Yahya Lababidi’s ‘If You Cannot Say Genocide’
“If You Cannot Say Genocide” explores a question familiar to Palestinians: how can they talk about what is happening in Gaza without saying the exact word for it?
Nonfiction
The Second Erasure: How Do We Speak of (and with) Political Prisoners?
How do we speak of political prisoners while they are still inside, and how do we speak with them once they’re out? This is not a question about representation, but rather about production; about what we manufacture when we speak or write about political prisoners.
On ‘Desert Imaginations’ and the Meaning of Saharanism
“In Desert Imaginations, Brahim El Guabli draws on literature, colonial history and other fields to articulate a new conceptual framework — Saharanism — that, much like Orientalism more generally, facilitates the exploitation of desert spaces.”
It’s Publication Day: May Ziadeh’s ‘Musings’
It’s publication day for May Ziadeh’s Musings of a Young Woman, the second title in our ERASED NOT FORGOTTEN series, ed. Ibtihal Rida Mahmood. In honor of the release, we share scholar-translator Dana Al Shahbari’s introduction to the volume, which you can find in our store and in select bookshops worldwide.
Alaa Alqaisi and What Caution Cannot Do
Today is the Dublin launch of ArabLit contributor Alaa Alqaisi’s The Thin Border: Living in Extra Time. It is available through Skein Press.
Where is Everybody?
Originally published in December 2012, “Where Is Everybody?” is a celebrated essay by Egyptian writer and novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, later collected in Coffee with Uranium, first published in 2012. […]
Publication Day: ‘Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life’
It’s publication day for the US edition of Samar Yazbek’s Your Presence Is a Danger to Your Life, translated to English by Leri Price. To mark the day, we have a link to an excerpt from the book, a conversation about the book between Samar and Olivia Snaije, a review by editor Ibtihal Rida Mahmood, and a conversation about the translation process between contributor Tugrul Mende and translator Leri Price.
Fallible Men vs Safynaz Kazem
This originally ran in the 2020 ROAD issue of ArabLit Quarterly and appears here for Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), as this year, we’re focusing on underappreciated classics in Arabic by women. And, as Hadil Ghoneim writes below, the gifted and sometimes frightening Kazem was “overshadowed, banned, and deliberately ignored.” Here, we remember her path-breaking work.
Beyond the Workshop: How a Writing Community Was Born
Taqwa Ahmed Alwawi explores the creation of a community of writers in Gaza under genocide.