“Abu Shalakh, the Chameleon” is a 2002 fantastical, satirical novel by Ghazi Algosaibi (1940-2010) in which the Saudi literary giant and politician recounts the history of the Kingdom and its global entanglements through Abu Shalakh, a lovable liar, unreliable storyteller, and self-proclaimed “truth-teller.”
“He did not say goodbye when he rose to leave.”
On a review that nearly didn’t happen.
“Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all of this only makes sense in the context of our desire for justice, our desire to preserve the true essence of humanity.”
“Are you tired of walking / My son, are you tired?”
Publisher and managing director of Saqi Books, Lynn Gaspard, on what it means to publish as your world faces destruction.
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.
“She closed her olive-green eyes and sang songs she’d learned from the women in her family.”
This is the sixth and final installment of Emile Habiby’s The Six-Day Sextet, which has been made available in an open-access, non-commercial translation by Invisible Dragoman.
