‘The Common’ Issue 25 Launches Today with Kuwait Special Section
The Amherst, USA-based literary magazine The Common today launches its 25th issue, which features a special section of short stories and art from Kuwait.
Reviews
Publication Day for ‘Shalash the Iraqi’
It’s publication day for Shalash the Iraqi’s series of posts — essays, short stories, satiric monologues, magical-realist sketches — translated to English by Luke Leafgren nearly twenty years after their first appearance online.
Kanafani and Shibli: Different Stagings of Palestine, Different Stagings of Death
In an essay that originally appeared in Turkish, novelist Süreyyya Evren explores the deaths in works by Ghassan Kanafani and Adania Shibli.
A Conversation About Miral Altahawy’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘Days of the Shining Sun’
” This is a godless world, even though Allah is mentioned all the time. The only possible heroism in the novel is that of survival in face of misery.”
5 Songs for the Launch of Haji Jaber’s ‘Black Foam’
Haji Jaber’s Black Foam is full of diverse cultural, linguistic, and musical landscapes. It opens in Addis Ababa, Eritrea, one of the final stages in our main character’s journey from his tangled past […]
On the Translation of NTA-shortlisted ‘Exhausted on the Cross’
The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced yesterday that Najwan Darwish and Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s Exhausted on the Cross was one of the four-book shortlist for their poetry prize, alongside works by Mandelstam (tr. Peter France), Dante (tr. D. M. Black), and atalka Bilotserkivets (tr. Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky).
WatWat Takes Flight: Arabic Comics for Young Readers
Since its creation in 2007, the comics collective Samandal has published more than 17 magazines, six anthologies, and six graphic novels. What’s more, the collective has undertaken numerous initiatives for the promotion of comics in Lebanon. From this experience, the youth-focused WatWat or “Bat” project was born in 2018.
Translation’s Agitated Mirror
“Perhaps each iteration of the poem is a supplicant, yearning for a connection with Ibn Arabi’s original. Or perhaps each one is a lover, longing to see itself in another. Perhaps they are both.”
‘Une Révolte Tunisienne’: New Graphic Novel from Lab619 Co-founders Released in Arabic and French
Une révolte Tunisienne is set in between history and fiction, with the main story taking place in the days of the Tunisian “bread riots.”