As young Egyptian author Ahmed Nagi (Rogers) happened to email me, I thought I’d ask about his favorite books of the last decade. With the caveat that “maybe there are other titles I can’t remember now,” he said: On The… Read More ›
fiction
Two Excerpts from Yet Unpublished Iraqi Novels
Two of the novels excerpted in Banipal 37: Iraqi Authors have not yet been published in Arabic (or Finnish, English, Urdu, Quechua). Both are terrifying, and both show serious promise. The first is an excerpt from Nazum al-Obeidi’s A Woman’s… Read More ›
Review of Banipal 37: Excerpt of Lutfiya al-Dulaimi’s /The Book of the Girls/
As one flips through the latest Banipal (37: Iraqi Authors), the first fiction to appear is an excerpt from Lutfiya al-Dulaimi’s The Book of the Girls. The magazine’s foreword notes that: “Lutfiya al-Dulaimi, with her new novel The Book of… Read More ›
Update on Forthcoming Ibrahim al-Koni (in English)
I’m not quite sure what’s going on here, but Ibrahim al-Koni’s masterwork The Animists (translated by Elliot Colla) was originally scheduled to be out from AUC Press in February of this year. Now, it’s had its English-language debut delayed until… Read More ›
A Few of My Favorite Things: Egyptian Authors, Taha Hussein-Present
Please don’t think that the list below is authoritative. It doesn’t have Yahia Haqqi, for instance, because I haven’t read him. It doesn’t have Edwar Kharrat, because I’ve found the translations of him very unsatisfying. It’s not even authoritative on… Read More ›
One Minute Review: Taha Hussein’s /The Tree of Misery/
The Tree of Misery. By Taha Hussein, trans. Mona El-Zayyat. The Palm Press: Cairo, 1997 (Arabic 1944). 137 pages. I had thought of the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein (1889-1973) as a memoirist and a critic, not an author of gripping… Read More ›
Should You Listen to Hassan Blasim’s Stories Online?
My friend Mai once told me, Reading is one thing. Seeing a thing on film is another. She was referring to Blindness, which I’m sure I couldn’t take from a “push” medium. And if there were a film based on… Read More ›
Egyptian Fiction ‘Bored’ of Big Issues?
Such is the thesis of Hamza Hendawi, writing today for the Associated Press. I’m not quite sure I agree with the lead—Hendawi quotes Hamdi Abu Golayyel, whose A Dog with No Tail (or The Laborer, in Arabic)—is actually full of… Read More ›
Review of (an excerpt of) the One Not Shortlisted: Its Name is Love
The 2009 novel by Lebanese author Alawiyya Sobh Ismuhu al Gharam has been named by some (Youssef Rakha in particular) as the book that should’ve won the Arabic Booker. The novel, which has received excellent reviews from the Arabic press,… Read More ›
One-Minute Review: A Dog with No Tail
by Hamdi Abu Golayyel, translated by Robin Moger The narrator of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s A Dog with No Tail (Arabic 2008; English 2009) moves through life lazily but anxiously. He’s aimless, but still hoping for literary greatness. The novel itself… Read More ›
Elias Khoury: The Danger
I have been caught up in an Elias Khoury feeding frenzy of late, reading Yalo (Quercus edition), Gate of the Sun, and White Faces (or White Masks, as Maia Tabet has translated it) all at once, and overlapping, and over… Read More ›
Transcript 33: New Fiction from Gaza
Transcript 33—a European Review of Books and Writing—marks the anniversary of the 2008-09 military invasion of Gaza with new writing from the strip. Are of the work was quite short. Somaya El Sousi had two pieces that could be flash… Read More ›
