By Samira Meghdessian The importance of historiography lies in ensuring a continuity between past and present, even as bombs erase everything that has been built, as we have witnessed recently in Gaza, or as homes are destroyed and families evicted, as in cities and villages across historic Palestine. Ramallah is not the oldest of Palestinian cities. In her introduction to The Book of Ramallah, author Maya Abu al-Hayyat describes it as “a seemingly modest city ...
A few years ago, when we asked Egyptian novelist Miral al-Tahawy for a favorite book in Arabic by a woman writer, she said, “Truth is, there is a long list of Arab women’s work that I’m sure was important in the history of my reading, but what I remember is the last text I read that had a profound impact on me, and that’s Duna Ghali’s Orbits of Loneliness (منازل الوحشة), a novel that tells ...
The forthcoming collection Bidayàt, ed. Aldo Nicosia, brings together the openings of twenty-two different Arabic novels; these are translated into Italian by Nicosia with the help of two other translators. For ArabLit, Nicosia sat down in front of the mirror and conducted a somewhat impertinent interview with himself about the project. Interviewer: Mr. Nicosia, why Bidayàt? What new does it add to the Italian cultural landscape? Aldo Nicosia: Bidayàt is an anthology that, as its ...
A few years ago, when we asked Egyptian novelist Miral al-Tahawy for a favorite book in Arabic by a woman writer, she said, “Truth is, there is a long list of Arab women’s work that I’m sure was important in ...
Najem Wali’s 2024 novel My Romantic Aunt, published by Rewayat, follows a man’s relationship with his boundary-breaking aunt. From ‘My Romantic Aunt: Her friends, Her Relationships, and Me’ By Najem Wali Translated by Nada Hodali About Her My “Romantic Aunt.” Whoever ...
In Abdulaziz al-Saqabi’s A Drop of Alcohol, the search for an absent brother turns into a journey of self-discovery. A Drop of Alcohol By Abdulaziz al-Saqabi Translated by Lily Sadowsky Chapter One “Who are you afraid of? Go on, get a move on ...
The forthcoming collection Bidayàt, ed. Aldo Nicosia, brings together the openings of twenty-two different Arabic novels; these are translated into ...
“Our anonymous author was most probably a gourmet cook himself but not necessarily a professional cook. He might have had a profession like those people to support his family, and wrote about cooking, his passion.”
This look at the women who seem to have disappeared in scholarship about the Arabic popular epics is a re-run from Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) last year.
“My book really is an examination of how he participated in the coup ,and how he believed fundamentally that the Free Officers were going to install democracy, and—once he realized that they were actually installing military dictatorship—the way he dissented, in the editorials and in person, the way that he was jailed, and the way he turned to fiction to express his dissent directly to Nasser.”