Algiers has long been a cartooning hotspot, and the International Comics Book Festival of Algeria (FIBDA) is an important annual event. But although Algiers has welcomed and celebrated both Arabophone and Francophone comic artists — Lebanese graphic novelist Jorj Abu Mhayya and Egyptian magazine TokTok both won awards at last year’s fair — the Algerian scene has its own flavor. Lately, apparently, manga has been on the rise.
Recently, I’ve been reading my way around and through Algerian poet Habib Tengour’s Crossings, trans. Marilyn Hacker, Post-Apollo Press. I was particularly charmed by the final poem.
Although more widely celebrated in French- and Spanish-language publishing circles, Bibliodiversity Day — or El Día B — is a day to encourage the growth of smaller and environment-specific book trends (not the sparrow and the blue shark, but the dugong and broad-snouted caiman). In the words of bookstore owner and editor Guido Indij, it’s also “to counter the North-South current in the spread of books and ideas and to push for counterbalance, from South to North, as well as across the South.”
This year’s Nour Festival of the Arts — set to run from October 1 to November 30 — will kick off its series of talks on October 2 with a salon on Arab (and thus Arabic) science fiction.
For years in English, aphorisms were a red-headed stepchild of a genre, practiced seriously only by a few. But with the compression forced by new technologies and social-media software, more writers are writing short. Perhaps by coincidence, a few translations of aphorisms are also appearing.
Elisabeth Jaquette, who’s spearheading the And Other Stores book groups that will be discussing three Arabic novels in three world cities, said that the next meeting times and locations have been set.
This week, ArabLit talked to Iraqi poet and publisher Faiza Sultan about her magazine and newly launched publishing house, Dar Safi, which is based in the US’s Pacific Northwest. Dar Safi promises to focus on literatures in English, Arabic, and Kurdish.
Best-selling Egyptian novelist Ahmed Mourad was recently at Italy’s Mantua Book Festival. Cristina Dozio wrote about it for Editoriaraba; the blog’s editor, Chiara Comito, graciously translated the post for ArabLit.
People often speak of translators, and translated literature, as the stuff of “bridges” between cultures.
