On the Field of Arabic Studies
Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence
Fiction
From Saïd Khatibi’s ‘I Resist the River’s Course’
Saïd Khatibi’s I Resist the River’s Course — on the shortlist for the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), with a winner set to be announced online April 9 — chronicles half a century of Algerian history, from the Second World War to the early 1990s.
From Ghazi Algosaibi’s ‘Abu Shalakh, the Chameleon’
“Abu Shalakh, the Chameleon” is a 2002 fantastical, satirical novel by Ghazi Algosaibi (1940-2010) in which the Saudi literary giant and politician recounts the history of the Kingdom and its global entanglements through Abu Shalakh, a lovable liar, unreliable storyteller, and self-proclaimed “truth-teller.”
Poetry
New Poetry: Maha Al Aswad’s ‘Death in Six Images’
“They walk beneath the sky. As their arms extend. As they grow new arms. As they carry their children.’
Interviews
On the Field of Arabic Studies
Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies.
Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the particular role translation has played in the US military.
Samar Yazbek on Redefining Collective Memory
“Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all of this only makes sense in the context of our desire for justice, our desire to preserve the true essence of humanity.”
In Focus
From the archives
Samer Abu Hawwash’s ‘It No Longer Matters If Anyone Loves Us’
A Talk with Poet Golan Haji: ‘Languages Never Draw Geographical Boundaries’
” Jaziri wrote poetry with one set of alphabets which at that time were used in four languages: Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Sometimes, he used the four languages in one couplet. His poems are still recited and sung by Kurds. That coexistence of languages was quite natural, the alluring music was convincing, although I sometimes understood almost nothing.”
‘When Darkness Falls’: On the Shortened, Brilliant Life of Iraqi Author Hayat Sharara
“The word eib rings in my head, it is eib to love, to sing, to get sick, to divorce, to show your emotions…and.…and. I felt these social chains were burdening me with fear, despair, and confusion, and I almost abandoned work on the book, but when I looked at the materials that I had collected, I knew that if I didn’t publish it now, it would never be published.”