Libyan poet, translator, and short-story writer Ghazi Gheblawi has been enthusiastically tweeting about Mansour Bushnaf’s “Chewing Gum,” now out in English translation, by Mona Zaki, from Darf Publishers. So, what’s the big deal about “Chewing Gum”?
Hala Salah Eldin Hussein — the editor of Albawtaka Review — says she will be issuing the “very first literary audio book in the Arab World,” 10,000 copies of a short-story collection that has been translated from English to Arabic. The stories will be voiced by prominent women authors and distributed free.
Italian journalist Vittoria Volgare talked with the Libyan short-story writer Omar al-Kikli, whose work has appeared in English translation Banipal and Jadaliyya about al-Kikli’s 2012 prison memoir, Sijniyat, a testament to the years he spent in Ghaddafi’s prisons.
Amir Tag Elsir (@amirelsir), longlisted for the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel 366, was previously shortlisted for his novel The Grub Hunter (in 2011), which was translated into English by William Hutchins. Elsir was born in Sudan in 1960 and currently works as a physician in Doha, Qatar. He talked to ArabLit’s M. Lynx Qualey about his writing process, the novel 366, and the literary scene in Sudan.
Abu Dhabi-based translator S.A. Qudsi has translated a wide range of Arab authors — Nawal al-Saadawi, Ghada Samman, Naguib Mahfouz, Salwa Bakr, Ghassan Kanafani, Najwa Barakat — into Malayalam. He also translates from English, Indonesian, and Farsi. He answered a few questions about the Arabic-Malayalam relationship for our Arabic Literature, World Readers series.
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab is one of the most important names in modern Iraqi poetry — and indeed modern Arabic poetry. The poet, who died in 1964 at just 38, shook the poetic world with his verse. Translator, scholar, and author Dr. Issa Boullata, whose PhD dissertation became a book on al-Sayyab, answered a few questions about the poet’s life and work.
ArabLit’s sister-site in Italian — editoriaraba, curated by Chiara Comito — shares an interview with Ada Barbaro, author of the new book La fantascienza nella letteratura araba or Science Fiction in Arabic Literature. Comito also translated this interview from the Italian.
Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala’ika is best known for the important role she played in the development and popularization of Arabic “free verse” (or taf’ila poetry) in the 1950s. But while she is well known as a pioneer, her verse itself is less well-known, and largely absent in translation. Emily Drumstra has translated one of al-Mala’ika’s poems for Jadaliyya, “Revolt Against the Sun,” and is currently at work on another translation. She talked about translating al-Mala’ika.
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on August 9, 2008: I particularly appreciate this 2002 interview Darwish gave to Raja Shehadeh: Raja Shehadeh: Do you build on the work of others? Mahmoud Darwish: Yes. […]
