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Title
Pub. Date
Duration
Flash Fiction Winner Karima Ahdad
17 Oct 2024
00:47:07
Moroccan author Karima Ahdad was the winner of this year’s Arabic Flash Fiction contest run by ArabLit and Komet Kashakeel, which saw more than 900 entries from around the world. We read her award-winning story in Katherine Van de Vate’s discussion and discuss patriarchy, story creation, and what it means to write “feminist” work.
Show Notes:
Karima was also shortlisted for an earlier edition of the ArabLit Story Prize. You can read her shortlisted story, “The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz,” in Katherine Van de Vate’s translation.
The Arabic Flash Fiction prize is funded by the British Council’s Beyond Literature Borders programme corun by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions. Find all the finalists at ArabLit.
Reem Bassiouney: Writing Historical Fiction is like “Stringing Pearls”
03 Oct 2024
00:42:08
An epic historical novel set in Fatimid Cairo, Reem Bassiouney’s The Halva-Maker trilogy won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and is forthcoming in English. The book explores the founding of Cairo, by a Shia dynasty and a set of generals and rulers who all hailed from elsewhere. We talked to Bassiouney about balancing research and imagination; shining a light on women in Egyptian medieval history; and the heritage (architectural and culinary) of the past.
This episode of the BULAQ podcast is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe. The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for fiction titles that have won or been shortlisted for the award. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply. Find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae
Bassiouney is a professor of socio-linguistics at the American University in Cairo. She has won the State Award for Excellence in Literature for her overall literary works, the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature from the Supreme Council for Culture for her Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy (trans. Roger Allen), the Sawiris Cultural Award for her novel Professor Hanaa (trans. Laila Helmy), and a Best Translated Book Award for The Pistachio Seller (trans. Osman Nusairi).
Dar Arab will publish Bassiouney’s The Halva-Maker trilogy and her novel Mario and Abu l-Abbas. Both have been translated by Roger Allen.
Bassiouney’s Ibn Tulun Trilogy, also translated by Roger, was published by Georgetown University Press.
Inside The World of Lebanese Comics with Rawand Issa
15 Jun 2023
01:00:31
Comics artist Rawand Issa joins us to talk about her book Inside the Giant Fish (trans. Amy Chiniara, Maamoul Press); her path from journalism to graphic art; artist groups and collectives across the region; the “new school of Arab comics,” and the challenges of making a living as a comics artist. We also talk about a few other Lebanese graphic novels, particularly Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan,and Lena Merhej’s I Think We’ll Be Calmer in the Next War.
Show Notes:
You can find several of Rawand’s books available from Maamoul Press: http://maamoulpress.com.
We talk about two festivals (one long-established, one brand new) that celebrate Palestinian literature; an author who was penalized for supporting BDS; and a book that asks the question: What would happen if Palestinians simply disappeared? (And once again we recorded this episode in the studio of the wonderful Sowt platform in Amman).
Show Notes
Jayne Cortez’s poem “There It Is” was performed by Sapphire at Palfest 2014.
Palfest was re-launched this year with a focus on knowledge production and an emphasis on how Palestine fits within larger struggles against imperialism, racism and economic exploitation.
The first-of-its kind literary festival Palestine Writes will be held in New York in March 2020.
Ursula & MLQ open the new season of BULAQ -- recorded in Amman, under the auspices of the Sowt network -- with a focus on Egypt.
This episode's reading is from Yasmine Zohdi's translation of Muhammad al-Haj's Sawiris-winning Nobody Mourns the City's Cats, available in the Summer 2019 issue of ArabLit Quarterly.
Azzurra Meringolo Scarfoglio’s book of interviews with Egyptian exiles is Fuga dall’Egitto (“Escape from Egypt”).
More than 2,000 Egyptians have been detained in a massive sweep of arrests following a new series of protests across the country; among the detainees is Egyptian novelist Muhammad Aladdin, whose charming revolution story, "Season of Migration to Arkadia," is available in Humphrey Davies' translation.
In our last episode before half our team moves and we take a summer break, we discuss a brilliant essay on the downsides of being a professional translator; the Shubbak literary festival; and our plans for the future.
The literary strand of the Shubbak Festival took place at the end of last June in London; there was some discussion online of the first panel on feminism. You can also get panelist and graphic novelist Deena Mohamed’s Shubeik Lubeikonline.
During our summer hiatus, please take share Bulaq with a friend. Also, if you are so inclined, share your feedback with us on our Twitter handle @bulaqbooks: What was your favorite episode? What would you like to hear more of? Are there particular topics, essays, or books that you think would make for an interesting discussion on Bulaq? What else, if anything, would you like to tell us?
We have novelist Ruqaya Izziddien as our guest in this episode, to discuss her debut novel The Watermelon Boys, her blog Muslim Impossible and the need for more narratives in English that accurately represent Arab voices and history. We also talk about George Orwell’s 1939 essay “Marrakech.”
Show Notes
Our guest this episode was Ruqaya Izzidien, author of The Watermelon Boys, which was shortlisted for this year’s Betty Trask Prize. Ruqaya will also be appearing June 30 at the Shubbak Festival in London, on a panel with Inaam Kachachi and Rabai al-Madhoun, and possibly Hammour Ziada.
Hanna Diyab is acknowledged -- in Antoine Galland's diary and is Diyab's own writings -- as the author of the "Aladdin" story commonly bundled in with the 1001 Nights. A French translation of Diyab’s travel narrative,D’Alep à Paris: Les pérégrinations d’un jeune syrien au temps de Louis XIV, appeared in 2015, edited and translated by Paule Fahmé-Thiéry, Bernard Heyberger, and Jérôme Lentin. An English translation, by Elias Muhanna and Johannes Stephan, is tentatively scheduled for Fall 2020.
The Dzanc Books statement about Hesh Kestin's The Siege of Tel Aviv is available on the publisher's website.
Izzidien is also the editor behind Muslim Impossible, a new website that “reviews fictional Muslim and Arab characters in film, TV and literature that are unbelievable, poorly-researched or prejudiced.”
We disagreed about whether George Orwell’s “Marrakech” essay falls in that category. Here is a video and translation of part of the essay into Darija by a Moroccan YouTuber.
We spend most of today’s episode talking about a forthcoming collection of essays by female journalists from the region. Guilt, anger, recklessness, determination. There are many different and movingly honest takes on reporting while Arab and female.
Ursula’s piece about Sa’adallah Wannous, “Coup de Théâtre,” is in the NYRB. The great playwright’s daughter, Dima Wannous, is also an acclaimed novelist and will be appearing at this year’s Shubbak Festival. Her novel The Frightened is expected in 2020 in Elisabeth Jaquette’s English translation.
Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World, ed. Zahra Hankir, will be published August 6, 2019, when an audiobook version, read by Soneela Nankani, will also be available. Among the many brilliant contributors is Lina Attallah, who both MLQ and Ursula have worked with variously at Al-Masry al-Youm, the Egypt Independent, and her current iconic, fearless, and relentlessly experimental project, Mada Masr.
This week we talk about how MLQ’s latest passion project, the Arab Lit Quarterly, and the ups and downs of making a living (sort of) writing about books.
MLQ is back from Abu Dhabi, and we talk about the recently awarded International Prize for Arabic Fiction — and an unfortunate controversy this year, involving leaks, no-shows, and calls for prosecution — and the book fair. We also share excerpts from the winning book and from several of the short-listed ones.
Show Notes
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction announced the prize’s 2019 winner, Hoda Barakat’s The Night Post, on April 23. The name of the winner, and a few apparent details about the judging process, was leaked by former IPAF judge Abdo Wazen in Independent Arabiaa few hours before the official announcement.
The prize’s official statement about the leakcan be found on their website. Also notable are Arab Writers Union head Habib al-Sayegh’s comments about the leak, Hoda Barakat’s acceptance speech, and shortlisted writer Kafa Al-Zou’bi’s social-media habits.
We talk about the career of the best-selling Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany – who like many other artists is on the outs with the country’s military regime now. Also, about Shakespeare productions and censorship in Gulf countries; and book reviews in the age of online algorithms and the culture of positivity.
Show notes
At the end of February, Youm7 reported that a lawyer submitted a complaint to the Prosecutor-General (No. 2697 of 2019) against Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany, in which he accused the author of The Yacoubian Building and The So-Called Republic of spreading false news, as well as cynicism and ridicule of the state’s leaders on social media. This story spread and, in mid-March, Mesreyoun reported that a lawyer had filed a complaint with the military prosecutor. It’s still unclear what’s happening; the NGO ANHRI has asked whether political “hesba” lawsuits can now be filed in military courts; there has not yet been an official answer. Thanks to TIMEP for assistance in sorting all this out. (Back in 2013, Al Aswany, like the vast majority of Egyptian artist and intellectuals, justified violence against members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supported their overthrow.)
The actors Amr Waked and Khaled Abol Naga have been prosecuted and smeared recently for speaking out against Egyptian government repression.
In this episode we rave about an Omani novel – a multi-generational saga that is “anti-romantic and anti-nationalistic.” We also discuss a dark family road trip through Syria, and works from Lebanon and Morocco. And we delve into the larger question of how much a writer’s identity and experience gives him or her the right, or the ability, to tell certain stories.
There was also an MBI-longlisted novel set in Morocco that was originally written in Dutch: Tommy Wieringa’s The Death of Murat Idrissi, translated by Sam Garrett. The translation was reviewed in The Guardian.
Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work, translated by Leri Price,was released in February.
We spend most of this episode discussing the work and life of the Syrian playwright Sa’dallah Wannous, and how strongly it relates to repression, resistance and art in the Arab region today.
A new Sa’dallah Wannous reader,Sentence to Hope(ed. and trans. Robert Myers and Nada Saab) brings together four translations of plays as well as essays by and interviews with the great Syrian playwright (1941-1996).
The founder of Egypt’s Dar Tanmia Bookshop and Publishing, Khaled Lutfi, was sentenced to five years in a military trial at the beginning of February. A statement of support for Lutfi has been circulating online, in Arabic and English.
The photographer we mention is Mohamed Abu Zeid – Shawkan – who should never have been jailed in the first place and is currently being held unlawfully beyond his release date.
Translator Sawad Hussain joins us to talk about the challenges of making a living as a translator, the art of co-translation, her focus on Arabic literature from Africa and the Gulf, and the advice she gives to her translation mentees. We also highlight three of Sawad’s recent and forthcoming translations: Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind, and Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Souls.
Show Notes:
Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, co-translated by Sawad Hussain and M Lynx Qualey, came out in February from AmazonCrossing. You can read reflections on the novel at Hadara magazine and listen to a sample at Amazon.
What should you recommend to someone who is interested in exploring Arabic literature? We tackle this big question this week; we also talk about the authors short-listed on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and about North African literature in English translation.
Show notes:
There are many opinions on where you should start with Arabic literature. Back in 2010, Ursula’s five-to-read-before-you-die were: Memory for Forgetfulness, Mahmoud Darwish; Season of Migration to the North, Tayyeb Saleh; The Trilogy or Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz; Bleeding of the Stone, Ibrahim al-Koni; Youssef Idris’s stories in Arabic.
We're back! And ready to talk about two poets who have moved into prose: the Egyptian Iman Mersal and the Palestinian Mazen Maarouf, who have written books that explore the bonds between children and parents, among other things. We also talk about the Cairo book fair's recent make-over, and about the vibrant but struggling cultural scene in Casablanca.
Show notes
Iman Mersal's How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts was translated by Robin Moger and published by the Kayfa Ta initiative. It's available from Neel wa Furat and Jamalon and, we hope, from good bookstores everywhere.
The Cairo International Book Fair (@cairobookfair), which has moved from the Nasr City Fairgrounds to the exhibition center in New Cairo, runs through February 5. Ursula has written about previous iterations here and here.
Casablanca, nid d'artistes just came out from Malika éditions, ed. Kenza Sefri and Leïla Slimani, featuring profiles and work by 115 artists.
Marcia was still working to compile the “Arab Authors’ Favorites” list that ArabLit runs every year. Early favorites included Mohamed Kheir’s Afalaat al-‘asabie, Muhairi Huwaidi’s Wa Kan al-Bayt Akhi al-Saba’a, and Mohamed Shoair’s Awlad Haretna: Biography of a Forbidden Novel.
We talked about Shoair’s Biography of a Forbidden Novel, which focuses on Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of Our Alley, and the intimidation of other public intellectuals, particularly Nasr Abu Zeid and Farag Fouda. Shoair’s book is dedicated to Taha Hussein and Nasr Abu Zeid.
Nawal Nasrallah was one of the winners of the $2M Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation, based in Qatar, for her translation of the fourteenth-century Egyptian cookbook Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table.
And, on December 11, Saudi writer Omaima al-Khamis was announced as the winner of this year’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, for her historical novel Voyage of the Cranes over the Agate Cities.
This episode is almost entirely dedicated to the work of the Moroccan film-maker, novelist, artist, and poet Ahmed Bouanani – much of which has yet to be released, and much of which was censored or destroyed in his own life.
Show notes
Bouanani’s cult-classic novel L’hôpital was re-published in 2012 by DK Editions in Morocco and Editions Verdier in France. Muhammad al-Khudairi’s Arabic translationwas published in 2016. Two of Bounanai’s books have been released this year in English translation: The Shutters(translated by Emma Ramadan) and The Hospital(translated by Lara Vergnaud), both from New Directions Press.
A fragment of Bouanani’s filmwork can be seen online: his film about Casablanca in the 1960s, “6 et 12”, is on YouTube, as is a section of As-Sarab / Mirage. The film-maker Ali Essafi’s documentary about Bouanani is entitled Crossing the Seventh Gate.
Touda Bouanani, Ahmed Bouanani’s daughter and a visual artist, has conserved his work and featured it in her own.
Marcia should have a piece about the discovery of Naguib Mahfouz’s “lost” manuscript,set to be published December 11 by Dar al-Saqi in Lebanon, forthcoming soon in LitHub. An extended Q&A with translator Roger Allen, agent Yasmina Jraissati, and manuscript-discoverer Mohamed Shoair will follow on ArabLit. The English translation of what’s being called The Whisper of Stars is forthcoming from Saqi Books in 2019.
We overcame communication blocks and interrupting children to speak to the poet Zeina Hashem Beck about how she’s given herself permission to write poems that move between English and Arabic. We also discuss James Montgomery’s heart-breaking essay on grief, memory, trauma and translating a 7th century Arabic poet famous for her elegies.
Show notes:
Zeina Hashem Beckis a Lebanese poet who lives in Dubai. She won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for her second full-length collection, Louder than Hearts (April 2017) as well as the 2016 Rattle Chapbook Prize for There Was and How Much There Was, chosen by Carol Ann Duffy, as well as many more prizes you can read about on her website.
The first of her new “duet poems,” which weave together separate and distinct threads of Arabic and English, appeared in The Lifted Brow, with more forthcoming in The Adroit and Modern Poetry in Translation.
She read the poem “Blue / أزرق.”
James Montgomery, author-translator of Loss Sings, is Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at Cambridge. This collection of Montgomery’s meditations is twined with translations of seventh-century poet al-Khansa’. It is part of The Cahier Seriespublished by Sylph Editions in collaboration with The American University of Paris.
In this episode we talk about recent developments in Cairo, kids’ literature in Arabic, Naguib Mahfouz, and the launch of Marcia’s new project, the literary magazine ArabLit Quarterly.
Ursula’s long-awaited essay “The World of the Alley: Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo,” finally appeared in The Nation. Ursula talked about reading Gamal al-Ghitani’s Meetings with Mahfouz, how al-Ghitani brought her to meet the master, and Mahfouz’s iron habits.
MLQ talked about the Fall 2018 debut of ArabLit Quarterly, set for a November 15 release. The theme of the first-ever ArabLit-affiliated magazine is “beginnings.” Those who want to be subscribers can do so through Patreon; otherwise, a storefront will be ready on November 15.
This week we talk to an old Cairo friend, acclaimed Egyptian artist Ganzeer, about art, propaganda, publishing and how much damn work it is to put out a graphic novel.
The first four chapters of The Solar Gridare available for download at thesolargrid.net, and his earlier collaboration, The Apartment at Bab El-Louk(written by Donia Maher, co-illustrated by Ahmed Nady, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette), is available from Darf Publishers and online.
The new Epic of Gilgameshgraphic novel was translated by Kent Dixon and illustrated by Kevin Dixon.
The Rusumat comix platform, featuring works in Arabic and in English, is at rusumat.co.
We talk about looking down on dialect; passing literary theft off as “salvation”; the beginning of awards season; a book that is a fragmented portrait of Jerusalem; and our fellow podcasters in the region.
Since we recorded Episode 20, Israel’s Resling Publishing has pulled a short-story collection, Horreya,in which they published women’s short stories translated from Arabic to Hebrew. Resling’s statement says that they are investigating the matter. The cover image, by the Lebanese cartoonist Hasan Bleibel, was also taken without permission, and the artist was not credited for his work. Earlier, Resling’s chief editor, Idan Zivoni, gave a statement that was translated and posted on Hyperallergic.
The shortlist for the first-ever ArabLit Story Prize was announced September 15; longlists for the major French literary prizes have also appeared. Moroccan author Meryem Alaoui made the Goncourt longlist with her La verite sort de la bouche du cheval, andSyrian novelist Samar Yazbek made the Prix Femina longlist with Khaled Osman's translation of her المشّاءة, translated to La Marcheuse in the French, and working title The Blue Pen in English.
The work of postcard-like fragment-stories set in Jerusalem is Mahmoud Shukair’s Jerusalem Stands Alone, which has recently been translated by Nicole Fares for Syracuse University Press.
We talk about the relationships between education and literature; about a devastating entry in the prison memoir genre, from Syria; about the legacy of V.S. Naipaul; and about why Kuwait is the worst offender in the region for censoring books.Show notes
This was our back to school episode, informed by the scholarship of Erin Twohig and Ursula’s “Hard Lessons: North African Writers on Education” at al-Fanar. We particularly talked about Mohamed Nedali’s Grâce à Jean de la Fontaine, a satiric and scathing account of the life of a schoolteacher in Morocco, and also Radwa Ashour’s writing on education, in her The Journey (translated by Michelle Hartman) and her later Spectres (translated by Barbara Romaine).
Ursula’s summer reading included Mustafa Khalifa’s devastating novel The Shell, based on his experiences in Syria’s Tadmor prison, in which he reclaims and re-inscribes humanity. It has been translated to English by Paul Starkey.
The death of V.S. Naipaul led to several interesting conversations about his work and legacy. Here is one, between Nikil Saval and Pankaj Mishra in n+1.
And here is a piece by Teju Cole from a few years back about meeting the writer.
In our last episode before a summer hiatus, we discuss a graphic novel about the life and art of the stars of Arab music and cinema; Egyptian writer Radwa Ashour’s memoir of studying at university in the United States in the 1970s; and the Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani’s novel The Hospital, out in English (alongside a new poetry collection, The Shutters) after nearly falling into oblivion. Show notes
Lamia Ziade’s Ô Nuit Ô Mes Yeuxis a stylish, charming illustrated text about the larger-than-life lives of Arab musicians. An excerpt titled “Fairouz in my Grandfather’s Shop,” translated into English by Edward Gauvin, appears in the July 2018 Words Without Borders. Ziade’s Bye Bye Babylon has been translated into English by Olivia Snaije.
And—there is some debate over whether this is a beach read—but Moroccan author-filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani’s The Hospital, translated by Lara Vergnaud, and his The Shutters, translated by Emma Ramadan are newly out from New Directions Books, and get a recommendation both from Ursula and from MLQ.
Twenty years after the disastrous and mendacious US invasion of Iraq, we take a look at writing from Iraq: memoirs, poems and blog posts. Shalash the Iraqi is a collection of such posts – a satirical, surreal, and affecting panorama in life in a Shia suburb of Baghdad in the early years of the occupation.
Show Notes:
An excerptfrom Gaith Abdul-ahad’s memoir A Stranger In Your Own City ran recently in the Guardian
Shalash The Iraqi, trans. Luke Leafgren, is a collection of blog posts written in 2005-2006
An excerpt from Faleeha Hassan’s memoir War and Me, tans. William Hutchins ran on Arablit.org.
The only English-language collection of Sargon Boulous’ self-translated poetry is Knife Sharpener from Banipal Books. You can find a list of his poems available online here.
We talk to humorist Karl Sharro about the origins story of his Twitter alter-ego Karl ReMarks and about finding the ideal online nemesis. Marcia takes issue with a new book listing the “hundred best novels in translation.” Show notes
Boyd Tonkin’s The 100 Best Novels in Translation was released June 21. The two Arabic novels that made the list were Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, and Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan. The translation was overseen by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, along with Martha Levin, and their notes on the manuscript can be found at the Lilly Library Manuscript Collections.
You can read the Amazon press release online about how the mega-corporation has (finally) launched some 12,000 Arabic ebooks into the Kindle system. You can find and purchase them on Amazon.com.
In which Ursula and Marcia discuss how much innocence American can claim when abroad, and the urge to write expatriate diaries in one’s twenties; they also talk about the new collection Marrakech Noir; and about the never-ending debate over Classical versus Colloquial Arabic. Show notes:
Marrakech Noir, ed. Yassin Adnan,is the third Arab city to join the Akashic Books series, following Beirut Noir and published simultaneously with Baghdad Noir. The Marrakesh collection features stories by lesser-known writers like Hanane Derkaoui, whose “A Way to Mecca” has some particularly fun moments, as well as heavyweights like Mahi Binebine, Mohammed Achaari, and Fouad Laroui—whose short-story collection The Curious Case of Dassoukine's Trousers was translated by Emma Ramadan. Fouad and Emma previously talked with MLQabout the collection and about writing in Moroccan Arabic.
Inspired by a fiery essay by an Egyptian professor, Ursula and MLQ discuss cosmopolitanism, nostalgia, and literary representations of the city of Alexandria. Marcia also talks about three new books – from Iraq, Southern Sudan and Lebanon/London. She loved two of them.Show notes:
Marwan Hisham’s memoir-reportage Brothers of the Gun, with art by Molly Crabapple, came out May 15. It details life under the Islamic State in Raqqa and covers, from a quite different point of view, some of the same ground as DunyaMikhail’s The Beekeper, which we discussed in Episode 8.
Stella Gaitano’s Withered Flowers, trans. Anthony Calderbank, is available in bookshops in Juba, South Sudan. We’ll also see if we can convince them to make it more widely available.
We discuss Marcia’s recent interviews with professors teaching Arabic literature in translation; an essay by Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine’s in which he picks apart “world literature” and foreign writers – such as himself – who act as “tour guides”; and a book that is an ambitious overview of modern art in the Arab world. Show notes
Rabih Alameddine’s“Comforting Myths: Notes from a Purveyor”and takes us from Superman to Joseph Conrad to “the cute other,” with stops at Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, Hisham Matar’s The Return, and one of Alameddine’s own novels, which a 2008 New York Times reviewcalled “a bridge to the Arab soul.” As Alameddine has said elsewhere: “What the fuck is the Arab soul?”
Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, co-edited by Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout, is forthcoming June 5 from Duke University Press. The selection of texts, many appearing for the first time in English translation, includes “manifestos, essays, transcripts of roundtable discussions, diary entries, letters, and the guest-book comments[.]” Some can be read online.
The Center for Translation Studiesat The American University in Cairo will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2020, and to commemorate nine years of CTS lectures—MLQ gave one in 2013—the head of the center, Dr. Samia Mehrez, is bringing together an anthology of essays. The book will be coming out from AUC Press in English, and an Arabic edition will follow.
You can find the Kayfa Ta project’s Arabic originals and English translations at kayfa-ta.com. That’s where you can download a PDF of Haytham al-Wardani’s How to Disappear translated by Jennifer Peterson and Robin Moger, or in the Arabic.Iman Mersal’s How to Mend: On Motherhood and Its Ghosts is also available in Arabic. Robin Moger’s English translation should be forthcoming somewhere this year.
In this episode, we talk about debates surrounding Western military intervention in Syria; about Arab American writer Randa Jarrar and her Twitter rant against the late Barbara Bush; and about whether there is any alternative to the term “Arab world.” Also Ursula has a squeaky chair. Show notes
At the recent Yale symposium on translation, Samah Salim discussed the relationship between translator, text, and paratext in “Paratext and Political Translation,” with a focus on the introduction, footnotes, and glossary of her translation to Arwa Salih’s The Stillborn. Kamran Rastegar talked about “Translational Infidelity: Paul Bowles’ notes on For Bread Alone.”
If you are near Princeton on April 23 at 4:30, do come hear MLQ speak about “Shifting Local, Regional, and International Pressures on Arabic Literature.”
The winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction will be announced Tuesday, April 24. MLQ’s prediction of Aziz Mohammed’s The Critical Case of Kas the winner will almost certainly not come true.
Tales of Yusuf Tadros, by Adel Esmat, tr. Mandy McClure, has just been released in English and MLQ was hoping it will receive some prize attention.
Leila al-Shami, co-editor of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War, is author of “The Anti-Imperialism of Idiots.”
Randa Jarrar is the author of A Map of Home(2008), Him Me Muhammad Ali(2016) and a handful of tweets about the late Barbara Bush’s legacy that were turned into a major trolling campaign and news story. She teaches at Fresno State, where President Joseph Castro has suggested the university is investigating her tweets, which, he has alleged, “wasn’t just a free speech issue.”
We spend most of this episode talking about two books: the late Arwa Salih’s Stillborn, a memoir of and reckoning with her time as a leftist student militant in Egypt in the 1970s; and Rabai al-Madhoun’s novel Fractured Destinies -- about lives constrained, conflicted and divided in Palestine.
Show notes
Arwa Salih’s The Stillborn, tr. the brilliant Samah Salim and published by Seagull Books as part of their “Arab List,” curated by Hosam Aboul-ela.
In which Marcia talks about her difficulties being interviewed; we discuss genre (sci-fi, fantasy, and especially noir) writing in Arabic; and we question whether translation into English “empowers” women writers from the Arab region.Show notes
On voices at various margins:Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz (recently re-translated by Humphrey Davies); Kamal Ruhayyim’s Muslim Jew trilogy(tr. Sarah Enany); the film Marock; The Othersby Seba al-Herz.
Baghdad Noir, ed. Samuel Shimon, is forthcoming from Akashic Books later this year. You can already get Tehran Noir, ed. Salar Abdoh, who has a story called “Baghdad on Borrowed Time” in Baghdad Noir.
In which we discuss the validity and necessity of the negative review (or what we like to simply call critical engagement); how rare it is to find negative reviews these days; and the shift that has seen Western reviewers of Arabic literature move from one extreme to another. But is it more condescending to dismiss outright or to offer all-around encouragement? Show notes
Marcia has written on Arablit about John Updike’s infamous dismissal of Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt, from a time when negative reviews of Arabic literature were more than common.
Ursula and MLQ discuss a moving new book documenting the suffering and the resourcefulness of Yazidi women taken captive by Daesh, and the efforts to help them escape; and the perversely dull newspaper columns of the great Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz.Show notes
Dunya Mikhail’s The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraqis coming out in March 27, 2018 from US publisher New Directions and as The Beekeeper of Sinjar from the UK’s Serpent’s Tail in August 2018. Both were translated by Dunya Mikhail and Max Weiss.
Historian Omar Mohammed is the force behind Mosul Eye, an independent writer who documented what was happening in Mosul during Daesh’s occupation. He wrote anonymously for three years before revealing his identity in December 2017 and can still be followed at @MosulEye and @omardemosul. One of Mosul’s libraries re-opened this month.
We wandered through Arabic poetry and prose to talk about many different forms of literary love: regretful love, unreciprocated love, bad love, vengeful love, liberating love, married love.
We read this poem by Núra al-Hawshán: “O eyes, pour me the clearest, freshest tears And when the fresh part’s over, pour me the dregs. O eyes, gaze at his harvest and guard it. Keep watch upon his water-camels, look at his well. If he passes me on the road I can’t speak to him. O God, such affliction And utter calamity! Whoever desires us We scorn to desire, And whom we desire Feeble fate does not deliver.”
We discussed our recent readings. This includes some early foreign reporting on Morocco, which is both vivid and prejudiced; a moving account of the way Moroccan political prisoners clung to their memories and their words and refused to be fully “disappeared” during the country’s decades of repression; and a collection of beautifully translate and unusual folktales, shared by Lebanese women with each other. We also discussed the Cairo Book Fair, whose official theme this year is “Soft Power…How?”
Show notes
Walter Harris’s (1866-1933) Morocco That Wasis the book Ursula is considering “hate-teaching”. Harris was a British journalist and socialite who worked as a correspondent for The Times. The book can be read
The Performance of Human Rights in Moroccoby Susan Slyomovics looks at the words (literary and otherwise) that sent Moroccans to jail during the Hassan II years; the attempts to make peoples and their stories disappear; and the words that eventually exposed the terrible abuses of the “Years of Lead.”
The Return by Hicham Matar explores secret prisons in Libya under Ghaddafi, in search of a trace of the author’s kidnapped father.
Pearls on a Branch, by Najlaa Khoury, tr. Inea Bushnaqis forthcoming from Archipelago books March 2018. This ridiculously delightful folktale collection is based around work Khoury collected in Lebanon during the civil war, many of which became stage productions. A collection of them was published in Arabic in 2014, and soon they’ll be available in Bushnaq’s fun, luminous, inventive translation.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi’s ominous recent speech. Sisi is running for a second term against just one other candidate, who turns out to be a great fan of his.
"He had electoral tendencies and wanted to nominate himself. But, thank God, he's back to feeling better!!"@abdalla_cartoon in today's Al-Masry Al-Youm, the privatey-owned Egyptian paper, where the jokes on the forthcoming presidential balloting have been riotous. pic.twitter.com/snyE7NKeqv
In this episode we discuss Moroccan literature about the country’s “years of lead” and its formidable and ruthless former king Hassan II; and about the relationship between humour, fear and power. We look at literary awards and what they are good for, and why Arablit has decided to create a new award. And we ask: how much contemporary Arabic literature is “dystopian”?Show notes
Youssef Fadel’s “Moroccan trilogy” will appear from Hoopoe Fiction. They have already brought out A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me(translated by Alexander Elinson) and A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me(translated by Jonathan Smolin), and Elinson is at work on the novel Farah, which would translate to Joy, but will instead be translated as A Shimmering Red Fish Swims with Me.
Mahi Binebine’s Le Fou du Roi(The King’s Fool) is, like A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me, inspired by the figure of Hassan II’s court jester, Binebine’s father, as well as Binebine’s brother, who was imprisoned in the infamous Tazmamart prison. Aziz Binebine is one of a number of former Tazmamart prisoners to have written memoirs. His is Tazmamort.
Yassin Adnan’s Hot Marocwas longlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and is currently being translated by Alexander Elinson.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) released its 2018 longlist on Wednesday, January 17. Many of the novelists are well-known authors; eight have been on previous IPAF longlists. The longlisted novel The Baghdad Clock, by Shahad El Rawi, has already been translated by Luke Leafgren and will appear in April from Oneworld. Amjad Nasser’s Here is the Rosehas been longlisted; his previous novel, Land of No Rain, was beautifully translated by Jonathan Wright. The shortlisted The Frightened Ones, by Dima Wannous, is already out in Italian translation, Quelli che hanno paura.
Sonallah Ibrahim’s famous refusal of the Arab Novel Award from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture is discussed in this profile.
Yasmine Seal’s article, “After the Revolution,” about three Egyptian novels she considers dystopian, in Harpers’ magazine.
It was Robin Moger who asked us to stop describing so much Arabic literature as “dystopian.” The (maybe-sometimes-dystopias) discussed were Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette; Ezzedine Choukri Fishere’s No Exit; Mohamed Rabie’s Otared, translated by Robin Moger; Ahmed Naji’s Using Life, translated by Ben Koerber; Nael El-Toukhy’s Women of Karantina, translated by Robin Moger; and Ahmed Khaled Towfiq’s Utopia, translated by Chip Rossetti.
In this episode of BULAQ we highlight several new and forthcoming translations from Arabic to English. We also discuss the newly translated Concerto Al Quds by the renowned Syrian poet Adonis, as well as Adonis’ own status as an artist and public intellectual, and his stance on religion and revolution.
Banthology, ed Sarah Cleave, part of Comma Press’s “banned nations showcase,” is appearing this January 2018 in the UK, and from Deep Vellum in the US in March. The stories are by Anoud (Iraq), Wajdi al-Ahdal (Yemen), Ubah Cristina Ali Farah (Somalia), Najwa Bin Shatwan (Libya), Rania Mamoun (Sudan), Fereshteh Molavi (Iran) & Zaher Omareen (Syria).
The Iraqi author Hassan Blassim has published several collections of stories with Comma Press, and edited the collection Iraq +100.
Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright, is forthcoming from Penguin Random this month, as we celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. It won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
Arwa Salih’s Stillborn,translated by Samah Selim, is forthcoming from Seagull Books this month.
Jabbour Doauihy’s Printed in Beirutis forthcoming from Interlink this March, in Paula Haydar’s translation. His great liar-narrator referred to is Eliyya in June Rain (also translated by Haydar)and the Christian-Muslim confusion is in his Homeless, sometimes translated as Chased Away.
In this episode, we look back at 2017 about talk books published in the past year: notable books, favorite books, books we felt were overlooked, books we don't quite agree on, and books we can't wait to read. We also discuss how not to write about "discovering" Arabic and the Arab world. Show notes
ArabLit's "Arab Authors' Favorites of 2017" list is available online. Some of the most frequently mentioned books on the list were works of non-fiction: Haitham al-Wardany's Book of Sleep, Iman Mersal's How to Heal: Motherhood and Its Ghosts, and Charles Aql's Coptic Food.
A translation of Mersal's book was funded by Mophradat as part of their Kayfa Ta series and brought to English-language life by Robin Moger, although the publisher is still TBA.
American War was on the list of 2017 books of note Ursula made for the web site Al Fanar. Also on the list, Bad Girls of the Arab World, a collection of scholarly writing and essays edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas, published by University of Texas Press.
"The Fine Art of Learning to Say Nothing in Arabic," by Adam Valen Levinson, excerpted from the Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah and recently published on LitHub, has come in for considerable criticism online.
On the other hand, there is writing about learning Arabic that we have loved: "Matthew McNaught's Yarmouk Miniature," published in N+1; Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land; and I.Y. Kratchovsky's wonderful Among Arabic Manuscripts, translated from the Russian by Tatiana Minorsky.
Palestinian literature: regrets, tough choices and teen adventures
08 Dec 2017
01:17:04
President Trump just recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move that acknowledges only a single Israeli narrative. We discuss Palestinian writers and how they write about their relationships with Israelis; about living with trauma and danger; about coming of age under occupation. We also look at the emerging field of children’s and young adult literature in Arabic.Show notes
Raja Shehadehis a Ramallah-based author and attorney who has written a number of celebrated books, including Strangers in This House (2002), Palestinian Walks (2008), winner of the Orwell Prize; A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle (2010), and the book that was at the focus in this episode, Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine(2017). Ursula wrote recently about his life and his work for The Nation
The Palestine Festival for Literature, created by writers Adhaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton, brings authors, bloggers and journalists from around the world to Palestine every year. You can learn about it here: http://palfest.org
Ibrahim Nasrallah is a prolific Jordanian-Palestinian poet and novelist who has won numerous awards. His Time of White Horses, translated by Nancy Roberts, was shortlisted for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and his Gaza Weddings, also tr. Roberts, has just been released in English. An excerpt is available online.
Mazen Maarouf, Palestinian-Icelandic poet and short-story writer,won the inaugural Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story in 2016 for his Jokes for the Gunmen, forthcoming in Jonathan Wright’s translation from Portobello Books. This year’s prize, announced December 4, went the Syrian author Shahla Ujayli’s Bed of the King’s Daughter.
In which we discuss the fictional underworlds of Rabee Jaber and other Lebanese novelists; and explore Saudi poetry, from a new translation of a famous pre-Islamic collection to the satirical poems of “a grumpy old man” in the Najd in the 18th century. At this time when women are denouncing male abuses of power the world over, we look at two Moroccan female writers who are critical of their societies and who face the question of how their work is received and represented at home and abroad. Asma Lamrabet proposes a progressive feminist re-reading of the Quran; Leila Slimani is an award-winning novelist who has written a book on “sexual misery” in Morocco.
Show notes:
Beit Beirutcultural center is in the restored Barakat building, built in 1924, devastated during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and used as a vantage for snipers.
Rafic Hariri is the father of current Lebanese yes-no-yes-I’m-the-prime-minister Saad Hariri, and was assassinated in an explosion on February 14, 2005, along with twenty-one others. His assassination was the focus of a UN special tribunal.
The Mehlis Report, by Rabee Jaber, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is set in the Beirut of the living and the dead in 2005, just before the release of the titular UN report, overseen by public prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
Limbo Beirut, by Hilal Chouman, translated by Anna Ziajka Stanton, was published by University of Texas Press.
It was also Kareem James Abu-Zeid who won a $25,000 NEA grant this week to produce a new translation of the Mu‘allaqat, or “The Hanging Poems,” a collection of works by seven pre-Islamic Arabic poets (although Abu-Zeid will be bringing together works by ten pre-Islamic Arabic poets).
Arabian Satire: Poetry from 18th Century Najd, by Hmedan al-Shwe’ir, edited and translated by Marcel Kurpershoek, will be out December 1 from the Library of Arabic Literature. We read from Poem 19, which begins, “Our plowmen labored in the fields / while he was distracted by little Sarah.”
The collection Adrenaline, by Ghayath al-Madhoun, translated by Catherine Cobham, is out this month from Action Books.
Lullaby, by Leila Slimani, which won the Goncourt as Chanson douce, will be out in English translation by Sam Taylor in January 2018. Her new book is Sexe et mensonges. Ursula has a piece on Slimani here.
In the midst of a crackdown on gay men in Egypt, we discuss Mohammed Abdel Nabi’s novel about being gay in Cairo, In The Spider’s Room. Also: a portrait of a love-hate relationship with a Cairo neighborhood, an award for Arabic Young Adult and children’s literature, a Saudi novelist under attack online, and a Palestinian poet whose trial hinges on translation. Show notes
The Apartment in Bab El Louk, by Donia Maher, Ganzeer, and Ahmed Nady was published in Arabic in 2014 and appears in English this month, November 2017, from Darf Publishers, translated by Lissie Jaquette.
Ahmed Naji was recipient of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award after his imprisonment on charges of “violating public modesty” for an excerpt from the Egyptian edition of Using Life, published in Akhbar al-Adab. University of Texas Press is releasing the English translation, by Ben Koerber, November 20. More about Naji’s ongoing trial from PEN America.
Magdy al-Shafee’sMetro was first published in January 2008 and quickly banned on the ground of “offending public morals”; al-Shafee and his publisher were both fined. An English translation by Chip Rosetti was published in June 2012, and the book—in English and Arabic—is now available in Egypt again.
Thursday’s Visitors by Saudi novelist Badriya Albeshrwas the target of trolls and then a banning in Saudi Arabia. You can read an excerpt at ArabLit.
Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour,who has been in prison or under house arrest for more than two years for a poem,has her next trial date November 9. You can follow her case at freedareentatour.org/trial. The poem, which is alleged to be incitement, is "Resist, My People, Resist Them."
It’s literary prize season! When the Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at the start of 2023, novelist Shady Lewis Botros turned his novel award down, launching a storm of criticism, defense, and discussion. Is it bad manners or good politics to turn down a prize? How do different prizes affect the literary landscape? How is the 2023 prize season shaping up?
Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed talks about her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”). A product of playful self-translation, it’s coming to English as a single volume. It will be unbottled by Pantheon (US) and Granta (UK) on January 10, 2023.
Show Notes:
While the US edition keeps the title “Shubeik Lubeik,” the UK edition will use a literal translation: “Your Wish Is My Command.”
El-Rifae’s book Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution tells the story of a movement that mobilized in Egypt to protect female protesters from mob sexual attacks in 2012 and 2013. Based on interviews with friends and comrades, the book explores memory, truth, gender, violence, political organizing, trauma, and possible futures.
In this sponsored episode, we talk to Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner Dr. Muhsin Al-Musawi about his life-long scholarship on the 1001 Nights.
Show Notes:
This podcast is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe.
Today’s guest, Professor Muhsin Al-Musawi, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of “Arab Culture in Other Languages,” for his book “The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures.” Al-Musawi is a professor of classical and modern Arabic literature, comparative and cultural studies at Columbia University. He is the author of 39 books and the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children’s Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae
Professor Al-Musawi’s biography and a description of his book can be found on the SZBA website.
We’re back to talk about books we read over the summer and books we’re looking forward to this fall. Including poetry from Iman Mersal, Hadiya Hussein’s novel about looking for a lover disappeared in Saddam’s Iraq, and Mohamed Alnaas’ novel about the pressure to be a certain type of Libyan man.
Show Notes: Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, trans. Robyn Creswell, is a selection from four of her poetry collections, forthcoming from McMillan. Hadiya Hussein’s Waiting For The Past, trans. Barbara Romaine, is forthcoming from Syracuse Press. Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table, by Mohamed Alnaas, won the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
In Aziz Muhammad’s The Critical Case of a Man Named K, an unnamed narrator is diagnosed with leukemia. His 40-week journal, shaped by his readings of Kafka, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, sarcastically and movingly documents his alienation from his body, his surroundings and even, eventually, from books.
We also talked about a few other works where protagonists are diagnosed with cancer:Shahla Ujayli’s A Sky So Close to Us, translated by Michelle Hartman (Interlink Books); Radwa Ashour’s Heavier than Radwa (Dar Al Shorouk), although this is a memoir; Haifa al-Bitar’s A Woman of This Modern Age (Dar Saqi); Hassan Daoud’s No Road to Paradise, translated by Marilyn Booth (Hoopoe Fiction).
We also mention some Saudi books that have won awards or attracted international attention, such as Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea and The Dove’s Necklace by Raja Alem.
Deena Mohamed’s Graphic Novel Asks: What If Your Wish Came True?
15 Aug 2024
01:02:35
We recorded this interview with Deen in January 2022, just as her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”) was coming out in English. This original and beautifully illustrated story imagines that wishes of varying quality can be bought and sold in contemporary Cairo, with unpredictable and poignant results. It has been widely celebrated and nominated for a Hugo Award.
While the US edition from Pantheon keeps the title “Shubeik Lubeik,” the UK edition from Granta uses a literal translation: “Your Wish Is My Command.”
Find more of Deena’s work at http://deenadraws.art and on Twitter and Instagram as @itsdeenasaur.
The original Arabic three volumes were published by Dar Mahrousa and are available in the US through Maamoul Press.