‘Dar Arab’ Publishing House Announces First Translations to English

The London-based Dar Arab for Publishing and Translation announced plans for their first three English translations at this year’s Muscat International Book Fair:

The publishing house, headed up by UK-based Omani writer and editor Nasser Albadri, also made the announcement on Twitter:

The books are Badria al-Shihi‘s Circumambulating the Embers, to be translated by Sawad Hussain; Syrian author Haitham Hussein’s There May Not Be Anyone Left, to be translated by Nicole Fares; and Omani author Younis Al-Akhzami‘s Bidoon, to be translated by Michelle Hartman.

Dar Arab also tweeted: “For this project / dream, the books were chosen as carefully as the translators … the road is long but we are natural-born runners.”

And Haitham Hussein also added, on Twitter, that it was a “dream project led by Nasser Albadri.”

Dar Arab was established in July 2017 in the UK, which is where its publisher, Albadri, relocated after being arrested and detained in Oman, apparently for a series of critical tweets. Dar Arab started out publishing Arabic books, and the house has a particular interest in “unexplored topics that will educate, open hard conversations and challenge /change perceptions.” Thus far, they have published around 30 titles, and now aim to open up some of their work to English-language readers.

ArabLit previously published an excerpt of There May Not Be Anyone Left, translated by Ahmed Al Saleh.