It was not long ago that playwright Lucien Bourjeily (@lucienbourjeily), nominated for a 2014 Index Freedom of Expression Award for his censored play “Is It Permitted or Not,” announced that he’d been prevented from traveling to perform another play in London.
Contributor Aisha K. Nasser explores the difference between Sonallah Ibrahim’s classic novel, Zaat, and the TV series it inspired, just as news comes that Ibrahim’s Sharaf (Honor) will also be coming to the screen.
The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) has helped fund, supply, and train staff at two libraries in Gaza. One saw damage when it was occupied by the Israeli military, and the other was entirely destroyed, the building where it was housed razed to the ground.
In their October issue, Poetry magazine announced winners of eight annual prizes for the best work published in the magazine over the past 12 months. Among the eight honored for their poetry, translations, and prose was Arabic translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid, for his translations of Dunya Mikhail and Najwan Darwish.
This past summer, as part of a workshop on “The Possibilitiies of Arab-Jewish Thought,” Najat Abdulhaq spoke about “Rethinking Narratives: The Emergence of the ‘Arab Jew’ in Contemporary Arabic Literature,” a talk recently posted to SoundCloud. Abdulhaq discusses the phenomenon and speculates about reasons behind this blossoming of new novels.
A back-and-forth with the author and translator of the witty, wild Women of Karantina (2013), released last month in excellent, gum-snapping English translation.
The five shortlists for the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature were announced several days ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair, but the press release didn’t come out until October 11, which meant many shortlistees found out who they were only yesterday.
This year’s American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference will feature a new opportunity: “Speed-Dating for Editors and Translators.”
“Had the committee for the Nobel Prize decided at an earlier date than 1988 that recognition should be given to the renaissance that was occurring in modern Arabic literature, the prize would surely have been awarded to Tawfiq al-Hakim.”
