Celebrating Nazik al-Malaika
Google has dedicated today’s doodle to Iraqi poet Nazik al-Malaika (1922-2007), an early and influential free-verse poet.
August 2011
The Perils of Portraying Islamism in Arab literature
So, the Scylla and Charybdis in literature are the same as in politics, where Scylla is cleaving to Anglo-American stereotypes of Arabs and Charybdis is avoiding the topic of religion, allowing oneself to be limned in by fear and self-censorship.
And the Sun Rises on Libya
#Libya is free
Matar on Libya: This is About ‘a People Trying to Find Their Voice’
This is not about a country removing a dictator, but a people trying to find their voice. #Libya
To Write About Anything in Arabic ‘Would Be Suicidal’
It would be impossible to write anything—it would be suicidal. Fundamentalism is against freedom in general, and freedom for a writer is not just to be free to sit down and write, but to think freely, to express oneself freely. So I think that a fundamentalist society can produce nothing but silence or a literature of opposition written in exile.
Arab Literary Events This Fall in the UK
August: All right, August isn’t the fall, but if you’re at the Edinburgh Book Festival, stop by the Tahar Ben Jelloun and Elias Khoury event on the afternoon of August […]
17 More Rules for Translators from Tiina Nunnally and Ibrahim Muhawi
Award-winning translator Tiina Nunnally has translated over 50 books from the Scandinavian languages. Ibrahim Muhawi was this year’s winner of the PEN translation prize for his beautiful translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s Journal of an Ordinary Grief.
A Short Walk through Tahir Wattar’s ‘The Earthquake’
Interested in the meditations of homicidal religious men revolting against wealth redistribution and threatening retribution? Tahir Wattar’s The Earthquake might be for you.
Update on Harvill-Secker Translation Award
Judge Briony Everroad, an editor at Harvill Secker, said that they received “about 92 entries in the end.” That’s down considerably from last year, when they received 230 for the Spanish-English translation of”‘El Hachazo” by Matías Néspolo.