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Critics like al-Ghitani said that, “bloggers were tainting Arabic literary production by writing books in poor language, and ‘they even express ideas making fun of language’.“

We’re interested both in the many connotations of sea in English (a sea of faces; ancient sea creatures; she sells sea shells by the sea shore) and بحر in Arabic (as body of water and poetic meter).

“The film ‘The Summons,’ based on the novel by Yusuf Idris, was being shown at the Cinema Rivoli in Cairo and Cinema Radio in Alexandria, while the Cinema Royale in Alexandria was showing ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ which had been preceded by the fame of the actor Jack Nicholson, and of course of the producer, Miloš Forman.”

No book translated from the Arabic made either the poetry or fiction longlists of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award (BTBA), announced yesterday.

“It works beautifully as satire and parody, in a way that makes it a reading experience very like the kind of contemporary metafiction – so called magic realism, etc. – that so many of us at least claim to find so brilliant, right? It’s hilarious, it’s absorbing, it’s full of gripping anecdotes and fascinating insights into an instantly recognisable if impossibly distant reality.”

It’s now a two-year invitation “for those whose experience in Palestine catalyses new work or new collaborations that can then be presented at subsequent festivals.”

“The general narrative has it that Arab writers, disillusioned by the failures of the Arab Spring and the renewed plunge into disorder and authoritarianism, have spawned a new literary movement of late, turning to speculative fiction – dystopian in particular – to make sense of the nightmarish present.”