The Latest

On Finding Community Through Adabiyat

On Finding Community Through Adabiyat

Nonfiction /
Adabiyat is a virtual book club for readers of Arabic literature to come together monthly and debate, interpret, and appreciate written works of the Arab world and its diaspora. Houcine Chraïbi is a member of this club and writes of how his enlightening experiences during meetings and the welcoming energy of the Adabiyat community has rekindled his relationship with reading and enriched his life. ...

Maria Douaihy: ‘The Play is Everything’

Maria Douaihy: ‘The Play is Everything’
Reviews /
“With Yehia, the play is everything. So, we make sure that sets, costumes and props fit in one car. This way we are ready to perform at short notice." - Maria Douaihy on "Qornet el Bayda." ...

‘A New Year in Gaza’: By Ibrahim Nasrallah

'A New Year in Gaza': By Ibrahim Nasrallah
Gaza, Poetry /
The people named in this poem are the writers, painters, and musicians martyred in the genocide. They are only a few of the many artists who were martyred in the past two years of war against Gaza ...

Fiction

Part Two, Emile Habiby’s ‘The Six-Day Sextet’

Part Two, Emile Habiby's 'The Six-Day Sextet'

Over the next six weeks, we will be publishing installments of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet, which is available in an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman. The next installment is set to appear February 16, 2026.

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Part One, Emile Habiby’s ‘The Six-Day Sextet’

Part One, Emile Habiby's 'The Six-Day Sextet'

Over the next six weeks, we will be publishing installments of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet, which is available in an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman. The next installment is set to appear February 9, 2026.

...

New Short Fiction from Kuwait: ‘The Phone Call’

New Short Fiction from Kuwait: 'The Phone Call'

In this short fiction from Kuwait, the central character and his author are in a standoff over a telephone call.

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Poetry

‘A New Year in Gaza’: By Ibrahim Nasrallah

'A New Year in Gaza': By Ibrahim Nasrallah

The people named in this poem are the writers, painters, and musicians martyred in the genocide. They are only a few of the many artists who were martyred in the past two years of war against Gaza.

...

Three Poems by Nima Hasan

Three Poems by Nima Hasan

“Hold me before the game ends. / Like everything else, / grief needs time / to become a language.”

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New Poetry in Translation: ‘From a Country That Was’

New Poetry in Translation: 'From a Country That Was'

“The temperature dipped a little / but the country’s still burning—”

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Interviews

On Translating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

On Translating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra

Will Tamplin has devoted much of his work in translation to sharing the literary world of the exceptionally complex Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. In this interview, Tamplin explores his motivation behind this continuous dedication to Jabra’s work, as he dives into his experience translating The Other Rooms.

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Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder 

Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder 

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Zia Ahmed discuss approaching Arabic translation via English and Urdu, the layers of “outsider-ness” in translation, and the boom of narrative fiction in Oman.

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Sinan Antoon’s ‘Of Loss and Lavender’

Sinan Antoon's 'Of Loss and Lavender'

In this conversation over e-mail, Sinan Antoon talks about the novel, the fraught nature of collective memory, the process of self-translation, and the sort of “security checkpoints” a book must pass through in the process of translation.

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In Focus

From Gaza
Between Two Arabic Translators with Yasmeen Hanoosh
2024 Flash Fiction Finalists

From the archives

A Talk with Poet Golan Haji: ‘Languages Never Draw Geographical Boundaries’

A Talk with Poet Golan Haji: 'Languages Never Draw Geographical Boundaries'

” Jaziri wrote poetry with one set of alphabets which at that time were used in four languages: Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Sometimes, he used the four languages in one couplet. His poems are still recited and sung by Kurds. That coexistence of languages was quite natural, the alluring music was convincing, although I sometimes understood almost nothing.”

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Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship

Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship

“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.”

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Safia Ketou: The First Algerian Sci-fi Novelist of Post-independence Algeria

Safia Ketou: The First Algerian Sci-fi Novelist of Post-independence Algeria
For Women in Translation Month, our Algeria editor writes about one of her favorite discoveries, whose La Planète Mauve et Autres Nouvelles should ...