Last Bulaq of the Year: ‘Lists!’

The final Bulaq of 2018 — Episode 25 — is, naturally, about the year-in-review:

Bulaq co-hosts M Lynx Qualey and Ursula Lindsey talk about the process of selecting “best-of” lists at the end of the year. They also talked about Mohamed Shoair’s Biography of a Forbidden Novel, which focuses on Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of Our Alley, and the intimidation of other public intellectuals at the time of the attempt on Mahfouz’s life, particularly Nasr Abu Zeid and Farag Fouda.

Discussion also touched on another favorite of the year: Nawal Nasrallah’s translation of rthe fourteenth-century Egyptian cookbook Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table, which was one of the winners of the $2M Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation, based in Qatar.

MLQ and Ursula also talked about this year’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, which went to Saudi writer Omaima al-Khamis for her historical novel Voyage of the Cranes over the Agate Cities, and the reason Mahfouz’s daughter, Um Kulthoum, said she wasn’t attending the ceremony.

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