‘Daybreak in Gaza’
By Olivia Snaije “In this war who am I? To the world, it seems I am just a number, a person who is counted on a list of people displaced, […]
Reviews
Karim Kattan, Imagining Eden
By Olivia Snaije Since October 7, 2023, Palestinian author and poet Karim Kattan, along with Lebanese writer Dominique Eddé, has been among the few literary voices on France’s intellectual horizon […]
A Look Back: Hussein El Sayyed’s ‘We Had Days’
Recently, the American University of Beirut unearthed and archived three novels by the late Palestinian author Hussein Al-Sayyed, all three originally been published by Dar al-Hayat. These newly archived novels […]
‘Egypt + 100’: Fictions on the Future of Public Space
By M Lynx Qualey Each anthology of near-future fiction in Comma Press’s “Futures Past” series has had a distinctly different flavor. The stories in Iraq + 100, ed. Hassan Blasim, […]
The Story of a Poem: Refaat Alareer’s ‘If I Must Die’
By Salih J Altoma “And in Gaza and the West Bank, a new generation of poets persists. The most famous, of course, is Refaat Alareer, who was murdered by an Israeli […]
‘Maqam Kurd’: A Counterpoint of Fragmented Identities
By Mohammed Said Hjiouij Much like Kurdish music, which is dominated by the Bayat maqam—a blend of sorrow and joy—the first chapter of Maha Hassan’s latest novel, Maqam Kurd, is […]
What Can Palestinian Literature Tell Us About Amputations in Gaza?
By Graham Liddell Words fail spectacularly in the shadow of 2,000 pound bombs. Palestinian author Anton Shammas recently described his own incapacity to respond in writing to the slaughter and […]
Hanan Jasim-Khammas: On Writing the Body in Iraqi Literature After 2003
By Olivia Snaije Iraqi academic Hanan Jasim-Khammas was just 19 in 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse came to light. Later, as a student of comparative literature, she became […]
Looking for Ghosts: On Said Khatibi’s ‘End of the Sahara’
You can also read an excerpt of the novel in Alex Elinson’s translation and listen to an episode of the BULAQ podcast that features novelist Said Khatibi, talking about this […]