Words, Music, and Translating ‘Red Like Orange’
Words, Music, and Translating ‘Red Like Orange’
Sarah Enany in Conversation with Tugrul Mende
Today, Hoopoe Fiction (an imprint of AUC Press) publishes Charles Akl’s debut novel Red Like Orange, which won a 2023 Sawiris Cultural Award. Now, three years later, Sarah Enany’s translation of this novel is available to a new readership. In this conversation, which took place over email, Enany describes her relationship to this novel, the relationship between words and music, and—in a new Naguib Mahfouz translation out this August—working alongside her mother’s words.
Tomorrow, an excerpt from Red Like Orange, tr. Sarah Enany.
Tugrul Mende: Can you tell us about how you came to translating this book? How do you usually come to translation projects?
Sarah Enany: I am usually approached by clients. While there are a number of books I would like to translate, my resources (both in terms of finances and energy) are limited, and translating a novel is a very intensive and demanding task, so I take on work primarily from publishers and authors who already have the budget for it. That said, I have done things for free, usually musical translation: fitting words to music is a hobby of mine, something I do for fun, and I’m always seeking to work with people who want to produce libretti.
TM: Charles Akl has a background in independent journalism. Do you see his background in cultural journalism reflected in his debut novel, in terms of language or style? How would you describe the style?
SE: A great many Arab novelists write in MSA – Modern Standard Arabic – which is the simplified form of classical Arabic used by the press. These forms of MSA are affected by the local vernacular, whether Egyptian ‘ammiya or Levantine shami. The novel that won the Naguib Mahfouz award for 2024, which I judged, was MSA with a Shami touch, especially in dialogue. Akl’s novel is deeply Egyptian and at the same time MSA.
TM: The novel won the Sawiris Cultural Award for Best Literary Work in 2023. How do literary prizes change how you view—or work with—a text? How do you see the literary-prize landscape? Are there prizes you follow?
SE: Prizes are sort of a blessing and a curse, I think – it’s so deeply subjective that sometimes I see a worse novel being recommended for a prize over a better one. Still, it seems to work at weeding the wheat from the chaff in the overcrowded literary landscape we find ourselves in nowadays. I just worry about works of real merit, and especially genre fiction, falling by the wayside. We must not forget that both Charles Dickens and Shakespeare considered themselves hacks writing for the popular taste.
TM: The novel has a somewhat unorthodox structure, as though it were an album; how does this structure shape the narrative experience? How did your own background as a musician and translator of musical theater influence your work?
SE: First point: A lot of postmodern novels these days are written in vignettes, sometimes loosely connected, sometimes not; we used to call it the effect of cinema, now we call it the Tiktok effect. Charles’ novel is idiosyncratic but ultimately cohesive in its structure; I can’t say more without spoilers.
Re: the musical element, one often thinks one knows more than one does. I was very happy to know what Akl was talking about when he mentioned Pink Floyd, specific makers and models of guitars, timbres, and specifics of jazz; but thanks to my wonderful AUC Press editor, Laura Gribbon, who enlisted a young musician named Zacharia Fahmi for the edits, I found out how much I don’t know. Here’s a note made to me from Zach: “(Technical observations: The 4 chord in the key of ‘A major’ is ‘D major’ not ‘D minor’/Unlike what is described here, in a twelve bar blues, you go back to the 1 chord after the 4, before heading to the 5).” So yeah, there are differences between people who are musicians and people who only think they are! Big shoutout to Zacharia Fahmi.
TM: You have been working with AUC Press for a while now; how do you think has the press changed since you started working for them? (And what has remained the same?)
SE: AUC Press made a name for itself translating Naguib Mahfouz and since then has been consistently producing award-winning novels. The biggest change they have implemented is to split the fiction into its separate imprint, Hoopoe, while keeping ‘AUC Press’ as its nonfiction branch. It’s led to more exciting content and definitely more contemporary literary content being published. What has remained the same is that the press has remained underfunded compared to the rest of the university activities, which seems a shame given that both AUC Press and Hoopoe greatly enhance the university’s image abroad.
TM: Last, we have to ask about another exciting summer event: the publication of a collection of eight one-act plays by Naguib Mahfouz that you have translated with your late mother, the great Nehad Selaiha. How did this finally come to print? What was it like, working alongside your mother’s words? And again, what of your experience of music and musicality appears here?
SE: I have been absolutely thrilled to have my name alongside Nehad’s. She was my best and closest friend and mentor for all of my life, and she frequently asked me how to phrase things, so I felt no qualms at all about working alongside her translations. The main contrast is that Nehad, having lived in the UK for over ten years when young, is very British in her phrasing: ‘round’ instead of ‘around’, ‘chuck them out’, ‘darling’ instead of ‘baby’, and so on, while years of working with US-based clients have led me to use a more Americanized style.
Nehad had translated the Mahfouz plays, with a very relevant introduction, in 1984; the print run was halted for reasons I’m not privy to, but I think had to do with copyright at the time. Since then, much has changed. I was delighted when I presented the plays to Nadine el-Hadi, the commissioning editor of Hoopoe, and she suggested I do the other four plays for a comprehensive and never-before-seen volume of Mahfouz’s literary output. As Nehad’s heir, I am the copyright holder, and I was glad to allow AUC to finally bring this collection to the light after so many years. Another thing I’m thrilled about is the publication of Nehad’s original introduction alongside mine, providing historico-cultural background in addition to contemporary critical insight (such as it is).