The Quail King: An Alexandrian Odyssey is a novel by Egyptian author Ahmed Fakharani. Nancy Roberts’ translation is part of the Sawiris Culture award for emerging writers launched by Sawiris […]
Today, the last in our Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) Wednesday series of “9 Stories” lists.
This story, from Najwa Binshatwan’s acclaimed 2019 collection, An Ongoing Coincidence, won the ArabLit Story Prize that same year in Sawad Hussain’s translation. We re-run it this year as part of Women in Translation Month.
In celebration of Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), Comma Press has shared author Maya Abu al-Hayyat reading her short story “The Gap” in the original Arabic as well as in Yasmine Seale’s English translation.
The fourth novel by Jordanian author and gender activist Fadi Zaghmout is set in an alternate universe where people are divided not by gender but by height. In it, a character of middling height appears and throws a short dressmaker’s life into disarray.
“But, Mr. President,” Borges cut in, “we’re already dead.”
“I remember another waterfall—how we left the dirt road and walked down towards the shore. Clear water flowing over the pebbles deepened in the middle of the river, so that leaving the shore became an adventure, and made the small island packed with trees appear distant, despite how close it actually was.”
“He stares at the reflection of the furniture in the mirror but everything is perfectly still. When he speaks to his own reflection, he hears a muffled hiss like the one made by the hands of a clock.”
“On joining primary school, I started leaving sufficient space for my non-existent name at the right margin of the page, followed by my father’s full name, who died and immortalized his name through me. I did the same in my English notebooks, at the left side of the page. I was the third person in all languages and descriptions in the universe.”
