Correction: Palestinian-Chilean Writer Diamela Eltit
I incorrectly wrote yesterday that Nathalie Handal had nominated a non-Arab for the prestigious Neustadt prize, Chilean writer Diamela Eltit.
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Posts by Marcia Lynx Qualey:
Friday Links: New Stories and Poems in Translation, Submission Calls, Arab Neustadt Nominees
The June issue of Words Without Borders is now up (Queer II), and it features the writing of Beirut39 laureate Abdallah Taia. His “The Algerian and the Moroccan” was translated […]
Al-Mutanabbi and Elias Khoury’s ‘As Though She Were Sleeping’
Humphrey Davies’ translation of Eliash Khoury’s 2007 كأنها نائمة, As Though She Were Sleeping, is now available in the UK. I wish the Marilyn Booth translation (Archipelago, 2012) were out at the same time, so we could compare their strategies. This book is a particularly complex beast: Khoury’s novels have long been interested in what language can’t (and can) do, but كأنها نائمة is perhaps his most language-obsessed work.
2011 Arab American Book Award Winners Announced
It wasn’t a tremendously wide field—just 28 books were submitted to Arab American Book Award (AABA) judges—but the AABA’s four winners and three honorable mentions are certainly worth a look.
Sonallah Ibrahim on the Stages of Revolution
Have not revolutions and historical rebellions always passed through these two stages?
Denys Johnson-Davies on Translation (No, He Doesn’t Like It)
Edward Said once called Denys Johnson-Davies “the leading Arabic-English translator of our times.”
Can Egyptian Humor Be Translated?
I wrote a bit about the difficulty of translating humor last week; the idea seemed worth pursuing, so I followed that with an essay for Al Masry Al Youm. One of the most obvious differences in the books I looked at was whether or not authors chose to use footnotes.
In Praise of…Khaled Mattawa
I do believe that poets can become too easily shackled to ideology.* A certain sort of political poem (the “Arab Spring” poem, the “confessional Western feminist” poem, the “confessional Arab feminist” poem) becomes un-surprising. It makes us fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
What Role Should a Poet Play in Politics?*
In recent days, two very different views of poets and politics have appeared online.