“Often, readers tell me I should write about one subject or another, and I don’t like this sort of relationship, where readers approach the writer as though they’re a machine or a mythical creature.”
“I began thinking about the sanctity of Arabic and the way it is used to justify certain ideologies or concepts which many Libyans don’t agree with. Gaddafi made Arabic Libya’s standard language, and with it not only marginalized Libya’s indigenous people but also justified a newly established regressive way of living.”
“This is undoubtedly the most intense literary work I have done in my ten year career as a translator.”
This review was meant to be published two years ago, but the magazine that requested it went dark. So here, to accompany our piece on the crowdfunding campaign for the […]
“Libyan poet Fatima Mahmoud wrote such powerful things in the 70’s, at the height of Gaddafi’s suppression of the people. Everything she wrote still rings true today.”
“Why scrape off my scabbed wound now, Haj Ali? Why prolong tales after the season of their telling has passed?”
“If there is a villain in this book, it is not Muammar Ghaddafi, who we never see. It is his bald son Seif[.]”
“Settling is the death of nomads: the scarecrow, then, is the fate of settling down.”
Translator Valentina Viene profiles “Muslim Libyan Arab British graphic novelist” Asia Alfasi, who has moved from writing about her identity to, more broadly, life in Libya and Scotland.
