Friday Finds: A Conversation with Libyan Novelist Najwa Benshatwan
“But my work came to the scrutiny of the Libyan authorities who tried to lure me to write about the regime and its ideology which I refused to do.”
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‘Excellence of the Arabs’: Ibn Qutaybah and the Cultural Authority of Poetry
“It was fun! And what I quite liked about it is that it was tremendously educational, and it compelled me, in having to translate these poems, to really figure out what they said, and to participate in the intellectual culture of ninth-century Iraq. One of the advantages is that, in other projects that I’m working on, I’m seeing many of these poems coming back. And now I have a much more personal relationship with the poetry.”
2017 Arab American Book Awards Announced: 3 Big Names, 1 YA Debut
The fourth award, for children’s and young adult literature, went to pediatric nurse and debut author Michelle Chalfoun for “The Treasure of Maria Mamoun.”
Paula Haydar on the Tightrope of Translating Award-winning Novelist Jabbour Douaihy
“This is what translating Lebanese fiction is like for me – not a window into a foreign world, but into my own world, the world that might have been had my grandparents not immigrated to America at the turn of the century.”
Naguib Mahfouz: Between Fiction and History, ‘Essays of the Sadat Era’
“While Mahfouz’s opinions are often considered to be obscured in his fiction writing, here we gain an extraordinarily clear insight into his personal views – views which helped shape his novels.”
When Arabophones Weren’t Arabs: Ibn Qutaybah and Identity Formation During the Early Period of Islam
“The book should also be interesting to people who study medieval history of the rest of the world, because this was a time, in the post-Roman world, in which the identities of the modern European nations — the Franks, the Anglo Saxons, and even German identities — were being constructed in Europe. It’s really at the same time that Arabness was being constructed in the Middle East, so from a comparative perspective of the birth of modern nations, this book would be very helpful to people who know a lot about how Anglo Saxon identity was constructed, for instance.”
Charif Majdalani’s ‘L’empereur à Pied’ Longlisted for FNAC Prize
“The winner will be announced on the eve of the FNAC Books Forum, which will take place from September 15 to 17.”
Eternal Nightmares of the Hounded Mind: On ‘Post-Revolutionary Egyptian Dystopias’
“Is this authority really that clever and strong, or is it the people’s imagination that makes it terrifying?”
Summer Saturday Re-Runs: Iraqi Poets Speak
“When I decided to study the translations of Sayyab’s poetry, I was shocked when I found that there’s just one book in English about the pioneer of modern Arabic poetry!”