Arabic Literature for Young Readers: 10 Publishers to Know
As a way of marking #WorldKidLitMonth (which you can follow at @worldkidlit and worldkidlit.org), we are profiling 10 publishers that have a focus on children's literature in Arabic. While some have been around since the 1980s and 90s, such as the Tamer Institute and Al Salwa Books, most are more recent. Indeed, it has been in the last 20+ years, since around the turn of the century, that the landscape of Arabic children's literature has burst into flower. Although there have long been comics and magazines that children enjoyed, the Arabic children's books on offer before 2000 were often didactic, with uninspiring illustrations. Now, however, there is a vibrant landscape of literature for young readers with dozens of literary prizes, ...
Lit & Found: Weekly Arabic Poetry Newsletter
This wasn't perhaps a difficult find -- as we have built this Wednesday newsletter out of poems previously published on ArabLit or in ArabLit Quarterly -- but, in any event, wanted to share the news. Our first poem, Rasha Omran's "Claws," in translation by Phoebe Bay Carter, was sent out this Wednesday. Future poems will be drifted out to inboxes worldwide on Wednesday mornings (for the Americas) afternoons (for Europe, Maghrebi, Mashreqi, and African time zones), and evening (the rest of Asia, Australia, and New Zealand). We will focus on relatively short poems by a wide range of Arab authors, in translation. Interested readers can sign up through Substack. Poets, translators, and publishers who would like to see their work ...
Lit & Found: An Excerpt of Hilal Chouman’s ‘Sadness in my Heart’
A photograph taken during Lebanon's Civil War launches a journey of discovery in a new translation -- by ArabLit editor Nashwa Nasreldin -- from Hilal Chouman's novel, Sadness in My Heart. The excerpt opens: I heard a faint tapping at the door then the knocks grew louder. Someone was calling out, using my first name: “Mr. Youssef! Mr. Youssef!” I opened my eyes and my head immediately began to throb. I discovered that I was in the hotel bed, naked, and that a young man was asleep nearby, fully clothed, covering his face with a pillow. The hotel phone was resting on the floor, its receiver detached. Slowly, I nudged the pillow aside and found Jean’s face. Read it on The ...
Lit & Found: Poems by the Late Zakaria Mohammed
Palestinian poet Zakaria Mohammed passed away aged 73 on August 2, 2023. The winner of the 2020 Mahmoud Darwish Prize for Culture and Creativity, Mohammed published several novels and plays, but will be remembered above all for his thought-provoking and stylistically inventive poetry. Iraqi novelist and poet-translator Sinan Antoon has brought eight of Mohammed's poems into English for Jadaliyya, among them: There is no death There is only a tiny cloud that passes and covers your eyes Like a friend who comes from behind and blindfolds you with his hands There is no death There is a black goat and a tattooed hand milking an udder White milk fills your mouth and flows in your eyes Again, there is no ...
Women in Translation Month Wrapup: Stories, Interviews, Lists, Poems, & More
This month, as in past Augusts, we focused on writing by Arab women in translation. We included new translations of stories and novel excerpts, lit lists, audio recordings of poetry, book reviews, and writers' recommendations. We also expanded our view with a special section curated by editor Essayed Taha: Arab Women of Words: Conversations With 9 Industry Leaders. Special section In this special section, Essayed Taha talks to nine women in publishing about how they see their role in the publishing landscape now and in the future. Arab Women of Words: Conversations With 9 Industry Leaders #NineStories We continue our "9 Stories" series, begun in 2021, with short works by women writers from Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, and Tunisia, ...
9 Short Stories by Tunisian Women, in Translation
Today marks the final "9 stories" list for this year's Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth). We began the series in 2021, when we featured short fiction by Sudanese and South Sudanese women, by Algerian women, by Egyptian women, and by Syrian women, all in translation. In 2022, we added a short collections of work by Palestinian women writers,by Lebanese women writers, by Moroccan women writers, and by Iraqi women writers, also in translation. This year, we began with a list of short stories by Kuwaiti women writers, followed by short stories by Jordanian, Saudi, and Libyan women writers. Issue 39 of Banipal, which focuses on Tunisian literature, is an excellent introductory anthology to Tunisian literature in translation. For a brief look at Tunisian women writing short stories in the 1950s and ...
A Look at 5 Emirati Publishers: Summer Break Edition
By Eman AlYousuf It’s August, when heat and humidity are at their glorious peak and nothing much is happening in the literary scene here in the UAE. Summer has always been known as the quiet season, especially for cultural and arts events. Yet in the last decade, the United Arab Emirates has played a key role in the Arab literary scene, transforming the way we see and deal with literature, publishing, the book industry, and the creative economy. This includes new and re-launched book fairs in Sharjah and Abu Dhabi, new literature prizes, including the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction, the Emirates Airlines LitFest, as well as many new museums, galleries, and art festivals. Yet while these Emirati initiatives ...
9 Short Texts by Libyan Women, in Translation
This week's list -- of short works by Libyan women writers -- couldn't focus solely on short stories in translation, or even on excerpts of prose. This week, we've also included two poems ...
Writing Their Way Out: 16 Prison Narratives by Arab Women
By ArabLit Staff with Alexander Elinson Yesterday, we published an excerpt of Moroccan author and activist Khadija Marouazi's 2000 prison novel History of Ash, which was published this month in Alex Elinson's English translation. Although there are a range of powerful prison memoirs by Arab women, there are fewer prison novels. Today, we have a short list of prison narratives by women across the region, both fiction and nonfiction, from Morocco to Palestine to Saudi Arabia. There are, naturally, many prison narratives by men, fiction and memoir, including a number of outstanding examples: Abdulrahman Munif's East of the Mediterranean; Sonallah Ibrahim's Sharaf; Mustafa Khalifa's The Shell (tr. Paul Starkey); Fadhil al-Azzawi's Cell Block Five (tr. William Hutchins); and Ahmed Naji's Rotten ...
9 Short Works by Saudi Women, in Translation
"In the 1980s, short-story writers, male and female, numbered only a few dozen, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century they were in their hundreds." ...
