In Conversation: Songs as Memory, as Solidarity, as Resistance
Iman Humaydan, Michelle Hartman, and Emma Hardy discuss the new translation of Iman’s book "Songs for Darkness" and songs as a tool for the transmission of memory, of solidarity, and as a method of resistance ...
Translating Noir: On ‘The End of Sahara’
In this conversation with ArabLit’s Tugrul Mende, translator Alex Elinson talks about how literary prizes affect the translation landscape, the draw of detective novels, and how he hones voice in a novel with many starring characters ...
Said Khatibi and the Algerian Crime Novel
Algerian novelist Said Khatibi talks with us about his latest novel, and the conversation turns to organ theft, the global shifts in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and what he hopes to illuminate with crime novels: not the whodunit, but the why ...
On Translating Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Will Tamplin has devoted much of his work in translation to sharing the literary world of the exceptionally complex Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. In this interview, Tamplin explores his motivation behind this continuous dedication to Jabra’s work, as he dives into his experience translating The Other Rooms ...
Omani Literature and the Translator as Intruder
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Zia Ahmed discuss approaching Arabic translation via English and Urdu, the layers of "outsider-ness" in translation, and the boom of narrative fiction in Oman ...
Sinan Antoon’s ‘Of Loss and Lavender’
In this conversation over e-mail, Sinan Antoon talks about the novel, the fraught nature of collective memory, the process of self-translation, and the sort of “security checkpoints” a book must pass through in the process of translation ...
Translating Arabic Polyglossia
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Jonathan Wright discuss Wright's start in literary translation, its divergence from the sort of translation he practiced as a journalist, and his ideas about what he calls Arabic polyglossia ...
On ‘Fighting Ideological Fantasy with Fiction’
Several authors who contributed short stories to the collection spoke about their thoughts on the collapse of time, historical continuities and the notion of fighting ideological fantasy with fiction ...
Listening to Voices with Hoda Barakat
This is part of an interview with the Lebanese author Hoda Barakat that took place on September 30 2025. It has been translated from French and edited for clarity and length. You can also listen to the BULAQ episode based on this interview, in which we also discuss Barakat’s unique life journey and works ...
In Translation: Blurring the Line Between the Real and the Ludicrous
This December 15, Dar Arab is set to publish Belal Fadl’s The Completely True Tales of Um Mimi and Shari The Adulterer, brought to English by first-time translator Osama Hammad. This darkly humorous coming-of-age is set in a grittily, over-the-top, darkly funny 1990s Cairo. It was originally published in Arabic in 2021 and longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2022. Here, Hammad talks about how he came to translate this novel, the challenges of translating humor, and what makes this novel so special ...
