5 Years of ArabLit Quarterly: Founding Editor M Lynx Qualey on Beginnings and Endings
“I expect this is a magazine for people who read widely, and they want something different and new.”
Interviews
A Physician on the Nile Lives Among the Dead: A Talk with Tim Mackintosh-Smith
“There is a scene where a woman is eating her husband’s thigh and she says, ‘It’s alright, he is my husband.’”
Extended Conversation: On Wishes, Translation, & Being ‘Deena Shubeik Lubeik’
“There’s a real novelty to seeing modern Egyptian life illustrated like this because it’s not as common as people think and most of us haven’t grown up with it, and I know that because I enjoy it too. It’s the joy of representation in its most literal form; visual representation for the sake of its own existence.”
Luke Leafgren on Translation, Najwa Barakat, and Falling Out of Love With His Translations
“I think great literature addresses perennial questions, things that we come back to time and again. Questions of identity and relationship, you know, who we are and how we relate to other people, or the world around us. This novel dives into those questions in a unique and interesting way.”
Kareem James Abu-Zeid: Making Imru al-Qays Sing and Soar
By AJ Naddaff It’s been quite the hiatus since my last piece — but I’m pleased to return with three great interviews featuring important actors in the Arabic to English […]
A Conversation with Hadiya Hussein and Barbara Romaine about ‘Waiting for the Past’
“Wars shrouded every corner of our country with some painful tale, and I built Narjis’ character out of what happened to many.”
A Conversation with Palestine Book Award-winning Poet Mosab Abu Toha
“Wordsworth talks about tranquility, but in Gaza there is no such sense of tranquility. You recollect these things in troubled times, in anxiety.”
Ahmad M. Ahmad on Translating Nathalie Handal into Arabic
“The biggest difference is Nathalie’s poetic techniques are unfamiliar in Arabic. As a translator, I have tried to communicate these techniques faithfully, to preserve the poet’s tone and breath, to preserve the fine, close thread that connects the technique to the essence of the poem.”
Nathalie Handal on Her First Writing Assignment from Mahmoud Darwish, Her New Collection, and the Role of Translation
“Every language carries a world, so a translated work will inevitably experience a transformation. That can be magical. And if you are lucky enough to have a skilled translator, their art will extend the body of your poems.”