‘Here’s to Blowing Savior Literature off the Shelves’

So tweeted Egyptian writer Yasmin El-Rifae, when sharing the list of 10 — which was really 15, because sometimes one can’t help oneself — books by women writers that should be translated from Arabic to English:

The list appears on lithub and is led off by a screed against the “Saving Muslim Women” genre, followed by a pitch for Hoda Barakat’s latest novel, Kingdom of this Earth. Barakat was on the 2015 shortlist for the Man Booker International, and yet this novel has no contract for an English translation.

Other authors on the list include Barakat’s sister, the prominent author and literary mentor Najwa Barakat, as well as Radwa Ashour, Sahar Mandour, Rasha Abbas, Taghreed Najjar, Donia Maher, Duna Ghali, and Eman Abdel Rahim. Each book has a brief on why it “should” be translated: You can read them here.

Tacked onto the end are five classic works by women, which are: collected poetry by Nazik al-Malaika, Safinaz Kazem’s Romantikayyet, Samira Azzam’s Al-sa’aa w al-inssaan, Bint al-Shati’s Alaa al-Jisr, and Sahar Khalifeh’s Bab al-Saha.

Contributor Nadia Ghanem also added six Algerian women authors whose works should be translated into English.