Egyptian author on mission to save storytelling art

An Egyptian author, who is on a quest to save the fast disappearing art of storytelling in the Arab world, has said her next book is set in India.
Abeer Soliman, who is in Qatar's capital Doha for a series of performances, said story telling is a dying art which she is trying to revive in the Arab world.
Soliman's book 'Diary of a Single Lady' was a bestseller in Egypt and her next book is set in India, which she intends to release by the end of this year.
"It used to be very a popular art form in the Arab world. Hakawati, the Arabic word for the storyteller, would sit in a cafe, sip tea and tell amazing stories to people belonging to any age or colour," she told Gulf Times.

However, modern technologies have ensured Hakawatis are nowhere to be found these days.
She insisted that storytelling was still relevant in this modern age because she believed it could help revive human contact that was becoming non-existent from people's lives 'takeover' of mobile phones, internet and television.
"My aim in life is to bring that human contact back into the people's lives through storytelling, she added.
Soliman is famous for her rendition of Shaharazad's: A Thousand and One Nights. She frequently performs her craft to audiences of all ages in her native city of Cairo.