From Suleiman Naguib’s 1923 ‘Memoirs of a Coachman’
“Memoirs of a Coachman [Mudhakkirat ʿArbagi] tells us the story of Egypt’s 1919 revolution from the margins.”
Fiction
An Excerpt from Ahmed El Fakharany’s ‘The Quail King: An Alexandrian Odyssey’
“I was nineteen years old, working in Mu`allim Idris’s workshop, when I asked him about the age of the Universe.”
Translator’s Preface to ‘The Quail King: An Alexandrian Odyssey’
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 […]
9 Short Stories by Iraqi Women, in Translation
Today, the last in our Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) Wednesday series of “9 Stories” lists.
#WiTMonth Fiction: ‘The Sharp Bend at Al-Bakur’
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.
Listen: Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s ‘The Gap’
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.
An Excerpt of Fadi Zaghmout’s Speculative Novel ‘A Needle and a Thimble’
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.
From ALQ: Muhammad Zafzaf’s ‘Borges in the Hereafter’
“But, Mr. President,” Borges cut in, “we’re already dead.”
New Short Fiction: ‘The Awakened Memory’ by Salima Saleh
“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.”