If you know of other Arabic books forthcoming in translation in December 2024 that should be added to this list, please let us know either in the comments or at info@arablit.org.
Sand-Catcher, by Omar Khalifah, tr. Barbara Romaine (Coffee House Press, December 3)
Four young, Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked, on account of their heritage, with profiling one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be all too happy to go on record, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed. This living witness to history, this secular saint, has no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to serve as an inspiration for the youth of tomorrow. What he wants is to be left alone.
As threats from the team’s editor-in-chief put more and more pressure on the journalists, they must decide just how far they’re willing to go to get the old man on the record. After all, what possible weight can one stubborn demand for privacy have when balanced against the imperative to bear witness?
Look for an excerpt of this fast-paced, thought-provoking romantic satire on ArabLit December 3.
From the publisher:
Wadih Saadeh was born Wadih Amine Stephan in 1948 in the village of Chabtine in northern Lebanon. As a young man he moved to Beirut where he first began to write poetry and where, in 1973, he would distribute handwritten copies of his first collection, The evening has no siblings. He lived and travelled between Beirut and Europe—Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus—until in 1988 he finally emigrated with his family to Australia, where he lives now: ‘a village farmer, resident in Sydney.’ A figure of central importance in the development of the Arabic prose poem.
Find poems by Saadeh at the Tenement website.
Arabic, between Love and War, ed. Norah Alkharashi & Yasmine Haj (trace press, December 15)
In Arabic, the word for love حب is one letter shorter than the word for war حرب
Here, translators gather to perform an intimate labour, moving words from Arabic into English, or reversing such direction as language dissolves into cities, landscapes, or portals that open to rubble, or only air.
The poems in this collection reverberate in the space between there and here, silence and voice, original and translation, and the polarities of war and love.
Journals of Salt: Tunisian Women’s Writings on Experiences of Political Imprisonment, ed. Haifa Zangana and translated by Katharine Halls and Nariman Yousef (Syracuse University Press, December 20)
