Friday Finds: Lina Mounzer Translates Mazen Maarouf
I hadn’t realized Rusted Radishes had put so many of their translated works online:
“The Lion Cub” is from way back in Issue 5, but if you haven’t seen it, you certainly should. The story opens:
We never suspected that the Lion Cub was not, in fact, a lion cub until his bicycle was stolen. He made no attempt to get it back. He only shot a few rounds into the air from his bedroom window, then lay down on the sponge mattress on the ground, tears dripping from his wide-open eyes, staring at the ceiling, longing intensely for his mother. His gun lay by his side.
More Maarouf:
Portion of Jam, tr. Jonathan Wright, was on Granta
Mazen Maarouf: At the Intersection Between Surrealism and Fantasy
Three poems of Maarouf’s, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal: On Death, Downtown and A Stray Bullet.
Maarouf will also be appearing at this year’s Liverpool Arab Arts Festivals.
More Mounzer:
Translating from the Arabic: Marilyn Hacker and Lina Mounzer in Conversation
War in Translation and Giving Voice to the Women of Syria