Two Jabbour Douaihy Novels Signed by Interlink, Other Recent Deals

Lebanon’s Raya Agency, run by Yasmina Jraissati, has had a good number of new rights sales in the recent months. Several are worth noting:

There have been multiple sales for works by Syrian writers Dima Wannous and Khaled Khalifa, Lebanese novelist Jabbour Douaihy, and Iraqi novelist and poet Sinan Antoon.

As with Khalifa’s two previous novels, Leri Price will translate Death is Hard Work for Farrar Strauss Giroux. Although it was — surprisingly — not on the longlist for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), Khalifa’s 2016 novel has already had rights sales into five languages.

There’s no news on an English translator yet for Dima Wannous’s The Frightened, which is also set to appear in four other languages, although one does hope the English translator will be Elisabeth Jaquette, who has championed the novel.

Jabbour Douaihy’s 2016 novel Printed in Beirut is set to appear in French and English, from Interlink, and Interlink also bought rights to Douaihy’s earlier novel, American Neighborhood, on the 2015 IPAF longlist.

New rights sales for Sinan Antoon’s books include his IPAF-shortlisted Ave Maria (translated into English by Maia Tabet as Baghdad Eucharist) into French and a Malayalam deal for The Pomegranate Alone (translated into English by the author as The Corpse Washer).

The full list, from Raya’s most recent mailing:

Dima Wannous’s The Frightened:
-Blessing, Random House (German)
-Baldini & Castoldi (Italian)
-Gallimard (French)
(Previously: Signatuur, AW Bruna (Dutch). Harvill Secker, Penguins Random House (World English rights)).

Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work:
-De Geus (Dutch)
-Sindbad, Actes Sud (French).
(Previously: Farrar Strauss Giroux (World English). Rowholt (German). Italian (Bompiani))

Jabbour Douaihy’s Printed in Beirut:
-Interlink (World English)
-Sindbad, Actes Sud (French)

Jabbour Douaihy’s American Neighborhood:
-Interlink (World English)
(Previously: Sindbad, Actes Sud (French)).

Sinan Antoon’s Ave Maria
-Sindbad, Actes Sud (French)
(Previously: Hoopoe, AUC (English World))

Sinan Antoon’s The Pomegranate Alone
-Green books (Malayalam)
(Previously: Sindbad, Actes Sud (French). Yale University Press (World English). Aylak Adam (Turkish)).