Holiday Bulaq: ‘One Thousand and One Dreams’
Yasmine is at work on a fresh translation of the Thousand and One Nights, and she reads an excerpt from her work-in-progress during the episode.
From ArabLit Quarterly
Release Party for Winter 2020 ArabLit Quarterly: Dreams
“One of the trickiest, most mysterious secrets of the Arabic language is the root h-l-m.”
‘Dear Tayeb Salih’
This letter originally appeared in the debut issue of ArabLit Quarterly: Beginnings, published in the Fall of 2018.
Monday Literature: ‘Schrödinger’s Cats’ by Ameer Hamad
“Bella felt she had several cats at once, and that the spirit of her cat was being continually rejuvenated, such that she could never guess what her cat would do next.”
New Fiction in Translation: ‘The Cats’ by Mohamed El-Makhzangi
“And whenever they slipped past my door, I’d throw a folded-up piece of paper at them or, to make them panic, I’d pretend I was about to throw my book.”
How to Swim the Backstroke with a Shilka Missile
“They say this city was once beautiful.”
Sunday Classics: Safynaz Kazem’s ‘Romanticisms’
This essay and excerpted translations of Safynaz Kazem’s ran in the Winter/Spring 2020 issue of ArabLit Quarterly — the ROAD issue — and reappear here as part of our series on Women in Translation Month classics.
Summer of Lock-in Lit: Sonallah Ibrahim’s ‘Arsène Lupin’
“Look, there’s no novels,” a voice suddenly boomed directly above my head. “We don’t sell novels.”
‘Place a Hope Beyond a Hope’: Devotional Literature as Literature
“Devotional literature never gets viewed as literature because people assume it’s for devotional purposes.”