Saying ‘This Is a Poem’ Asks a Great Deal
Omar Taher’s ‘The Last Cassette Tape in Egypt’
New Poetry in Translation: ‘In My Kitchen’
Fiction
Omar Taher’s ‘The Last Cassette Tape in Egypt’
“After his father died, they found an old English biscuit tin at the bottom of the wardrobe. What lay inside it puzzled him greatly.”
In the City of Flies
Published by Dar al-Shorouk in January 2026, Ahmed ʿAbd al-Manʿam Ramadan’s novel “في مدينة الذباب” (In the City of Flies) presents a dystopian vision of a future city overwhelmed by accumulating rubbish and swarms of flies.
‘A Taste of Bitter Tea’, by Mohammed Alnaas
The title here is borrowed from the French edition, Un goût de thé amer, which was translated by Sarah Rolfo, while the Arabic original is titled العراك في جهنم. This satirical novella is set in a Libyan village called Hell and is a retelling of events our narrator claims took place there in the 1990s.
Poetry
Mahmoud Darwish: ‘The End of Things’
There are events around the world this September 25-27 celebrating the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, after the Arab World Institute and Centre Pompidou declared September 25 to be “Mahmoud Darwish Poetry Day.”
Interviews
Saying ‘This Is a Poem’ Asks a Great Deal
“Before I loved poems, I loved language. As a child I thought many times about inventing a new language and teaching it to the children my age, so that all of us could slip out of the world’s language in a way of our own. It was a childish, almost primal tenderness for words, and I still feel it in me.”
On BULAQ: Reflections on Twenty Years
This episode of the BULAQ podcast asks: What has changed in the last twenty years in Arabic literature, publishing and translation? What has not?
In Conversation with Salim Barakat
“Barakat is forthright, crude, and uncensored in his writings, and he was the same in his responses to my questions. He paints a prophetic picture, neither for himself nor for anyone else.”
In Focus
From the archives
For Valentine’s Day: The Many Loves of Nizar Qabbani
Your love has taught me… how to be sad.
And I have needed, for ages
A woman to make me sad
A woman in whose arms I could weep
Like a sparrow,
‘Resistance and the Palestinian Folk Song’
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.”