‘So Much Survives the Process of Translation’
Yes, it’s Halloween, but it’s also nearly time for this year’s Arab-focused London Poetry Festival. Spooooky!
October 2010
Dr. Naif Al Mutawa: Book Censorship is Killing Arabic
Dr. Naif Al Mutawa—creator of extremely successful comic series The 99—had long dreamt of creating comics. When he was in his twenties in his native Kuwait, he wrote and published his first two books.
Alaa Al-Aswany on the Unauthorized Hebrew Translation of ‘The Yacoubian Building’
According to The Associated Press, best-selling Egyptian author Alaa Al Aswany has lashed out at an unauthorized Hebrew translation of his most popular novel. He has called it, unsurprisingly, intellectual theft.
British vs. American Dialect in Translating ‘The American Granddaughter’
One thing is bothering me. The narrator’s diction is quite high—a working-class girl from Detroit says, “I pulled into the spacious parking lot in front of Wal-Mart….” Fine. Something has elevated this character, putting her outside of ordinary American speech. I haven’t read so far that I can see the full effects, but I can appreciate the decision.
New Blog: ‘Graphic Novels in the Middle East’
Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies Outreach Center has just started up a new blog for its 2010 – 2011 program on comics and graphic novels. The information is […]
Big-Money Sheikh Zayed Award Stripped Over Allegations of Plagiarism
Yesterday, Sheikh Zayed Award organizers announced that Algerian scholar Dr. Hafnaouoi Ba’li—who’d been awarded the 2010 Sheikh Zayed literature prize for his Comparative Cultural Criticism—had been stripped of the award. […]
Sharjah International Book Fair Opens Tomorrow
The Sharjah International Book Fair opens tomorrow, and—although perhaps not as glittery as the March fairs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi—it’s reportedly the second most well-attended book fair in the region. This follows our slightly crowded (2 million visitors), slightly chaotic (map? what map) exhibition in Cairo.
Iraqi Literature in Translation: A Brief Introduction
Yet Iraqi literature continues, somehow, to blossom. There are older writers Fadhil al-Azzawi and Muhammad Khudayyir still at work (although the former in exile), and much younger ones, too: Thirtysomething Iraqi Hassan Blassim has been called “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive.”
Is There or Ain’t There Arabic Science Fiction?
Last year in The Guardian, Nesrine Malik published a widely-quoted lament about the disappearance of science fiction from contemporary Arabic literature.