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Every Alley, a Different Damascus

Every Alley, a Different Damascus

News, Reviews, Syria /
Every Alley, a Different Damascus A Review of 'Book of Damascus,' edited by Zaher Omareen Reviewed by Nada Hodali Upon thinking of a war-ridden country, the first thought is often its political situation. We think of people going through horrendous circumstances, often forgetting that they are also attempting to live a somewhat “normal” life given everything—a normal defined by very different circumstances. The Book of Damascus vividly portrays the many facets of life in Damascus, ...

Fallible Men vs Safynaz Kazem

Fallible Men vs Safynaz Kazem
Nonfiction /
This originally ran in the 2020 ROAD issue of ArabLit Quarterly and appears here for Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), as this year, we're focusing on underappreciated classics in Arabic by women. And, as Hadil Ghoneim writes below, the gifted and sometimes frightening Kazem was "overshadowed, banned, and deliberately ignored" By Hadil Ghoneim I tried to avoid writing about Safynaz Kazem, preferring to let her writing speak for her. I wanted to tune out the problematic politics ...

‘By Candlelight’: Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat

'By Candlelight': Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat
Fiction /
Part of our focus, this Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), is on classic Arabic works by women, especially those at the margins of (or neglected entirely by) critical and readerly attention ...

Fiction

‘By Candlelight’: Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat

'By Candlelight': Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat

Part of our focus, this Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), is on classic Arabic works by women, especially those at the margins of (or neglected entirely by) critical and readerly attention.

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From Zainab Hifni’s ‘I Was Here Yesterday’

From Zainab Hifni's ‘I Was Here Yesterday’

‘I Was Here Yesterday; is set between Saudi Arabia and the Florida coast and entangles grief and memory, centering on how the narrator grapples with her mother’s death and the truths about her mother’s life—and her own—that she uncovers.

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Short Fiction from Syria: ‘The Blacklist’

Short Fiction from Syria: 'The Blacklist'

Haseeb Al-Zainy’s “The Blacklist” appears in the new anthology The Book of Damascus: A City in Short Fiction, out this month from Comma Press. 

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Poetry

Poems of Whiskey and Regret by Rasha Omran

Poems of Whiskey and Regret by Rasha Omran

These poems, translated by Phoebe Carter, are from Rasha Omran’s sixth collection, “A Secret Wife of Absence.”

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New Poetry in Translation: Sayed Abolela’s ‘Cinema’

New Poetry in Translation: Sayed Abolela's 'Cinema'

This poem is from a forthcoming collection,  مصمم معارك, to be published by the General Egyptian Book Organization.

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In Memory: ‘Oh Stones Cloaked in Grief’

In Memory: 'Oh Stones Cloaked in Grief'

In memory of the July 2025 massacres in Sweida, Syria.

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Interviews

On the New Platform, ‘Palestine is Everywhere’

On the New Platform, 'Palestine is Everywhere'

Editors of the anthology Palestine is Everywhere — Skye Arundhati Thomas, Edwin Nasr, and Gloria Habsburg — recently launched a new “Palestine is Everywhere” platform to host a series of monthly commissions, “creating an ongoing space to support and amplify the work of artists, writers, and practitioners from Palestine and the wider region.”

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On the Choice to Write in Colloquial Arabic

On the Choice to Write in Colloquial Arabic

“Some classical poets feel that the popularity of colloquial writers has nothing to do with the quality of their work, but rather because they have chosen the easier path.”

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Translating Trauma, the Trauma of Translating

Translating Trauma, the Trauma of Translating

Here, Leri Price talks about the referred trauma (and guilt) of translating testimonies from a genocide, how she worked with translators bringing the book into other languages, and the particular challenges of translating this book.

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In Focus

From Gaza
Between Two Arabic Translators with Yasmeen Hanoosh
May Goes On: (Re)-Introducing May Ziadeh

From the archives

‘When Darkness Falls’: On the Shortened, Brilliant Life of Iraqi Author Hayat Sharara

'When Darkness Falls': On the Shortened, Brilliant Life of Iraqi Author Hayat Sharara

“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.”

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The Story of a Poem: Refaat Alareer’s ‘If I Must Die’

The Story of a Poem: Refaat Alareer's 'If I Must Die'
By Salih J Altoma  “And in Gaza and the West Bank, a new generation of poets persists. The most famous, ...

In Conversation: The Possibilities for Doing ‘Right’ in 14th Century Morocco & Spain

In Conversation: The Possibilities for Doing ‘Right’ in 14th Century Morocco & Spain
OCTOBER 15, 2024 — Mohamed Seif El Nasr’s debut novel, Then He Sent Prophets, is out today from Daraja Press ...