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.”

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.

In this conversation with Neil Hewison, we discuss what brought him to Mohamed Mansi Qandil’s The Country Doctor’s Tale, the pleasures of the Egyptian village novel, Mansi Qandil’s attention to women’s pain, and what makes a “modern classic.”

“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.”

“In Ways of the Lord, Christians are mistaken for being Jews and are accused of spying for Israel, which demonstrates the lack of recognition of Copts and their conflation with other minorities.”