English PEN Writers in Translation announced yesterday that four books had garnered supporting awards for the first half of 2012. They are: Ryszard Kapuścinśki: The Biography, by Artur Domosławski, translated […]
I haven’t seen a copy of Hawra al-Nadawi’s تحت سماء كوبنهاغن, although I must admit to a slight fear of books with leaping women on their covers. (Why do publishers […]
Embrace at the Brooklyn Bridge, a novel by former Egyptian diplomat (and current novelist-professor-commentator) Ezzedine Choukri Fishere, is the second of Fishere’s novels to be longlisted for the prize popularly […]
International Prize for Arabic Fiction organizers announced today that: Given the current turmoil in Cairo and our awareness of, and respect for, the suffering and anxieties of many of those […]
Poet, essayist, and playwright Muhammad al-Maghut—called one of the revolutionaries of the (Arabic) free verse movement—was born in 1934 in Salamiya, Syria. According to Robin Yassin-Kassab over at Qunfuz, “Al-Maghut […]
Two novels that I’ve read of late, one from Egypt (Mona Prince’s So You May See) and one by a Syrian (Fadi Azzam’s Sarmada), have depictions of sex that would […]
I am just now finishing a first read of Ali Bader’s حارس التبغ (The Tobacco Keeper, trans. Amira Nowaira), and it has struck me, again and again, how different the […]
In the inaugural Egypt Independent , published yesterday by Al Masry Al Youm, I have a review of The Granta Book of the African Short Story, edited by Helon Habila. The […]
I’m as yet only half-way through Sarmada, but yalla, we’ll never get through the longlist by Dec. 7 at this snail’s pace. The shortlist was originally scheduled to be announced […]
