The Contours of ‘Permissible Speech’ in Egypt
Jonathan Guyer, editor of the blog Oum Cartoon, has just published an examination of cartoons and Egypt’s shifting red lines, “Under Morsi, Red Lines Gone Gray.”
News
The Rising Profile of Algerian Manga
Algiers has long been a cartooning hotspot, and the International Comics Book Festival of Algeria (FIBDA) is an important annual event. But although Algiers has welcomed and celebrated both Arabophone and Francophone comic artists — Lebanese graphic novelist Jorj Abu Mhayya and Egyptian magazine TokTok both won awards at last year’s fair — the Algerian scene has its own flavor. Lately, apparently, manga has been on the rise.
Salon on Arab Science Fiction To Kick Off Nour Festival
This year’s Nour Festival of the Arts — set to run from October 1 to November 30 — will kick off its series of talks on October 2 with a salon on Arab (and thus Arabic) science fiction.
New Translation of Ibrahim al-Koni’s Aphorisms Coming Next Spring
For years in English, aphorisms were a red-headed stepchild of a genre, practiced seriously only by a few. But with the compression forced by new technologies and social-media software, more writers are writing short. Perhaps by coincidence, a few translations of aphorisms are also appearing.
Ahmed Mourad at the Mantua Book Festival: a Snaphsot of the New Generations of Egypt
Best-selling Egyptian novelist Ahmed Mourad was recently at Italy’s Mantua Book Festival. Cristina Dozio wrote about it for Editoriaraba; the blog’s editor, Chiara Comito, graciously translated the post for ArabLit.
Iraqi Author Abbas Khider Wins Major German Literary Prize
Officials announced yesterday that Iraqi novelist Abbas Khider had won the biennial literary prize of the city Dortmund, the €15,000 Nelly-Sachs-Preis.
Sabra and Shatila in Literature and Memory, 31 Years Later
Recently, I have been working with a Palestinian author on his memoirs, which includes a heart-breaking section on Sabra and Shatila (yes, indeed, I have an existence outside this blog):
More Arabic Literature and Translation Events this Month: From London to Brooklyn, Lucera to Los Angeles to Cairo…
There is an Arabic-literature-in-translation event somewhere in the world nearly every day in the second half of September.
New Online in September: (Arabic) Fiction, Memoir, Poetry
PROSE “The novelist vs. the revolutionary: My own Syrian debate,” by Samar Yazbek, trans. Ruth Ahmedzai, from the Washington Post. I am two women. They stand head to head, at loggerheads. […]