The Latest

“It was five o’clock in the morning. The station, faintly illuminated by dim lamps, lay beneath a murky canopy of locomotive smoke. Qasim stood beside the steps of one of the coaches, gazing at the station clock.”

This excerpt appeared in the FOOTBALL issue of ArabLit Quarterly, which you can still get in print and digital. 

This week, we’re celebrating the World Cup with work from our Fall 2021 FOOTBALL issue.

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

In celebration of the World Cup, a football chant from Egypt.

“I pace this room alone, / fingertips brushing the wall, / memorizing each mark, each echo.”

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.

Today, Kawthar al-Jahmi talks about her writing and reading journeys, the role of literary prizes, submitting her novel to the publisher a day before giving birth, and developing a writing practice while working and raising children.

This month, Hoopoe Fiction (an imprint of AUC Press) publishes Charles Akl’s debut novel Red Like Orange, which won a 2023 Sawiris Cultural Award. Now, three years later, Sarah Enany’s translation of this novel is available to a new readership.

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,

“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.”