The Latest

“The Wall,” by the massively popular Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (1962-2008) is from his collection “Now I Understand.”

“It was ridiculous, the way the battle of tuk-tuks and microbuses began.”

Areej Gamal’s Sawiris-winning novel Mariam, It’s Arwa appeared at the end of last month in Addie Leak’s translation. The titular Arwa and Mariam meet near Cairo University during the 2011 Egyptian uprising, and the encounter changes them both.

“The city wakes up in obituaries.”

“I want to step out on my balcony and hang my laughter out on the clothesline, so that passersby can catch hold of it, scale the wall to the fourth floor, and laugh with me.”

“Who am I? / I am not myself.”

Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies.

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the particular role translation has played in the US military.

“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.”

“The divide among poets has added a diaspora to the spatial diaspora, which scattered Syrians around the world.”

” Jaziri wrote poetry with one set of alphabets which at that time were used in four languages: Kurdish, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic. Sometimes, he used the four languages in one couplet. His poems are still recited and sung by Kurds. That coexistence of languages was quite natural, the alluring music was convincing, although I sometimes understood almost nothing.”