Happy Police Day!
No, it’s not irony. Nor is it a straightforward celebration of “police” and “security.” Not that security is necessarily a bad thing: I do applaud the Egyptian police for doing […]
January 2010
Callaloo 32:4: Featuring Arab Authors
The Callaloo website is a wee bit behind; good that Laila Lalami put out the alert about the current edition featuring Middle Eastern/North African authors. Callaloo 32: 4 features poetry […]
Arabic Literature’s ‘Epic Unwillingness’
I haven’t read Passage 62, just the summary up at Eurozine, but who can resist a phrase like “epic unwillingness,” as applied to the literature of a whole, long-lived, world-spanning […]
Abdelkader Benali Wins E. du Perron Prize
The Moroccan-born, Dutch-living Abdelkader Benali has won the prestigious E. du Perron prize for his novel, My Mother’s Voice. Yes, the novel was in Dutch (not Arabic, and isn’t this […]
Beirut39 in Cairo (Well, Not All 39)
There are five Egyptians on the “Beirut39” list, the celebrated 39 up-and-coming Arab writers under 40. They are: Hamdy el Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin , Mohamed Salah Al Azab, Nagat […]
What to Make of the Abu Dhabi Book Fair
“I would like to see this fair not as a miniature version of Frankfurt, but as something in its own right.” Something more colorful, says Abu Dhabi Book Fair manager […]
Owais Awards Go to Al Maqaleh, Wattar, Al Masdi, and Amin
Four men have won this year’s Sultan Bin Al Owais Cultural Foundation Awards: a poet, a novelist, a critic, and Galal Amin. (I’m not sure what to call him. An […]
Graphic Novels: ‘Everybody’s Doing Them’
That’s the School Library Journal’s assessment of the U.S. ALA convention: Graphic novels are everywhere, raining down from children’s-book publishers. And, of course, they’re not just for kids any more: […]
Forthcoming Arabic Lit in 2010: The Non-AUC Presses
There are three big books I’m looking forward to in 2010: Sonallah Ibrahim’s Stealth* (out from Aflame in February), Elias Khoury’s White Masks, (out from from Archipelago in April), and […]