Which of the Shortlisted 6 from Last Year’s Arabic Booker in Translation?

Fawwaz Haddad’s The Faithful Translator is reviewed this week by Al Ahram regular Youssef Rakha. The review does not mention when the novel—on the ’08-’09 “Arabic Booker” shortlist—might appear in, er, translation.

Of the six shortlisted books from 2008-2009, Mohamed al-Bisatie’s Hunger was out from AUC Press like a shot, in 2008, translated by the quick and prolific Denys Johnson-Davies. Habib Selmi’s The Scent of a Woman will be out this spring, also from AUC Press. The prize’s 2008-2009 winner, Yusuf Ziedan’s Azazeel, should be out from the rather uncommunicative Atlantic Books in the coming months.

Of the remaining two:

The very good translator William Hutchins must be working on Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter; an excerpt has appeared on Brooklyn Rail under the title If I Forget You, Baghdad.

That leaves Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses, about which I’ve seen nothing. I suppose I’ll have to ask.