"The ugliness of reality has surpassed the imagination of our ancient poets, and where modes of torture and killing machines have overshadowed the most creative minds of filmmakers, it is futile to invoke the ancient muses."
6 by Elias Farkouh (1948-2020)
Farkouh -- winner of a wide range of literary awards -- wrote and published over the course of five decades. A few of his works have appeared in English translation, most recently in the magazine The Common.
Jordanian Novelist Elias Farkouh Dies at 72
Jordanian author Elias Farkouh died today -- Wednesday, July 15 -- after an acute heart attack. He was 72.
Friday Finds: Two Short Works by Hisham Bustani, Tr. Thoraya El-Rayyes
"Yukio Mishima, why did you kill yourself like that?"
Summer of Lock-in Lit: Hisham Bustani’s ‘Eyes without a Face, or: Waiting with Billy Idol in Jordan’
"And over there, where there are no children, grandmothers or earth, it also did not mean a thing to me. My real homeland is: waiting.”
Friday Finds: ‘In Amman with Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)’
"Amman is originally a Roman city, and in its Roman era, it was built on seven hills like Rome."
Born on This Day: 6 to Read by Ghalib Halasa
"With so much to explore in his 7 novels, dozens of short stories, and scads of genre-crossing nonfiction that feels so relevant to our present day hopes and wars, the door is there, we need simply to walk through it."
Friday Finds: From Amjad Nasser’s ‘Petra’
The water that tells of life
also tells of the place.
Amjad Nasser, 1955-2019
According to multiple reports, Nasser died Wednesday. He was 64.
In Celebration of Amjad Nasser, a Poet Who ‘Mourns Himself While Still Alive’
This week, the literary journal "Akhbar al-Adab" dedicated an issue to Nasser and his work, which features essays by Ghassan Zaqtan, Tarek al-Tayeb, Qassim Haddad, Hoda Barakat, and others.
Online: 20 Translated Stories by Hisham Bustani
Hisham Bustani -- an award-winning Jordanian short-story author -- is one of the few practitioners of Arabic short stories who has been widely translated and published in non-specialized English-language literary magazines.
Fadi Zagmout on the Banning of ‘Laila and the Lamb’
"Unfortunately, banning books is a form of censorship that, nowadays, harms the book industry, limits creativity, and frustrates writers, but does not prevent the book from reaching the reader."
