The (Arabic) Children’s Book Dilemma
Yesterday, I got a very well-timed email from blogger Elias Muhanna. Lately, I’ve been trying to get together an Arabic story time or Arabic toddler book group for my two-year-old. […]
Reviews
One-minute Review: Taha Hussein’s /The Call of the Curlew/
Ideally, you wouldn’t read the A.B. As-Safi translation of Taha Hussein’s masterwork, The Call of the Curlew, published by Palm Press in 1997. The edition (pictured) is riddled with typos […]
One Minute Review: Taha Hussein’s /The Tree of Misery/
The Tree of Misery. By Taha Hussein, trans. Mona El-Zayyat. The Palm Press: Cairo, 1997 (Arabic 1944). 137 pages. I had thought of the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein (1889-1973) as […]
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There are some aspects of I Saw Ramallah that feel outdated.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 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 […]