Neza Bozic on Translating Hisham Matar’s ‘The Return’: ‘The Most Intense Literary Work I Have Ever Done’
“This is undoubtedly the most intense literary work I have done in my ten year career as a translator.”
Country Focus
Review: Alessandro Spina’s ‘Confines of the Shadow’
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 […]
5 Libyan Women Writers Re-shaping the Literary Landscape
“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.”
An Translated Excerpt from Rania Mamoun’s PEN-support-winning ‘Thirteen Months of Sunrise’
“Then another dog tossed me a piece of bread, half-moldy, and another a piece of raw meat, and another a chicken leg, and another, and another, things I couldn’t make out.”
An Excerpt from Najwa Bin Shatwan’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted ‘Slave Pens’
“Why scrape off my scabbed wound now, Haj Ali? Why prolong tales after the season of their telling has passed?”
On the Khartoum Omnibus: Stories of Sudan’s Cosmopolitanism
“As Max and I read more short stories about Khartoum for the collection, we began to notice that Gaetano’s focus on a bus was far from unique.”
‘The Return’: Hisham Matar’s Greatest Book So Far
“If there is a villain in this book, it is not Muammar Ghaddafi, who we never see. It is his bald son Seif[.]”
Beating — or Joining — Literary Piracy in Sudan
“To start with, a literary work is subject to taxes and customs, whereas a religious book is not.”
Ibrahim al-Koni’s ‘The Scarecrow’: The Death of Settling Down
“Settling is the death of nomads: the scarecrow, then, is the fate of settling down.”