An Excerpt from Laila Aljohani’s Memoir, ‘Forty’
Saudi novelist Laila Aljohani is the author of the acclaimed Days of Ignorance, which is out of print in Nancy Robert’s translation, as well as the compelling memoir Forty, a […]
Nonfiction
Comix in Translation: An Excerpt from ‘Beirut’ Trilogy
This excerpt from Barrack Zailaa Rima’s graphic-novel-trilogy Beirut, which appears with permission, follows the narrator as they try to reckon with exile. Rima’s time-hopping Beirut is out this fall from […]
‘My Grandfather and the Bookseller’
This essay first appeared in Romman in 2020. My Grandfather and the Bookseller By Abdalla Bayyari Translated by Dima Masri My maternal grandfather was a multilingual reader, and his library, […]
Hanan al-Shaykh on Romance, Writing, & Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
It’s publication day for iconic Egyptian novelist Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s A Nose and Three Eyes, translated by Jonathan Smolin. In this foreword to the translation, Hanan Al-Shaykh reflects on her […]
From ‘This Moment,’ by Beesan Nateel
The poems, essays, and genre-encompassing reflections in the THIS MOMENT section of the ArabLit Quarterly Spring 2024 “Gaza! Gaza! Gaza!” issue were curated by issue co-editors Muhammad Zaqzooq and Mahmoud […]
Watch: Four Palestinian Writers on Gaza
The group Passages Through Genocide (gazapassages.com) collects, translates and publishes texts from Palestinian writers confronting the genocide in Gaza, to lift up their words. You can read more about them […]
On Translating a History of Ramallah
By Samira Meghdessian The importance of historiography lies in ensuring a continuity between past and present, even as bombs erase everything that has been built, as we have witnessed recently […]
An Excerpt from Sahar Khalifeh’s ‘A Novel for My Story’
Sahar Khalifeh’s روايتي لروايتي appeared in 2018, long after she was established as one of the great novelists of her generation, one who painted complex portraits of Palestinian society in […]
Golan Haji & Marilyn Hacker on the Inseparable Natures of Writing and Translating
The two introductory texts below — on life, writing, and translation — appear in the newly published trilingual collection Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets. By Golan […]