‘Exiled at Home’: A Film Featuring Syrian Author Khaled Khalifa
In this short film, Sinjab sticks very close to Khalifa, who drives us around, sings for us, reads to us, washes dishes for us, shows us his mementos, and tells us about his life.
Poetry
Friday Finds: From Amjad Nasser’s ‘Petra’
The water that tells of life
also tells of the place.
New Collection of Adonis’s Poems To Be Released in Chinese Before Arabic
According to the Chinese news agency, the Chinese translation of Osmanthus is made up of 50 poems “that express the poet’s affections for China’s natural scenery, history, and culture, according to the publisher Yilin Press.”
Robyn Creswell on Poetic Modernism in Beirut and Deprovincializing Comparative Literature
“But I was able to find out that some early issues of that magazine did receive funding from the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and that was unexpected.”
Friday Finds: Najwa Bin Shatwan’s ‘The Reeling City’
The story begins when the narrator enters Colonel Hamid’s office.
School District Using Coelho’s ‘Alchemist’ To Teach ‘Middle-Eastern Customs and Practices’?
The Alchemist, according to the Columbia County Board of Education, “addresses the literary reading standards by offering .. an under-represented, middle-Eastern world perspective. … Students may participate in analytical conversations regarding middle-Eastern customs and practices.”
‘Songs of Mihyar the Damascene’: A Translation that Took 16 Years to Publish
“We often tend to read an author’s poetry against the backdrop of his/her critical writings, but I would argue that you can’t always do this with Adonis—for the simple reason that his poetry is much more radical, much more ambiguous, and much more open-ended that his prose.”
Friday Finds: A Talk with Haidar Haidar
“At the end, what is essential is to write a good literary work, and to hell with prizes.”
2019 Shortlists for Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature
Prize organizers reported that this year they had received 175 submissions from around the world, and that winners in all categories — including the new “Best Silent Book” category — would be announced at the opening ceremony of the Sharjah International Book Fair 2019, on October 30, 2019.