Launching ‘In Focus: IRAQ’
Our first focus is IRAQ, curated by contributor Hend Saeed.
Country Focus
Ali al-Tajer on Book-cover Design and Iraqi Stories
“Sometimes, after an initial agreement with the writer on a certain artwork, I read the text and then suggest some changes in the artwork, so I do some retouching on the work to be more suitable for the book.”
13 Books in Translation: A Literary History of Egypt After 2011
These thirteen books (six novels, three works of literary nonfiction, a graphic novel, a poetry collection, a short-story collection, and a collection of playtexts) provide a not-insubstantial literary landscape of contrasting visions and emotions:
Fiction from Sudan: Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin’s ‘A Veteran Warrior’
“Will they shoot again?” the little girl asks her mother.
Al-Bayati: ‘When I Met al-Sayyab in 1947’
“His illusions, his distant dreams, and his winged fantasies seemed to flutter quietly with emotion and land on his poems, leaving their enchanting colorful feathers on them.”
From ALQ: Football Chants and a Football-issue Playlist
“This chant reflects the intersections of football, politics, socioeconomics, migration, and the feelings of hogra. For those who want to escape the ills of the homeland, the wooden boat is often a symbol of their freedom.”
Mohamed Boukhza on Mohamed Choukri: ‘Romantic, Short-tempered,’ and with No Time for Hypocrites or Flatterers
“He was a multi-faceted person: romantic, short tempered, and self-loving with a high self-esteem. When surrounded by friends he liked, he would laugh hysterically. In him there was a mixture of spontaneity, adventure, and shrewdness. He was not malicious, and he believed in what he wrote.”
New Fiction: Eisa Al-Hilo’s ‘Two Old Ones in a Tree’
“In the end, they were like two birds perched in the tree. They stood behind the window and looked at the garden, which grew wider and wider to include the whole scene, where the old ones’ inner monologue ran like rushing water in the spaces of the evening, with senility’s trembling echoes.”
9 Short Stories by Syrian Women, in Translation
As far as we know, there is not an anthology of work by Syrian women writers, in English translation.