Dial 1401 for Poetry
Novels may not be in every (Arab) hand, but poetry lives and breathes, particularly on the peninsula. This is not necessarily the poetry that one would recognize in the West—our […]
January 2010
The Poetry of Absence
At a recent Cairo literary event, my friend Yasmine P.—who has spent the last three years living in Jerusalem, and continues to travel back frequently to finish her documentary film—complained […]
End of January ’10 News and Events
From Reading Morocco: Reading Crisis Alarms Moroccan Writers. As it is here, so it is elsewhere. The quotes put the blame on readers, although I am not so sure the […]
Cairo Book Fair Starts Today
The greatest literary show on Earth, we’re not. The General Egyptian Book Organization calls it a “massive literary festival,” and oh, it’s massive all right. The fair’s at the International […]
Missing from Cairo’s Beirut39 Event: Ahmad Yamani
Yamani, who apparently is traveling, is the Egyptian writer missing from Kotob Khan’s Beirut39 reading and discussion. Sousan Hammad has a new (short) interview with him on the Beirut39 blog. […]
A Literary Event Where Everyone Knows How Old You Are
Last night, I attended the Beirut39 event at Kotob Khan (bookstore, although it feels strange to write “Book store bookstore”). We did not get to know the authors’ weights and […]
More Money to Jump-start Arabic Children’s Lit
Arabic children’s-book publisher Kalimat has just received a 1.5-dirham ($408,000 U.S.) sponsorship from Gulftainer. This prestigious publishing house, exclusively for children, has seen just over 40 books into print. It […]
One-minute Review: /The Zafarani Files/, Gamal el-Ghitani
The Zafarani Files. By Gamal el-Ghitani, translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab. American University in Cairo Press: Cairo, 2009. 344 pages. In The Zafarani Files, as in Saramago’s Blindness, mysterious illness […]
An Interview with Sami Michael
Sami Michael is an Iraqi-born, Israeli author. Claudia De Martino interviews him for Med Arab News. I was particularly interested in his switch-over from writing in Arabic to writing in […]