Sonallah Ibrahim — as Elliott Colla writes in a recent piece for Jadaliyya — has been “arguably the most politically and aesthetically autonomous writer working in Egypt” over the last several decades. So what does it mean when Ibrahim, like more than a hundred other Egyptian authors, signs on to a public statement declaring the Muslim Brotherhood an unpatriotic organization? Colla re-reads.
If you’re among the first 15 K-12 educators to register for the group, you’ll get a free Mahfouz collection that includes “Autumn Quail”, “The Beggar”, and “The Thief and the Dogs”.
Last night, Egypt’s ninth annual Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at a ceremony at the Cairo Opera House, and authors Mahmoud al-Wardani, Huda Ahmed, Yasser Abdellatif, and Mohamed Abdelnaby were given top literary honors.
The longlist for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) is in, and the still-anonymous judges have chosen the maximum number — 16 novels.
As volunteers work to rescue the damanged books at Tripoli, Lebanon’s historic al-Sa’eh Library, several organizations have stepped forward to gather donations to Father Sarrouj to help rebuild.
Nawal El Saadawi continues to make the circuit of book fairs and literary festivals, having recently appeared at the Beirut International Book Fair and scheduled to be at the Umeå International Littfest in March.
On Friday night, a historic library in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli was burned, destroying thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of books and manuscripts. Today, salvage efforts have begun.
Often enough, I hear from new readers that ArabLit is just “too much,” and that the site lacks a good entry point for the reader who wants to know: Where do I start?
AUC Press and Sampsonia Way both recently conducted interviews with one-time philosopher and now-novelist Hamdy al-Gazzar (@hamdyelgazzar) about his first novel, Black Magic (trans. Humphrey Davies), which won a Sawiris Award, and the red lines crossed by his more recent novel, Private Pleasures (trans. Davies).
