quarterly |
Founder | Afro-Asian Writers' Association |
Founded | 1968 |
First issue | March 1968 |
Final issue | 1991 |
Country | |
Based in | |
Language | |
OCLC | 269235327 |
Lotus was a trilingual political and cultural magazine which existed between 1968 and 1991. The magazine with three language editions was published in different countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and German Democratic Republic. It contained one of the early postcolonial literary criticisms employing non- Eurocentric modes. [1]
The first issue of the magazine appeared in March 1968 with the title Afro-Asian Writings. [2] [3] The magazine was established by the Afro-Asian Writers' Association (AAWA). [4] [5] Its foundation was first proposed at the Association's inaugural meeting held in Tashkent, Soviet Union, in 1958. [6] The goal of the magazine was to support the Afro-Asian solidarity and nonalignment which had been stated in the Bandung Conference in 1955. [7] It was published on a quarterly basis and had three language editions: Arabic, English, and French. [2] [8] Of them the English edition was started first [9] and the Arabic edition was initially headquartered in Cairo. [10] The other two were published in the German Democratic Republic. [11] [12] The magazine was financed by Egypt, the Soviet Union and the German Democratic Republic. [11] In 1970 the magazine was renamed as Lotus with the subtitle Afro-Asian Writings [2] from the sixth issue. [9] [13] The permanent bureau of the AAWA in Cairo was its publisher until 1973. [1]
Lotus contained the sections of "studies", "short stories", "poetry", "art", "book reviews" and "documents. [9] The first issue of the magazine featured an article by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Yusuf Sibai, founding editor of the magazine, which was about the meaning of the African identity. [14] The magazine published the text of a talk by Ghassan Kanafani on resistance literature presented at the Soviet-sponsored Afro-Asian Writers' Association conference held in Beirut in March 1967. [15]
On 18 February 1978 Yusuf Sibai was assassinated in Nicosia, Cyprus, [16] and Pakistani writer Faiz Ahmad Faiz assumed the post. [4] [12] He remained as the editor of the Lotus until his death in 1984 [12] and was succeeded by Ziyad Abdel Fattah in the post. [17] Fattah edited the magazine until its closure. [9]
The headquarters of the Arabic edition was in Cairo until October 1978 and was moved to Beirut following the sign of the Camp David Accords. [6] [11] In Beirut the Union of Palestinian Writers published the magazine which remained there until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. [11] Then the magazine together with the Palestine Liberation Organization moved to Tunis, Tunisia, but soon after was relocated to Cairo. [4] [11] The English and French editions of the magazine disappeared in the mid-1980s. [7] The Arabic edition of Lotus folded in 1991 [2] after the collapse of the Soviet Union ending its financial support. [13] [18]
Although the contributors were mostly Arab writers from Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria and Sudan who were the members of the Afro-Asian Writers' Association, [5] there were also non-Arab editors from various countries, including Pakistan, Senegal, South Africa, Japan, India, Mongolia and the Soviet Union. [4] Major contributors of Lotus included Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Samih Al Qasim, [19] Adunis, Edward El Kharrat, Mulk Raj Anand, Ousmane Sembène, Alex La Guma, Hiroshi Noma, Anatoly Sofronov, Ahmed Sékou Touré and Agostinho Neto. [4]
Lotus billed itself as a "militant" periodical opposing the " cultural imperialism" and attempting to achieve a "revolution of construction." [9] Its contributors considered the 20 century as a period of the new colonialism which made use of the commodification of culture accompanied by the expansion of the global marketplace. [3] They opposed the economic imperialism which had penetrated into the cultural sphere. [3] The magazine fully supported the view that the Soviet Union should be modeled by other nations in that it achieved a cultural and social condition which minority groups and their cultural heritage were respected. [18] It was also argued that the Soviet Union had higher levels of educational and economic development, gender equality and respect for artists. [18]
Lotus paid a special attention to the Vietnamese and Palestinian writing and emphasized the similarity between them in terms of revolutionary movements. [1]
Some issues of the Arabic edition have been archived at American University of Beirut. [4]
In 2016 a magazine with the same title was launched by the Association of African, Asian and Latin American Writers in Lebanon. [2]