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.”
From ArabLit Quarterly
In Translation: Ameer Hamad’s ‘The Wooden Castle’
I don’t know when exactly the idea came to me: of building a castle like the ones I’d imagined when reading stories, or like the ones I’d seen in cartoons.
New Fiction in Translation: Layla Baalbaki’s ‘The Cat’
“Now, it was the beginning of summer.”
Abdallah Zrika’s ‘Funeral of the Snow Grenade’
“A dead language in the throat of a dead poet. Assassins only wait for the day of the feast. Cemeteries are only full of white beds.”
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.
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.”