Novelist Mohammed Hanif on the Re-release of Sahar Khalifeh’s Classic ‘Wild Thorns’
“Wild Thorns is an ambulance ride of a book, complete with a red light and blaring siren. It’s urgent and essential.”
Nonfiction
Kanafani and Shibli: Different Stagings of Palestine, Different Stagings of Death
In an essay that originally appeared in Turkish, novelist Süreyyya Evren explores the deaths in works by Ghassan Kanafani and Adania Shibli.
From ‘The Beauty Hunters’: An Excerpt from Adil Babikir’s Work on Sudanese Bedouin Poetry
To give readers a glimpse of The Beauty Hunters, we run a selection from the first chapter, which tells us a little about Al-Ḥārdallo’s life and poems.
‘#There_Is_a_Voice’: A Plea to Continue the Search for Earthquake Victims
“Do you know what it feels like to put your head on the ground with the hopes that you may hear the voice of someone you love?”
An Excerpt from Hussein Barghouthi’s ‘The Blue Light’: Introduction to the Psychology of Fog
“It is said that blue is an antidote to sexual excitation—and I was a raging bull then. It is also said that blue calms the nerves—and I was on the edge of madness, bad temper was my inheritance, my father was known for it.”
Bushra al-Maqtari’s ‘A Locked Room for Loss’: An Excerpt from ‘What Have You Left Behind’
This excerpt from Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind is a companion to our discussion with translator Sawad Hussain: “On Translating Trauma, and What To Do After Reading About Yemen.”
‘Have You Seen Afifa, Have You Seen Latifa?’ Recovering History Through Folktales
Every year, we run a special holiday gift on December 25. This year, it’s an essay from our most popular edition, the ArabLit Quarterly FOLK issue,
Origin Stories: Tracing Jabra and Munif’s childhoods in Bethlehem and Amman
On a sweltering July day in Amman, I left my friend’s apartment in Abdoun and made my way to Jabal Amman with nothing more than a set of vague coordinates plugged in to Google Maps to guide me. I was in search of Abdulrahman Munif’s childhood home.
‘Matters of National Football’
In honor of today’s match, we’re running this essay from our beloved FOOTBALL issue, by Moroccan author Yassin Adnan, translated by Moroccan translator Hicham Rafik, with photographs by Moroccan photographer Omar Mesrar.