When Yousef al-Mohaimeed published Wolves of the Crescent Moon four years ago, he never imagined it would stoke much interest in his native Saudi Arabia, never mind the West. But the novel has put Saudi Arabia at the forefront of Arab literature usually dominated by Egypt, an unusual position for a country seen as a cultural backwater, and found an audience in English and French translations. Yet Mohaimeed faces accusations at home that he is washing the country’s dirty linen before Westerners looking for dirt on a land seen as the heartland of Islamist extremism because of its famous son Osama bin Laden. “I find hints in the media that I am a writer exposing our laundry, who wants to get known in the West at the expense of society, its authenticity and its values,” he said in an interview. “Though I’m happy that Saudi and Arab literature reaches the world, I’m always anxious in case the reader abroad is scanning the text to find things about this closed society,” he said.
