Despite global shifts, literature stays true to cultural roots

The session hosted Lebanese academic Dr. Mamoun Tarbieh, Pakistani writer Mira Sethi, Nepali novelist Samrat Upadhyay, and Syrian author Sumar Shehadeh. The discussion centred on the link between creativity and identity, and on how literature helps preserve collective memory and shape contemporary human understanding.

Literature as a mirror of social identity

Tarbieh explained that literature serves as an intellectual and social front, expressing people's identity through their customs, traditions, rituals, and expressive forms that resonate deeply and endure in memory. He emphasised that genuine literature does more than offer aesthetic value; it shapes how societies understand themselves, even as some theories claim that social identity is dissolving in the face of digital and global change.

Writing freely in the face of social expectations

Cultural identity remains a part of creative writing, but for Mira Sethi, the impulse to write comes from personal and emotional experience. She argued that honest writing should pose questions and engage openly with social issues, free from imposed limits. In her view, true writers rely on their own lived realities and unfiltered emotions, even when their work challenges prevailing political or social norms.

Fiction beyond borders

For Samrat Upadhyay, literature that centres on human experience naturally crosses geographic and political lines. While he focuses on characters and their emotions, he acknowledged that politics inevitably enters the narrative because writers reflect the environments they come from. He believes the power of literature lies in its openness to varied human experiences, which gives it universal relevance. Although rooted in Nepal, his work speaks to concerns shared across societies.

Documenting the fractures of conflict

Author Sumar Shehadeh draws on the experience of war and displacement in Syria as the basis for his writing, aiming to record the social and human changes brought by conflict. His novels focus on characters shaped by loss and on places stripped of their memory. In such conditions, identity becomes fractured and painful, yet it remains at the core of the human experience. He sees literature not as a tool for embellishment, but as a means to confront reality and chronicle suffering with honesty and accountability.