Texts After the Screaming
Samar Yazbek, Karim Kattan on National Book Award Longlist
Classic Short Fiction from Tunisia: ‘Hajj Zayan’
Fiction
Stealing Sleep, Reclaiming Tomorrow
In the opening pages of The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem (tr. Sinan Antoon), Palestinian protagonist, Gharib Haifawi, recounts how he was dubbed the “sleep thief” by his interrogators during his imprisonment.
Poetry
Texts After the Screaming
Nour Balousha wrote these two poems “after I stopped screaming, not because it ended, but because I grew too exhausted to keep screaming.”
The Red Suns, Purple Moons, and Gun-Carrying Mice of Syrian Poet Da’ad Haddad
“In her poetry world, the sun is red. The moon is purple. Snow is ubiquitous. Winter is eternal.”
Interviews
On Music, Memory, and Damascus
“Music is one of the arts most connected to place, as it is a physical vibration in a space.”
On Shaping ‘The Book of Damascus’
The Book of Damascus, ed. Zaher Omareen, is a new anthology in their “Reading the City” series. Here, editor Zaher Omareen talks with Fifi Bat-hef about selecting ten stories to represent a city as complex and storied as Damascus.
Palestinian Sittis and the Inheritance of Memories
In this conversation, Hooda Shawa offers inspiring insight into her experience writing such a personal and powerful novel as well as herself as an author.
In Focus
From the archives
Safia Ketou: The First Algerian Sci-fi Novelist of Post-independence Algeria
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.”
‘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.”