Reading Challenge Update: Shakir Mustafa’s Top 5
Shakir Mustafa (not, you know, Mustafa Shakir) has finally turned in his reading challenge picks. Mustafa is the editor and translator of the excellent Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. I […]
Poetry
Arabic Literature ‘At Its Peak’?
So sayeth Marie Therese AbdulMessih, professor of English and Comparative Literature at Kuwait University. She was quoted by The Kuwait Times, which yesterday jumped on the popular question of whether […]
May 2010 Arabic Best-Sellers
As far as I know, Kotob Khan bookstore is still the only book-seller in the Arabic-reading world that compiles regular best-seller lists. I understand that Magrudy’s is selling more Arabic-language […]
Last Day of Short Story Month: Celebrate Yahya Taher Abdullah
Short story month seems to have made a few waves in the U.S. and Canada, with The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, the Toronto Globe & Mail, and National Post celebrating […]
More Memories of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Felicity Arbuthnot remembers the great Palestinian author who made Iraq his home on the GlobalResearch website. Jabra died in 1994, but his Baghdad home was destroyed last month by a […]
Three Saudi Women Writers Make ‘Top 10’ Lists
The National yesterday ran a list of “the region’s women to watch,” which includes a jet pilot and a TV producer and one writer: Hissa Hilal. The Abu Dhabi-based paper […]
Antoon: Five Could’ve Been Fifty, Youssef: Fifty(-Nine) It Is!
Sinan Antoon responded to my book request just after I’d posted the list for Take the Arabic Lit Summer Reading Challenge, and Win. If you don’t know who Antoon is, […]
Night of Environmentalism + Books in Cairo
Most of us—of the sort reading this blog—have a few extra books (hiding under a bed, in a closet, on top of a wardrobe) that we’d like to send back […]
Alawiya Sobh on Writing: Sexuality is an Essential Part of Relationships
This week, Qantara talks to prominent Lebanese author Alawiya Sobh, whose novel It’s Called Love was longlisted for this year’s Arabic Booker. An excerpt of the novel appeared in translation […]