Poetry

Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi, renowned Egyptian poet, has died at 77.

“The chair always writes an article about the [Man Booker International] prize, and I want to pay tribute to Radwa Ashour, because she was a strong candidate for the shortlist if she hadn’t died. I can’t guarantee that she would’ve been on, but she was definitely under consideration.”

“He tells of the characters who populated his childhood cosmos: the walking wounded, outcasts and failures – or ‘those left footsore by life,’ as he puts it.”

“There are a lot of advantages to writing in a European language, but I will continue to write in Arabic. Whether recognition comes or not, my world is the Arab world.”

“It’s difficult for me to predict the destiny of Arabic creative writing, but I think that we have to listen more to reality than we used to, but without being slaves to it, and without being mechanical reflections of reality.”

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award announced its 2015 winners today, including a literature award to “The Madmen of Bethlehem” (2013) by Palestinian writer Osama Alaysa.

The “Lanterns of Hope” poetry project is looking for poems by young Iraqis, aged 16-23, in Arabic, Kurdish, or English.

“The Hodahose are a population of centaurs living in a realm of caves, under the rule of a paranoid and capricious tyrant. “

Five writers who “introduced new sensitivities, new styles, new techniques and — to an extent — a new language in literature.”