Thanks to Frank Kane from our business section, we can thrill to a small literary mystery. As he wrote yesterday, a new novel set in Dubai has an author who clearly knows the emirate but of whom the emirate does not know. His name is a pseudonym, his background a conundrum. So far, so thrilling. For the writer at least. But what of Dubai, the port that went from pearls to golden dreams in just a few decades, but retains, in places, a villagey feel? Think of Bur Dubai, on the western side of Dubai Creek, with its souqs. Or Deira, on the other side of the Creek, with eccentrics, both old world and new.
Who captures Dubai’s layered reality? Most novels use it as a glittering backdrop – a city of tall towers, flash hotels, malls. Dubai becomes a stereotype – as do its people. In Dubliners, James Joyce was able to bring to life a down-at-heel city because he filled it with frustrated residents. A story or a city is only ever as real as its people.