One-minute Review: Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah
There are some aspects of I Saw Ramallah that feel outdated. There were a few moments when, reading Mourid Barghouti‘s 1997 memoir in 2010, I wished the celebrated poet had […]
Reviews
Reviews of Books I Haven’t Read–or–Why Do the Italians Love Arab Fiction?
Rogers, by Ahmed Nagi Apparently the Italians are interested in contemporary Egyptian writing. According to Al Ahram: This week the Italian publisher Il Sirente issues Rogers by Ahmad Nagi, the […]
Reviews of Books I Haven’t Read
The Guidebook as Literature. The new guidebook Beyroutes offers a very non-guidebook take on Lebanon’s capital city. Scholars, writers, architects and artists explore the city—mostly on foot—giving a literary view […]
New Reviews of Not (Yet?) Translated Arabic Fiction
The Lady from Tel Aviv, Rabai al-Madhoun. 2009. The Lady from Tel Aviv has generated a good deal of positive buzz from readers across the spectrum. Published last year, it’s […]
One-minute Review: Khaled Al Khamissi’s /Taxi/
Taxi. By Khaled Al Khamissi, trans. Jonathan Wright. Aflame Books: London, 2008. 218 pages. I’m not the sort of person who “laughs out loud” while reading. My people hail from […]
New and Reviewed: Khalidi’s Qur’an Translation, Celeb (Magrhebi) Memoir, and Nazi-to-Arab Propaganda
The Angry Arab News Service lauds the new Qur’an translation done by Tarif Khalidi and now out from Penguin Classics. First, As’ad AbuKhalil says that the translation is accurate, which […]
One-minute Review: /The Zafarani Files/, Gamal el-Ghitani
The Zafarani Files. By Gamal el-Ghitani, translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab. American University in Cairo Press: Cairo, 2009. 344 pages. In The Zafarani Files, as in Saramago’s Blindness, mysterious illness […]