The Best Translated Book Award has announced the 10 finalists for its 2014 Best Translated Book Award (BTBA). Both Lebanese novelist Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq’s Leg Over Leg, trans. Humphrey Davies, and Moroccan writer Mahi Binebine’s Horses of God, trans. from the French by Lulu Norman, have made the list.
At 6 p.m. tomorrow, the new experimental, trilingual “Makhzin” will launch its first issue in Beirut. Editor Mirene Arsanios answered a few questions about the project.
The work of Moroccan novelist Abdelrahim Lahbibi was little-known before his third novel, “The Journeys of ’Abdi, Known as the Son of Hamriya,” made it onto this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) shortlist. Al-Mustafa Najjar talked to the author about his sudden shift into the spotlight.
For just the second time, a book translated from the Arabic has been shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP). Hassan Blasim’s second short-story collection, The Iraqi Christ, has made the award’s shortlist along with five other works.
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.
In a recent interview with the Centre for African Poetry, Egyptian novelist and “occasional poet” Youssef Rakha talked about the possibilities of greater contact between various African literatures.
George Packer has a column in the April 7 New Yorker about “how soldiers write their wars,” which should be re-subtitled: “how US soldiers write their wars.” Which stories are we hearing and which are singing into the abyss?
In the most recent Brooklyn Quarterly, Deep Vellum publisher Will Evans writes an impassioned essay that declares, “I Want You To Start Your Own Publishing House.”
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