This short film, directed by Tarek Khalil and based on Yusuf Idris’s classic short story, won best satire last fall at the American International Film Festival and then, this January, […]
Yesterday, the great Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish would have been seventy years old.
Emirates Lit Fest Ends Tomorrow Regional and international coverage of Emirates Lit Fest has been subdued this year, in part—one assumes—because there’s so much else going on in the Arabic-writing […]
But, Hanaa Abdel Fattah argues in Ahram Online, Egyptian theater has fallen into disrepair, thanks to censorship, religious red lines, and “bad commercialism.”
I should have a piece in Al Masry Al Youm today that looks at different strands of Egyptian feminism (and alternatives to feminism) through the lens of women’s memoirs and novels.
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF, or “Arabic Booker”) organizers announced today that the six authors shortlisted for the 2011 prize were scheduled to arrive in Abu Dhabi on Thursday.
Apparently, these measures were not enough for a group “dozens of young men,” according to AFP, or “more than 500,” according to Al-Arabiya, who descended on the fair late Wednesday night, denouncing books and harassing women. They were alleged to have been members of the PVPV, although the commission denies it.
John Halliwell, working with the Meedan translation project, has rendered a Q&A with Egyptian poet Karim Abdel-Salaam in beautiful English. The interview was conducted by Abdel-Rahman Muqallid to mark the publication of Abdel-Salaam’s eighth poetry collection, The Book of Bread. (You can read the Arabic original of the interview on Youm7.)
One possible harbinger of ongoing state censorship is the caretaker government’s Minister of Culture, Mohamed al-Sawy. His appointment has not been met with enthusiasm from most artists and writers. Novelist Gamal al-Ghitani, for instance, told Ahram Online that al-Sawy’s appointment was “a disaster that defaces Egyptian culture.”
