The Latest

It’s publication day for Mohammed Alyahyai’s The War, in Christiaan James’s translation. In this opening passage, Issa Saleh prepares for an evening gathering—only to find that something, or someone, has slipped out of reach.

At this point in ‘The Country Doctor’s Tale,’ the titular country doctor is returning from a house call when he suddenly discovers political posters everywhere, even on the walls of the clinic.

“So you are still determined to sell the three mules?”

“The city wakes up in obituaries.”

“I want to step out on my balcony and hang my laughter out on the clothesline, so that passersby can catch hold of it, scale the wall to the fourth floor, and laugh with me.”

In this conversation with acclaimed Egyptian novelist Mohamed Mansi Qandil, we discuss his latest novel to reach English, The Country Doctor’s Tale, the relationship between doctoring and writing, the novels that shaped him, and why he’d like to see The Country Doctor’s Tale as a film or TV series.

Marilyn Booth reflects on her experience translating Zahran Alqasmi’s work and provides insight on greater questions of translation.

The”Translating Oman” event, hosted by Syracuse University Press, featured a discussion about Omani literature and translation.

“The word eib rings in my head, it is eib to love, to sing, to get sick, to divorce, to show your emotions…and.…and. I felt these social chains were burdening me with fear, despair, and confusion, and I almost abandoned work on the book, but when I looked at the materials that I had collected, I knew that if I didn’t publish it now, it would never be published.”

“The divide among poets has added a diaspora to the spatial diaspora, which scattered Syrians around the world.”