Online Now: 17 New Arabic Stories from Emerging Authors
“The stories center creation, missed opportunities, romance and memory, stuck-ness and entrapment, language and identity, patriarchies and colonialisms.”
Fiction
WorldKidLit Month: 10 Translations from Arabic for Young Readers
A few years ago, it was hard to find any contemporary children’s literature translated to English from Arabic. Now, several new titles are being published each year. Here, a list of ten children’s books translated from Arabic for young readers.
New Lit: Baya Mahieddine’s ‘The Great Great Big Bird’
“Le Grand Zoiseau” narrates the story of a little girl who wants to marry, and, seeing her mother deny her the right, she takes matters into her own magic hands.
New Lit: Excerpt of Stella Gaitano’s ‘The Souls of Eddo’
This first Monday of Women in Translation Month, Sawad Hussain and Stella Gaitano share this excerpt from her novel The Souls of Eddo, winner of a PEN Translates Prize
Lock-in Lit Series: ‘The Big Battle of Mohandiseen’
“But after Ramadan, everything is permissible!”
From Ahmed Atallah’s ‘Mariam: A True Story’
“Mariam: A True Story” was written mostly in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, detailing the quiet love between a young Egyptian Christian man and an Egyptian Christian woman turned into a taboo by the society around them.
Summer of Lock-in Lit: Hisham Bustani’s ‘Eyes without a Face, or: Waiting with Billy Idol in Jordan’
“And over there, where there are no children, grandmothers or earth, it also did not mean a thing to me. My real homeland is: waiting.”
Lock-in Summer of Lit: Hassan Abdel-Mawgoud’s ‘Crocodiles’ Laughter’
He asked her whether she’d seen his crocodile. She exhaled angrily.
Lock-in Literature: Ali el-Makk’s ‘Forty-One Minarets’
“What about the one who called the mosque after himself and built a sky-scraping minaret? People said he built his wealth from dubious deals. Certainly, people’s gossip was endless.”