Most recently — less than a month ago, in late November — Mahfouz made news when crank MP Abul Maaty Mustafa said, at a parliamentary debate, that “Naguib Mahfouz deserves punishment” for “violating public decency.”
Maarouf, in a celebratory Facebook post, called this a “win for the short story,” which has often been sidelined in favor of support and promotion for the novel.
“My role? For years I would receive emails, hate mail from the Arab world. Now I get hate mail from Finns! Because I speak about racism, about refugees.”
Yazbek’s ‘Bawabat’ has now appeared in thirteen languages, including Malayalam, Greek, Romanian, and Tamil.
“The ninth edition of the “Sea of Words” accepted stories that somehow addressed violence against women; unsurprisingly, then, the top three prizes all went to women. “
“The University of Durham and Banipal magazine have announced a new annual writing fellowship ‘for a published author writing in Arabic, based each year at St. Aidan’s College.'”
“Basra is a pioneer in writing fiction and this is probably because Basra is a multi-ethnic and -nationality city, or used to be, until it was depopulated of these many ethnic and national citizens with the passage of time, such as the Jews, Armenians, Christians and some other foreign residents.”
“What you need to understand is that truth is directly connected to our wallets. And since your wallet is empty, and mine is full, that means the truth isn’t in your wallet. It’s in mine.”
“‘Personal Empathy Machine’ is an original performance work by Amal Omran, Hatem Hadawe and Kathryn Hamilton about Syrian prisons, Virtual Reality and the limits of empathy.”
