, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Best 100 Arabic Books (According to the Arab Writers Union): 61-70

This is where you’ll find 1-10 (and an explanation of this project), and here’s 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60. Please do help me out with errors and omissions.

61 Seeds of Corruption, by the Egyptian author Sabri Moussa, translated by Mona Mikhail, published by Interlink in 2002.

62 Al Saghamat, by the Egyptian author Yusuf al-Sibai

I did find a book about al-Sibai’s novels: The novels of an Egyptian romanticist Yysuf al-Sibai, by Gail Ramsay. Published by Edsbruk.

Al-Sibai also has a story in Egyptian Short Stories, a collection edited by Denys Johnson-Davies.

63 The Emigration to the North of the Children of Hathoot, by the Egyptian writer Majid Tubia was translated by Wadida Wassif and published by the State Publishing House, 1995.

64 After the Sunset, by Egyptian Mohamed Abdel-Halim Abdulla.

Nothing.

65 Hearts on a Wire, by Syrian author Abdel-Salam Ajili.

Nothing.

66 Aisha, by the Tunisian Al-Bashir bin Salamah.

Nothing.

67 The Shadow and the Echo, by the Lebanese writer Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar. Roger Allen translated an extract from Al-Zill wa-al-sada (The Shadow and The Echo), for Banipal 4 (Spring 1999).

Also, there is a story of al-Asqar’s in Modern Arabic Fiction: An Anthology, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, out from Columbia University Press.

Al Ahram Weekly, on the translationg of al-Ashqar:

Perhaps one of the most challenging tasks for the translation of fiction is the rendering of the tone and dialogue of the original. The two short stories by Yusuf Habashi al-Ashqar and Ibrahim Aslan are good examples of this. In al-Ashqar’s short story entitled “The Banquet” (translated by Adnan Haydar and Anthony Thwaite) lyrical prose and symbolic overtones convey the theme of the destructive Lebanese civil war and sectarian strife. Educated at St. Joseph University and at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts, al-Ashqar’s prose is thick and multi-layered as in the following:

Jiryas put his hands on my shoulders . . . His seventy years glowed in his eyes like seventy candles lit in celebration of his sons’ return.

“Every time they return I light the seventy candles. Every time I am born again with them and I dance on the roof for the prodigal who is found.”

68 Al-Daqqala in Arajenha, by the Tunisian author Al-Bashir Khareef.

Nothing.

69 The Slaver, by another Tunisian, Salah al-Din Bujah.

Again, nothing.

70 Door to the Courtyard, by the internationally known Palestinian writer Sahar Khalifeh. Bab el-Saha, however, has not been translated.

Still, you can find at least these four novels by Khalifeh in English: The Inheritance (translated by Aida Bamia, AUC Press); Wild Thorns (Trevor Legassick, and Elizabeth Fernea, Interlink); The End of Spring (Paula Haydar, Interlink); The Image, the Icon and the Covenant (translated by Aida Bamia, Interlink).