Omar Taher’s ‘The Last Cassette Tape in Egypt’
New Poetry in Translation: ‘In My Kitchen’
The Winners: 2026 International Award for Arabic Children’s Literature
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
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.”
‘Writing Is Rediscovering the Tangible’
Born in the mid-1980s, Ahmed Alhokail is among the most distinctive Saudi writers of his generation. In this exchange, he talks about placing the ordinary at the center of the story, classical Arabic narratives as a living model, Najdi oral storytelling and the uncanny, and the “global reader.”
In Focus
From the archives
Authors, Scholars, and Translators Look Back: On Radwa Ashour’s ‘Granada’
The Second Erasure: How Do We Speak of (and with) Political Prisoners?
How do we speak of political prisoners while they are still inside, and how do we speak with them once they’re out? This is not a question about representation, but rather about production; about what we manufacture when we speak or write about political prisoners.
Jonathan Smolin on the Relationship Between Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s Politics and His Novels
“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.”