News

In response to the AP’s bits-and-piecey report on contemporary Egyptian fiction, I thought I’d dig up a list of current Arabic bestsellers. This list is certainly not authoritative—nothing close to […]

Such is the thesis of Hamza Hendawi, writing today for the Associated Press. I’m not quite sure I agree with the lead—Hendawi quotes Hamdi Abu Golayyel, whose A Dog with […]

The 2009 novel by Lebanese author Alawiyya Sobh Ismuhu al Gharam has been named by some (Youssef Rakha in particular) as the book that should’ve won the Arabic Booker. The […]

Bravo to Cameroonian author Léonora Miano for speaking up for how she believes her book should be framed in English. What she complains of is not the translation (from French), […]

No, it’s not that Elias Khoury. It’s a Palestinian (our Elias is Lebanese) attorney of the same name who’s  funded a translation of Amos Oz’s A Tale of Love and […]

by Hamdi Abu Golayyel, translated by Robin Moger The narrator of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s A Dog with No Tail (Arabic 2008; English 2009) moves through life lazily but anxiously. He’s […]

To me, this looks oddly like the “robot pharmacies” at certain medical facilities in the U.S. They could address the aesthetic issue, I imagine. But, for goodness sakes, pharmacists play […]

In an interview posted on the Beirut39 website, Sousan Hammad asked Iraqi novelst Ahmed Saadawi who, among Iraqi writers, had most influenced him: At first, the short stories and novels […]

I don’t quite understand this government-run survey. I imagine that, even in the closest-knit Egyptian family, there might be slight differences of opinion about reading. Also, I’m not sure how […]