BULAQ | بولاق
بودكاست يركز على الأدب العربي والكتب، يستضيفه أورسولا ليندسي (في عمان، الأردن) وإم لينكس كوالي (في الرباط، المغرب). يناقش ترجمات الأدب العربي وينشر حلقات أسبوعية. سُمي على اسم أول مطبعة تأسست في مصر عام 1820. ينتجه Sowt.
حلقات
Books by Rabih Alameddine, May Ziadeh, Samar Yazbek, Lamia Ziadé and More
Marcia is publishing the first English translation of early 20th century woman of letters and feminist icon May Ziadhe; Ursula has been working on a review of the award-winning Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine. We also talk about a devastating book based on interviews with Gazan evacuees by the Syrian writer/activist/journalist Samar Yazbek; and a memoir of art and politics, set in Lebanon and F
A Story of Jordanian Literature
Ibtihal Reda Mahmood, editor and translator of the anthology Snow in Amman: An Anthology of Short Stories from Jordan joins us to talk both about the Jordanian literary landscape from the 1940s to now, as well as her personal relationship with Jordanian writers and books. We talk particularly about the iconic feminist and master of the short-story form Basma Nsour, and how Ibtihal came across her
Unlocking Palestine: Sara Yasin on editing The Key
The Key is a new online publication dedicated to covering Palestine as “the core issue at the heart of the modern world.” We’re joined by its editor-in-chief, Sara Yasin, former managing editor of the LA Times. The Key is an outgrowth of PalFest, an annual traveling literature festival that gathers Palestinian and international writers in Palestine.You can find The Key at thekeymagazine.comWe talk
From the Archives: Walking Through Fire with Nawal El Saadawi
The Egyptian feminist writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi always spoke her mind. Her early books were explosive testimonials, based on her medical practice and personal experience, about sexual double standards and the abuses women faced because of them. She went on to write many more books, including novels, plays and several memoirs. Over the course of her life she was jailed, censored, fired, ad
From the Archives: Love and its Discontents
In this episode from a few years ago, we wandered through Arabic poetry and prose and talked 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 tearsAnd when the fresh part’s over, pour me the dregs.O eyes, gaze at his harvest and guar
From the Archives: Not Yet Defeated
Egypt’s January 25 revolution was 15 years ago. Since then many of its young leaders have been persecuted and the history of what happened distorted or denied. After spending over a decade in prison, the activist and writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah was finally released from prison in September, and allowed to travel outside Egypt in December. We are re-running an episode we did about Alaa’s 2021 book Yo
Listening to Voices with Hoda Barakat
Ursula traveled to Paris to talk to Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat about writing in Arabic while living at a distance from home; listening to the voices of characters who are destined to defeat; and starting each of her books with a question. 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
The Surprisingly Rich Arabic Literary Culture in 17th and 18th Century Southeast Asia
In this sponsored episode, we talk to Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner Andrew Peacock about his work on Arabic literary culture in southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a rich time for the burgeoning Arabic literary culture—alongside Javanese, Malay, Aceh, and other literary cultures—in several regions in the Malay Archipelago.This podcast is produced in collaboration with the
Inji Efflatoun, An Egyptian Artist Who Traced Her Own Path
As a teenager in Cairo in the early 1940s, Inji Efflatoun made two great discoveries: art and the Communist Party. Although she was from an elite French-speaking background, Efflatoun chose to “re-Egyptianize” herself, pursue painting and throw herself full-heartedly into anti-imperialist, feminist and leftist agitation. She was eventually arrested during President Nasser’s repression of Communist
Sonallah Ibrahim, The Egyptian Novelist Who Captured History
The great Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim passed away earlier this month. Several years ago, we discussed his novel Warda – the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her. We discuss the vibrant and mysterious female character at the heart of one of Ibrahim’s most
Mohamed Choukri's Brutal Honesty
The Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri grew up poor and illiterate on the streets of Tangier in the waning years of colonialism. He told the story of his childhood in his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone – El Khubz El Hafi in Arabic, Le Pain Nu in French. Choukri went on to write much more, chronicling life in post-independence Morocco during the “years of lead,” and the marginalized underclass
A Young Poet in Gaza, Writing in the Shadow of Death
Batool Abu Akleen is a poet and translator in Gaza, Palestine. Her home in Gaza City and her university have been bombed and she has been displaced multiple times. We talked to her about refusing to write and then choosing to write through the genocide; about the importance of mentors; and about creating a community of literary translators in Gaza. Her first full-length collection, 48 kg, is set t
Looking In the Mirror: Arab Women’s Memoirs with Khaled Mansour
Author, commentator and human rights advocate Khaled Mansour joins us to talk about how reading Arab women’s memoirs can help one gain a new understanding of the region’s collective history. After he worked with Egyptian psychoanalyst and feminist Afaf Mahfouz to write her autobiography, Mansour began a journey through Arab women’s memoirs set to culminate in his forthcoming podcast, المرآة (The M
‘One Day,’ with Omar El Akkad
Journalist, novelist, and memoirist Omar El Akkad talks about his latest book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a blend of memoir, social criticism, and moral philosophy. The book creates and shares space for everyone who is full of grief and rage, who cannot be at home in institutions that support or ignore genocide. We discuss the linguistic obfuscations around Gaza, El Akk
Listening to Syria with Alia Malek
Journalist, author and editor Alia Malek tells us about her recent visit to Damascus and about the anthology of Syrian writing she edited for McSweeneys. Aftershocks was released in December 2024, just days after Bashar al-Assad fled Syria and the country's political prisons began to crack open. The collection brings together work by sixteen Syrian authors who write from diasporic and refugee expe
Inside The World of Lebanese Comics with Rawand Issa
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,
Give and Take
In this episode, we talk through some literary news from Algeria and France, discuss two big translations out this fall from towering authors, as well as a new favorite by Maya Abu al-Hayyat. Then we turn to Read Palestine Week and the new collection focused on writers in Gaza, And Still We Write, before a discussion on refusing to work with Israeli publishers that are complicit in the violence ag
Arabic culture and literature in Spain
Today’s guest, Irene Lozano, is the director of a Spanish cultural institution, Casa Arabe. It received the 2024 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Cultural Personality of the Year. As we’ll discuss, Casa Arabe is a center of learning, discussion and exchange between Spain and Arab countries. It offers Arabic language classes and a myriad of cultural initiatives and programs, including hosting talks by m
Flash Fiction Winner Karima Ahdad
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
Reem Bassiouney: Writing Historical Fiction is like “Stringing Pearls”
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
Deena Mohamed’s Graphic Novel Asks: What If Your Wish Came True?
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.
Etel Adnan: “I Write What I See, Paint What I Am”
Art critic and journalist Kaelen Wilson-Goldie joins us for a sweeping look at the life, writing, and art of singular Lebanese author-artist Etel Adnan (1925-2021). Kaelin Wilson-Goldie’s Etel Adnan is available from Lund Humphries.Adnan’s Time, translated by Sarah Riggs, is available from Nightboat Books.The Beauty of Light, a collection of interviews with Laure Adler, is available from Nightboa
This Moment
Majalla 28 is a literary magazine out of Gaza co-producing an issue with ArabLit. We talk about the work by co-editors Mahmoud al-Shaer and Mohamed al-Zaqzouq and read excerpts from that issue. After that, we talk about a particular kind of Palestinian literature – by writers serving life sentences. Find out more about the Gaza issue at arablit.orgMore writing by Heba Al-Agha, translated by Julia
Ghassan Kanafani: Defiance on Every Page
Ghassan Kanafani is best known for his famous novellas, but he was many things besides a talented writer: a prolific journalist, an insightful critic and editor, a heterodox Marxist, a spokesman for the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He wrote and lived like he had no time to waste (which turned out to be true: he was assassinated in an Israeli car bombing at the age of 36)
WITH GAZA
This episode features writing from and about Gaza, and explores the imperative to write, between hope and hopelessness, at a time when words both seem to count enormously and to not be enough. Show NotesThis episode’s cover art is by Chema Peral @chema_peralLetter from Gaza by Ghassan Kanafani was written in 1956.Mahmoud Darwish’s Silence for the Sake of Gaza is part of his 1973 collection Journal
On Translating Arabic Literature with Robin Moger
We talk to Robin Moger about how he became a translator from Arabic and about what has changed in recent years in the field of Arabic literature and translation and what has stayed the same. Moger’s first book-length literary translation was Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s 2008 novel الفاعل, which became A Dog with No Tail. His most recent is a translation of Iman Mersal’s في أثر عنايات الزيات, which appears
A Crime at the End of the Sahara
Said Khatibi’s detective novel نهاية الصحراء (End of the Sahara) is set in a remote desert city in Algeria in the Fall of 1988, when the country’s October Riots are about to break out place. The book is one of the winners of this year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Khatibi explained how his writing is also a way of exploring larger historical crimes. Show Notes:This episode is produced in collaboratio
Remembering Hamdi Abu Golayyel
Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel died last month at the age of 56. In this episode, we remember Hamdi and his one-of-a-kind literary career, telling the story of Egypt’s laborers, Bedouin, and migrants. Show Notes:Egyptian Novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel Dies at 56: ‘There Was No One Like Him’A Special Section at ArabLit on Abu Golayyel, Bedouin Poetry, and ‘The Men Who Swallowed the Sun’Mohamed K
Inside The World of Lebanese Comics with Rawand Issa
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,
Sawad Hussain’s Translation Advice
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
Looking Back From Iraq
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 excerpt from Gaith Abdul-ahad’s memoir A Stranger In Your Own City ran recently
Love and its Discontents
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 tearsAnd 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, lo
Should You Turn Down That Literary Award?
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?Show Notes: Mada Masr published “A c
Getting Your Wish
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: “
Yasmin El-Rifae’s Radius
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.Show NotesYou can order the book directly from @VersoBooks.Read an exce
1001 Nights: A Never Ending Story
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,
End of Summer Reading
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 co
The Interesting Case of a Saudi Novel
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.Show Notes: An interview with translator Humphrey Davies.We also talked
Aftershocks
An earthquake inspired Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Agadir, published in French in 1967 and translated to English by Jake Syersack and Pierre Joris. Part playtext, part novel, part political essay, part poem, this insurrection of a book takes as its starting point the devastating 1960 earthquake that struck the Moroccan city. Show Notes: We also talked about a few recently published and forthcoming poe
The Book of Travels
We talk to scholar Elias Muhanna about translating a magical, delightful eighteenth-century travelogue. In 1707 Hanna Diyab journeyed from his native Aleppo as translator to a rapacious and sometimes ridiculous Frenchman. He survived a shipwreck and a pirate attack, met King Louis XIV, and gave The Thousand and One Nights translator Antoine Galland a dozen new stories. Cheated out of a promised jo
Stories Just Sprout Inside You
An Interview with Maria Dadouch, who won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Children’s Literature this year. Dadouch’s book The Mystery of the Glass ball features two children becoming friends, fighting villains and protecting nature on a train ride in the near future. We talked about the need for more Arabic YA books; contemporary sci-fi; literary prizes; digital publishing and why writing for teena
Poems from Palestine
We read from the work of Palestinian poets Maya Abu Al Hayyat, Fady Joudah, Asmaa Azaizeh and Najwan Darwish, who writes: “Death has liberated me/ from the shackles of our small jailers,/ just as poetry has liberated us/ from the greatest jailer–time.”Show NotesMaya Abu Al-Hayyat’s You Can Be The Last Leaf, Trans. Fady Joudah, is out from Milkweed EditionsNajwan Darwish’s Collection Exhausted On t
87+ Bonus: Book Quiz
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
‘Kids Take Over!’: On Sonia Nimr’s Thunderbird
Guest hosts Rafael (age 11) and Milo (almost 10) take over this episode of Bulaq to talk about the evil aunts, time-traveling djinn, and scary checkpoints in the first book of Palestinian novelist Sonia Nimr's fast-paced fantasy trilogy: Thunderbird.Show NotesThe first Thunderbird novel is available from University of Texas Press. The second is forthcoming this fall.Educators interested in joining
86+ Bonus: Book Quiz
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. One of our astute listeners has given the answer to last week's question: What Koranic and Biblical story is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's “Paradise”? The answer to this week's question is within the Moroccan novel “Hot Maroc” — and our last episode about it. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer
‘Hot Maroc’: An Internet Troll Novel
Translator Alexander E. Elinson joins us to discuss Yassin Adnan's Hot Maroc, a sprawling satire of contemporary Morocco. The novel, set in Marrakesh and online, follows the story of Rahhal Laouina, aka “The Squirrel,” who finds his voice as an anonymous internet troll – and then has it co-opted by the country's security apparatus. While it paints a bleak picture of the possibilities of political
85+ Bonuz: Book Quiz
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an island that was part of a Sultanate spanning Oman and East Africa, and that features in our last two episodes. And we ask about a Koranic and Biblical story that is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will ge
Of Human Bondage: Abdulrazak Gurnah’s ‘Paradise’
Paradise, by 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, is the coming-of-age story of Yusuf, a Tanzanian boy sent into debt servitude when his father can't pay back an Arab merchant. Yusuf travels into the interior with “Uncle Aziz” and other vivid characters, to trade with the “savages” there. The story takes place on the cusp of World War I, set in the wake of mass enslavement and the advent of
84+ Bonus: Book Quiz
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an Arab poet who emigrated to the US and translated some of the Beat poets. And we ask a question about Oman, where Jokha Alharthi's “Bitter Orange Tree,” discussed in our last episode, is set. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail
Reading Life Backwards: Omani Novelist Jokha Alharthi
Jokha Alharthi burst to sudden international literary stardom in 2019, when her second novel, Sayyidat al-Qamr (tr. Marilyn Booth as Celestial Bodies), won the International Booker. The novel, touted as the “first by an Omani woman to be translated to English,” has since appeared in languages around the world. More novels by Omani women, including Bushra Khalfan's The Garden, are forthcoming in En
83+Bonus: Book Quiz
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question from Episode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features Bedouin migration from Egypt to Libya. In our last episode with guest Mona Kareem we talked about self-translation and “writing in Arabic in the US” and our next question is about a writer
Mona Kareem on Translation as Kidnapping
Mona Kareem's essay “Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations” lit up debates among translators and poets. In this episode Kareem talks about poetry, the power dynamics of translation, and the relationship of both to migration, exile, self-censorship, and publication. She also reads from her poetry, both in her own translation and in translation by poet @SaraFarag.Essays by Mona
82+Bonus: Book Quiz
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question from Episode 81, “Naguib Mahfouz's Banned Book” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding one of the books we discussed in Episode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features Bedouin migration from Egypt to Libya. Send your best guesses to bu
Stealing, Drug-dealing, & the Epic of Egyptian Migration
Two very different Egyptian novels – Hamdi Abu Golayyel's The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Mohamed Kheir's Slipping – both circle around issues of migration in different ways. Abu Golayyel's Men (originally The Rise and Fall of the Saad Shin), translated by Humphrey Davies, is an anti-epic epic told in a rough, powerful storyteller's voice, following men as they move from Egypt to Libya and Italy
81+ Bonus: Book Quiz
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 80, “Just Different: Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding the subject of Episode 81, Nabuig Mahfouz. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond w
Naguib Mahfouz's Banned Book
What was so controversial about Children of the Alley, leading to it being banned for years in Egypt and to an attempt on the author's life? How and when was it published, criticized, understood? Mohamed Shoair delves into all of this in his literary investigation The Story of the Banned Book: Naguib Mahfouz's Children Of The Alley (trans. Humphrey Davies). It's a study of literary censorship and
80+ Bonus: Book Quiz
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 79, "Not Yet Defeated," and a new challenge for listeners around our Episode 80 focus, Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf. After you've listened, send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener t
Just Different: Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf
She was an outsider, an experimenter, a “rebel realist” and a feminist. You may not have read the short stories of Malika Moustadraf (1969-2006), since her work fell out of print after her untimely death. But tales of Moustadraf's fierce talent never stopped circulating, and now her work is back in print in Arabic and also set to appear in Alice Guthrie's English translation.The US and UK editions
Not Yet Defeated
Egypt's January 25 revolution was 11 years ago. Since then many of its young leaders have been persecuted and the history of what happened distorted or denied. We look at writing that remembers and resists. Alaa Abd El-Fattah's You Have Not Yet Been Defeated was translated by a collective, and is out from Fizcarraldo Editions in the UK. A US edition is forthcoming in March 2022 from Seven Stories
We Read Ramallah
The Book of Ramallah collects stories set in and around Palestine's administrative capital, which, Maya Abu Al-Hayat writes in her introduction, “represents this mirage, this glimmer of hope that isn't real, to many writers.”Show Notes: Book of Ramallah, edited by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, is available from Comma Press. You can read “Love in Ramallah” by Ibrahim Nasrallah, translated by Mohammed Ghalaien
Midnight in Cairo
Raph Cormack is author of Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring ‘20s, which chronicles the lives of many of Egypt's biggest stars of the early twentieth century. Show Notes: The Amar Foundation has an archive of Mounira al-Mahdiyya songs such as the one we end the show with, "اسمع اغاني المهدية" Raph also wrote about “Queer Life in Cairo in the 1920s” for the Gay and Lesbian Review. Hos
A Thousand And One Dreams
An abbreviated version of The Nights will be coming out in Fall 2021, in Seale's translation for W. W. Norton. The fuller Nights is currently set for 2023. You can follow the Nights Bot, with which Seale shares fragments of her translation, on Twitter. You can watch a recording of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2020 The Bookseller Webinar -The global influence of the Arabian Nights, with Richard van
Best of 2021
For our end-of-year book list, we made up our own categories -- from “best poet I hadn't heard of before” ” to “best book about cannibalism” to “best book that lived up to the hype” -- and added a few more along the way. It's a journey through 10 books that struck us and stayed with us this year. Show NotesBest literary cookbook for children (MLQ): Arab Fairy Tale Feasts, Karim al-Rawi, ill. Nahid
The Book of Travels
We talk to scholar Elias Muhanna about translating a magical, delightful eighteenth-century travelogue. In 1707 Hanna Diyab journeyed from his native Aleppo as translator to a rapacious and sometimes ridiculous Frenchman. He survived a shipwreck and a pirate attack, met King Louis XIV, and gave The Thousand and One Nights translator Antoine Galland a dozen new stories. Cheated out of a promised jo
So Kill Them Back!
We look at new writing from Syria and about the experiences of Syrian refugees, including Ramy Al-Asheq's Ever Since I Did Not Die, a book he categorizes not as poetry or prose but as “pieces of my body, haphazardly brought together in a paper bag.”Show NotesRamy Al-Asheq's Ever Since I Did Not Die was translated by Isis Nusair and edited by Levi Thompson.Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay was translat
Poems from Palestine
We read from the work of Palestinian poets Maya Abu Al Hayyat, Fady Joudah, Asmaa Azaizeh and Najwan Darwish, who writes: “Death has liberated me/ from the shackles of our small jailers,/ just as poetry has liberated us/ from the greatest jailer–time.”Show NotesIn Palestine these days, the olive harvest is under assault from Israeli settlers. Six prominent Palestinian human rights and civil socier
Walking Through Fire: A Look Back at Nawal El Saadawi
The Egyptian feminist writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi always spoke her mind. Her early books were explosive testimonials, based on her medical practice and personal experience, about sexual double standards and the abuses women faced because of them. She went on to write many more books, including novels, plays and several memoirs. Over the course of her life she was jailed, censored, fired, ad
Warda: Diary of a Revolutionary
Sonallah Ibrahim's Warda is the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her. We discuss the vibrant and mysterious female character at the heart of one of Ibrahim's most ambitious literary projects with scholar, editor and translator Hosam Aboul-ela. As Aboul-ela wri
Football Writing: The Passion and the Provocation
Football and Arabic literature haven't always had an easy relationship. Football has inspired famous authors like Mahmoud Darwish, and anonymous fans who have composed powerful stadium chants. But the sport is sometimes looked down on by writers. We celebrate the sport and its chroniclers, featured in the FOOTBALL-themed fall 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly.SHOW NOTESToday, we talk our way through
What You May Have Missed
We're back! Catch up on everything you missed over the summer, including Women in Translation Month and a Fall reading list full of intriguing new titles. Show Notes: In our opening, Marcia reads "Four Years Without You" (For Mahmoud Darwish) by Samar Abdel Jabar, trans. Zeina Hashem BeckAugust was Women in Translation Month with ArabLit highlighting Arab women authors you may not have heard of ye
Iman Mersal: Books You Need To Read & Need to Write
Iman Mersal's work spans poetry and scholarship, personal essay and biography. In 2021, Mersal received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for her deeply insightful prose work In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat. SHOW NOTESThis 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 sti
Impostures: A Rogue’s Many Tales
The Maqamat of Al-Hariri is a story collection from 11th century Iraq that showcases the Arabic language's dazzling, disorienting possibilities. Michael Cooperson received the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his ground-breaking translation. SHOW NOTESThis 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 l
Driss Chraibi’s Portrait of an Angry Young Man
This episode focuses on Driss Chraibi's The Simple Past (Le Passé Simple), a Moroccan novel about a very angry young man in revolt against his father's tyranny and the hypocrisies of his colonial education. Back in 1954, it was compared to an explosion – and it still packs a punch today. Show Notes:The Simple Past was newly re-issued from NYRB Classics in Hugh A. Harter's 1990 translation, with a
A Conversation in Cairo About Making Art Under Pressure
We recorded this episode in Cairo with author, translator, and Mada Masr culture editor Yasmine Zohdi. We talked about making art in difficult and precarious times; how to acknowledge the political context; censorship and self-censorship. “What we talk about when we talk about trees,” by Yasmine Zohdi, ran in Mada Masr in December of last year.We also spoke about the shrinking of cultural spaces i
Work-Lit Balance
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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Karl Sharro Only Takes Soccer Seriously
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 notesKarl Sharro spoke about Karl ReMarks' new book, And then God Created the Middle East and Said ‘Let There Be Breaking News' (and Analysis). The book is forthcoming July
The Interesting Case of a Saudi Novel
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.Show Notes: An interview with translator Humphrey Davies.We also talked
Aftershocks
An earthquake inspired Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine's Agadir, published in French in 1967 and translated to English by Jake Syersack and Pierre Joris. Part playtext, part novel, part political essay, part poem, this insurrection of a book takes as its starting point the devastating 1960 earthquake that struck the Moroccan city. Show Notes: We also talked about a few recently published and forthcoming poe
Women In Love and In Lust
We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers brings together fiction and poetry by more than 70 women over a span of more than 1500 years. Editor Selma Dabbagh talks about why it's hard to write about sex, and the difficult balance of reaching readers.Show Notes: The digital launch of We Wrote in Symbols, published by Saqi Books, is scheduled for April 29, hosted by the Arab British Ce
We Read Ramallah
The Book of Ramallah collects stories set in and around Palestine's administrative capital, which, Maya Abu Al-Hayat writes in her introduction, “represents this mirage, this glimmer of hope that isn't real, to many writers.”Show Notes: Book of Ramallah, edited by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, is available from Comma Press. You can read “Love in Ramallah” by Ibrahim Nasrallah, translated by Mohammed Ghalaien
