"When Naguib Mahfouz was a boy, he tells us, two paths lay before him. There was the path of the literature he loved to read and write. He could take that path and become a distinguished author. There was also the path of the football he loved to play and the footballers he admired. He could take that, it was said, and become a member of the Egyptian Olympic football team."
From ArabLit Quarterly: Naguib Mahfouz’s ‘The Man in the Picture’
"Sheikhun Muharram disappeared."
New Poetry: Rym Jalil’s ‘My Mother’s Kitchen’
"Every day I lie and say / I know this place. / My mother's kitchen / brims with afflictions / I must pretend to befriend it / we all know it can have only one master / from its beginning to its end"
Fiction from the Magazine: Raghad Qasim’s ‘Hair or No Hair’
"The no-hair phenomenon certainly has a backstory. "
‘Arsène Lupin,’ a Short Story by Sonallah Ibrahim
"His mouth discharged a second snort. I worried he might attack me, or tear me apart, but he settled his body back into the chair and sighed. "
Today: Launch of ArabLit Quarterly Summer 2021 ‘THE KITCHEN’ Issue
The Summer 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly is available today in print and e-form.
Publication Day for ArabLit Quarterly’s Spring 2021 Issue: SONG
The Spring 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly -- with voices moist and cricketlike, stirring and gritty, ploverlike and tremulous -- is available today in print and e-form.
New Fiction in Translation: ‘The Illusion of Sea’
"The place was choking, and it will always be."
New Short Fiction: ‘Our Offering,’ by Amgad ElSabban
"Magdy’s gaze fell by accident on a tiny ad written in fine print in the bottom corner of one of the pages of a local newspaper."