The Latest

On the Scottish Bilingual Publishing House 'Sunono' & the Importance of Chapter Books for Kids

On the Scottish Bilingual Publishing House ‘Sunono’ & the Importance of Chapter Books for Kids

Interviews /
Sunono Publishing -- a Scotland-based bilingual book operation -- is one of the newer publishers making an impact on the landscape of Arabic children's literature and translation.  This month, Sunono brings out an English edition of their beloved chapter book الرقم 25, translated by ArabLit editor M Lynx Qualey. We talk author Feda Shtia, who launched Sunono in 2018 "with the aim of creating books that encourage children to read and learn Arabic with pleasure." What made ...

’10/11 Heralds the Turning of a Page’: Sandra Hetzl & Katharine Halls on Their New Literary Agency

'10/11 Heralds the Turning of a Page': Sandra Hetzl & Katharine Halls on Their New Literary Agency
Interviews /
By M Lynx Qualey Headed up by Sandra Hetzl, Katharine Halls, and Alice Guthrie, 10/11 is "a literary agency operating in Europe that specializes in bold, exciting, contemporary Arabic literature." They represent a select group of literary writers that includes Haytham El-Wardany, Rasha Abbas, Ahmed Naji, Bushra Khalfan, and Mohammad Rabie. Here, two of 10/11's agents talk about their tastes and selection criteria, how they divide their work, and what they love (and don't) about ...

Arabic Literature for Young Readers: 10 Publishers to Know

Arabic Literature for Young Readers: 10 Publishers to Know
Lit Lists /
As a way of marking #WorldKidLitMonth (which you can follow at @worldkidlit and worldkidlit.org), we are profiling 10 publishers that have a focus on children's literature in Arabic. While some have been around since the 1980s and 90s, such as the Tamer Institute and Al Salwa Books, most are more recent. Indeed, it has been in the last 20+ years, since around the turn of the century, that the landscape of Arabic children's literature has ...

Fiction

Short Fiction in Translation: Ghassan Kanafani’s ‘The Crucified Sheep’

Short Fiction in Translation: Ghassan Kanafani’s ‘The Crucified Sheep’
Introduction by Rachel Green This previously untranslated story, written in Kuwait in 1960 and published in Kanafani’s first collection, Death of Bed 12 (1961), provides a glimpse into some of the concerns of the author’s early Kuwait writings, or what ...

New Fiction in Translation & an Author Talk: Said Khatibi’s ‘The End of the Sahara’

New Fiction in Translation & an Author Talk: Said Khatibi's 'The End of the Sahara'
In the latest episode of the BULAQ podcast, Episode 100, co-hosts Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey talk to Algerian novelist Said Khatibi about his novel The End of the Sahara, which won the 2023 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the “young ...

Short Fiction in Translation: Najwa Binshatwan’s ‘The Eavesdropper’

Short Fiction in Translation: Najwa Binshatwan's 'The Eavesdropper'
By Najwa Binshatwan Translated by Salma Moustafa Khalil  She went to the library in the morning and stayed for two hours. She called the plumber as soon as she left; there was a leak in the bathroom. She gave a ...

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Poetry

Monday Poetry: Two Readings by Mona Kareem and Sara Elkamel

Monday Poetry: Two Readings by Mona Kareem and Sara Elkamel
Last May, poet-translator team Mona Kareem and Sara Elkamel launched I Will Not Fold These Maps, a collection of Kareems poems translated ...

Sunday Submissions: Modern Poetry in Translation ‘Water’ Focus

Sunday Submissions: Modern Poetry in Translation 'Water' Focus
Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) have opened calls for submissions for its forthcoming issue, with ‘water’ as its theme.  They ...

Summer Reads: ‘Rice Pudding for Two’

Summer Reads: 'Rice Pudding for Two'

“Take a pinch of cinnamon with one hand and a pinch of vanilla with the other; delicately sprinkle both into the mixture. Now rub your hands together and bring your attention to your neck, patting your palms against it. This detail is essential for a good rice pudding.”

...

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Interviews

On the Scottish Bilingual Publishing House ‘Sunono’ & the Importance of Chapter Books for Kids

On the Scottish Bilingual Publishing House 'Sunono' & the Importance of Chapter Books for Kids
Sunono Publishing — a Scotland-based bilingual book operation — is one of the newer publishers making an impact on the ...

’10/11 Heralds the Turning of a Page’: Sandra Hetzl & Katharine Halls on Their New Literary Agency

'10/11 Heralds the Turning of a Page': Sandra Hetzl & Katharine Halls on Their New Literary Agency
By M Lynx Qualey Headed up by Sandra Hetzl, Katharine Halls, and Alice Guthrie, 10/11 is “a literary agency operating ...

‘I Cannot Ignore the Pain in People’s Faces’: Badriyah al-Badri on Writing About Expatriate Workers in Oman

'I Cannot Ignore the Pain in People's Faces': Badriyah al-Badri on Writing About Expatriate Workers in Oman
A Conversation with Katherine Van de Vate In 2021, the Omani poet Badriyah Al-Badri made history as the first woman ...

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Country Focus


From the archives

14th-Century Cookbook ‘Profoundly Rich Resource for Egyptian Culinary Heritage’

14th-Century Cookbook 'Profoundly Rich Resource for Egyptian Culinary Heritage'

“Our anonymous author was most probably a gourmet cook himself but not necessarily a professional cook. He might have had a profession like those people to support his family, and wrote about cooking, his passion.”

...

Jonathan Smolin on the Relationship Between Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s Politics and His Novels

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.”

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‘When Darkness Falls’: On the Shortened, Brilliant Life of Iraqi Author Hayat Sharara

'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.”

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