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Why didn’t you tell me that Amin Maalouf had a blog? It was only after the Angry Arab News Service had this short, slightly absurdist snippet about the (celebrated) Arab […]

My friend Mai once told me, Reading is one thing. Seeing a thing on film is another. She was referring to Blindness, which I’m sure I couldn’t take from a […]

It’s less than a month until the Beirut39 festival, and the attendance of one of the 39 “up-and-coming Arab writers” remains unconfirmed. According to the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, “Adalah, The […]

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 […]