There can be no series on Iraqi poetry without an engagement with Sargon Boulos. It’s coming. In the meantime, poet-novelist-translator Sinan Antoon has published two newly translated Boulus poems in Jadaliyya.
Translators are often expected to remain invisible puppeteers, unseen by all except specialists and those good at squinting. The translator who stays in the background is praised: The reader, we’re told, wants to connect with Elias Khoury, not Humphrey Davies; Jurji Zaydan, not Samah Selim. But there are moments when translators feel they must be heard.
Novelist Muhammad Aladdin — one Akhbar Al-Adab’s “Writers of the New Millennium” and of the Millions’ “Six Egyptian Writers You Don’t Know But You Should” — answered a few questions about the relationship between the State and the Writer soon after one of the guiding lights of Egyptian literature, publisher Mohammed Hashem, announced that he intends to leave Egypt.
The magazine The Common is publishing its first work of Arabic literature in translation in Issue 6, which is set to be released on October 28. We asked a few questions about the process of Jennifer Acker, the magazine’s founding editor and editor in chief, and of Hisham Bustani, whose work is featured in the magazine.
Bad news Monday from Qatar’s Court of Cassation: Poet Mohamed al-Ajami’s 15-year prison term was upheld as final.
In May, author Karam Saber was sentenced — in absentia — to five years in prison for alleged defamation of religion in his short-story collection أين الله (Where is God). Following protests from at least 46 Arab human-rights organizations, the case appeared again in mid-September, but was deferred until an October 22 hearing.
Emerging Arabic-Polish translator Aleksandra Lasota-Barańska is a student of Arabic language and Islamic Culture at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She has a few publications and is now looking to publish her first translated collection, of Najwan Darwish’ poems. She answered a few questions for ArabLit about the landscape of Arabic literature in Polish.
Marilyn Booth translated Hassan Daoud’s novel The Penguin’s Song as a labor of love and initially strugged to find a publisher. Now it’s forthcoming from City Lights Books in Fall 2014 and a second excerpt just ran on the (new! improved!) Asymptote.
The video began circulating on Wednesday: A talk by novelist Alaa al-Aswany at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris was suddenly derailed by chanting protestors getting up on chairs, shouting, breaking glass.
