Three Arabic Titles Among New ‘PEN Translates’ Winners
Organizers today announced winners of the Spring 2026 PEN Translates awards, and among the 18 selected titles were three in Arabic.
Organizers today announced winners of the Spring 2026 PEN Translates awards, and among the 18 selected titles were three in Arabic.
“Hold me before the game ends. / Like everything else, / grief needs time / to become a language.”
The chair of the judges for the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Mohamed Elkadhi, today announced the prize’s 2026 vibrant six-book shortlist in Manama, Bahrain.
Over the next six weeks, we will be publishing installments of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet, which is available in an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman. The next installment is set to appear February 9, 2026.
“The temperature dipped a little / but the country’s still burning—”
Forthcoming this month: Two criminal investigations from Algeria, an anthology of raw portraits of Gaza from emerging writers, and a new collection of poems by Ghassan Zaqtan.
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Zia Ahmed discuss approaching Arabic translation via English and Urdu, the layers of “outsider-ness” in translation, and the boom of narrative fiction in Oman.
The International Board on Books for Young People today announced the shortlist for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award.
In this short fiction from Kuwait, the central character and his author are in a standoff over a telephone call.