Hisham Bustani — an award-winning Jordanian short-story author — is one of the few practitioners of Arabic short stories who has been widely translated and published in non-specialized English-language literary magazines:
Well, perhaps the only practitioner of the Arabic short story who’s been widely published in non-specialized English-language literary magazines.
Thoraya El-Rayyes’s translation of his short-story collection The Perception of Meaning won the 2014 University of Arkansas Arabic Translation Award and was published, in a bilingual edition, by Syracuse University Press the following year. Bustani won a Bellagio Residency from the Rockefeller Foundation in 2017, and recently joined up with The Common magazine to bring more Arabic short fiction to its pages.
Bustani has also been supremely lucky in his translators, working with two highly talented and award-winning writer-translators: Thoraya El-Rayyes and Maia Tabet.
A sampling of his work in translation available online:
1. “Quantum Leap”, translated by Maia Tabet (Hotel, #4, Spring 2018)
2. “Faisaly and Wehdat”, translated by Maia Tabet (Barricade, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Spring 2018)
3. “Flash. Fade.”, translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (The Kenyon Review Online, March/April 2018)
4. “The Maestro” and “Night”, translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (The Poetry Review, Winter 2017)
5. “Slow Breaking of Long-term Bonds”, translated by Maia Tabet (The Short Story, November 2017)
6. “Crossing,” translated by Maia Tabet (Newfound, Vol. 8, Issue 2, 2017)
7. “Nicotine,” translated by Maia Tabet (The Punch, July 2017)
8. “Stardust,” translated by Maia Tabet (3:AM, January 2017)
9. “The Perfect Crime,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (Grist, Issue 10, 2016)
10. “A Few Moments After Midnight,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (The Common, No. 11, April 2016)
11. “Voices Within,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (The Honest Ulsterman, October 2015)
12. “The City is in My Chest,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (Apogee, Issue 4, Winter 2014)
13. “Requiem for the Aral Sea,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (Open Letters Monthly, January 2015)
14. “Cunning Clouds of Betrayal,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (Banipal 49, 2014 ; and Arabic Literature (in English) on November 23, 2014)
15. “Mirror, Mirror,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes r (The Malahat Review, Issue 188, Autumn 2014)
16. “Apocalypse Now,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (CutBank 80, 2014)
17. “History Will Not Be Made on This Couch,” translated by Thoraya El-Rayyes (World Literature Today, September 2012)
18. Hisham Bustani and others, Laila and the Wolf (short film with English subtitles)
19. Kazz alOmam featuring Hisham Bustani, Athar al-Ghorab (The Crow Effect), from the album “The Crow Effect”
20. Kazz alOmam featuring Hisham Bustani, Taja3eed (Wrinkles), from the album “The Crow Effect”
