An Olympic Poetry Map of the World
Art competitions no longer make up a part of the Olympics (oh, and thank goodness, really), but The Guardian nonetheless made an interactive map of verse from each Olympic nation.
July 2012
‘God Is Not a Policeman’: Helmi Salem Dies at 61
Egyptian poet Helmi Salem, one of the nation’s leading “’70s poets,” died this past Saturday, following a long battle with lung cancer. He was 61.
Translation of Nihad Sirees’s ‘The Silence and the Roar’ Due in January 2013
Max Weiss’s translation of Nihad Sirees’s 2004 novel “الصمت والصخب” — The Silence and the Roar — is due out from Pushkin Press in January of next year.
July Online: Arab and Arabic Writing in Translation
A few of the selected translations I’ve been reading online. Poetry from “Tales of a Severed Head,” by Moroccan writer Rachida Madani, trans. Marilyn Hacker. It opens: Each poem is […]
5 Questions on Translating a Graphic Novel
My piece about author-illustrator Magdy El Shafee, his graphic novel Metro, (and its English-language edition) has now run in the print edition of the Egypt Independent / International Herald Tribune. IsA it will be coming soon to the online edition. Meantime, the full Q&A with translator Chip Rossetti that informed the piece:
Call for Papers, Workshop: Politics and (Arabic) Children’s Books
The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) has taken up some of my favorite topics: Arabic children’s literature and translation. They sent out the following call for papers and workshop announcement:
‘Give Me the Names’: Should the International Prize for Arabic Fiction Release Names of All Submissions?
On the eve of the Booker longlist announcement, critic M.A. Orthofer went on at some length flogging one of his favorite horses: Transparency and the Man Booker Prize. So…what of transparency and the Arabic-language prize affiliated with the Booker?
Literary Views of Gamal Abdel Nasser
Sixty years after the 1952 revolution, the legacy of both Gamal Abdel Nasser and his regime remain fraught territory. Was Abdel Nasser a true friend of the poor? Was he an enemy of Islam (or just all dissidents)? How should he be remembered? Abdel Nasser has been the subject of a number of literary depictions over the last half-century, from laudatory to humorous to critical.
Review of Rasha al-Ameer’s ‘Judgment Day,’ trans. Jonathan Wright
The imam who narrates Rasha al-Ameer’s “Judgment Day” is pulled in at least six different directions. The novel’s central character is claimed by a corrupt state, by Islamists, by the Quran, by poetry, by fame and by love. In a way, the eloquent TV-star imam is a Mutanabbi of our times.