Author Archives
-
Hassan Blasim on Shortlist for New Swedish ‘Kulturhuset Stadsteaterns’ Prize for Translations
-
Queerness in Khaled Khalifa’s ‘No Knives in the Kitchens of This City’
“There is no shortage of varieties of shame: of body, of one’s sexuality or lack of sexuality, of modest or immodest dress, of impoverished dress, of ugliness, of age, of illness, of disability, of vanity, of religion, of doubting one’s religion, of being complicit with the regime, of Syrianness, of having no ‘important’ family roots, of people who talk incessantly about their roots.”
-
9 Great Arab Cult Classics
A crowdsourced list of cult classics.
-
In Books: Jewish Exodus from Iraq Revisited
“A guiding thread came unexpectedly from my mother, who turned out to have had a Jewish childhood friend named Evelyn.”
-
First Kurdish Novel Published in English? ‘It Is Unfortunate That We Still Talk About This’
“That’s when Ali got a surprising $25,000 advance for his ‘Ghazalnus and the Gardens of Imagination,’ which Abdulrahman has now translated into English as ‘I Stared at the Night of the City.'”
-
Iraqi Poet Dunya Mikhail on Censorship in the US, Censorship in Iraq
“Nobody knows where the red line is any more.”
-
Supporting Indonesian Initiative, ‘Banned Literature in Translation’
“InterSastra is raising money to put together a series from banned writers around the world, translated into three languages: Indonesian, English, and Norwegian.”
-
34 Years Later: Memory and Violence in Literary Sabras and Shatilas
“Most of the literary representations of the massacres in two Palestinian refugee camps don’t aim to hold a mirror to the three days of horror, which took place in 1982, between September 16 and 18.”
-
Samar Yazbek’s ‘The Crossing’ on Longlist for France’s Prix Médicis
“Both the Goncourt and Renadout have Arab voices on their longlists: Algerian-French writer Magyd Cherfi’s Ma part de Gaulois is on the Goncourt longlist, as is Algerian-Moroccan-French author Leila Slimani’s Chanson, which also made the Renadout longlist.”
-
On Imprisoned Novelist Ahmed Naji’s 31st Birthday
“‘Using Life’s’ illustrator Ayman Zorkany will be traveling to Italy to present the book at the Festival delle letterature Mediterranee in Lucera in Puglia. After that, there will also be a launch in Rome.”
-
Kuwaiti Novelist Saoud al-Sanousi on Why José Rezal Inspired Him and Hopes for the Future
“You want a surprise? Even I say José more than I say ‘Isa.’ It’s as though, sub-consciously, even I’m not convinced that he’s Kuwaiti.”
-
Support Omar Hazek as Nottingham Festival of Literature’s Virtual Writer in Residence
“Your money will go towards producing and marketing these events, and paying a fee to Omar and to all other artists involved. We are also hoping to commission a piece of work from Omar Hazek.”
