"Aside from these, nothing at all, just a great expanse of the arid Negev desert, over which crouched the intense August heat."
May Releases: From Arabic Cult Classics to Dark Fiction
Three compelling May releases will be available next week.
Extend Your Summer with the New ArabLit Quarterly: The Sea
Includes the perfect hot-and-sweet late-summer story from Muhammad al-Hajj, in pitch-perfect translation by Yasmine Zohdi.
Studio Créole: Listening to Fiction in Arabic and English, Simultaneously
"Through headphones that sit on the bone just below the ear, audience members will hear the authors read newly written stories in Arabic, Spanish, Croatian, Kikuyu, French and Antillean Creole, Japanese, and Icelandic. But their ears will be free to listen to an actor, who will voice a near-simultaneous interpretation in English."
Books by Hassan Blasim, Adania Shibli Win PEN Translates Prizes
"Books are selected for PEN Translates awards on the basis of outstanding literary quality, strength of the publishing project, and contribution to literary diversity in the UK."
Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: The Creative Writing Workshop
"If in the classroom you’re able to compare multiple translations of a single work, and/or read essays by translators on their craft, this offers rich and rigorous examples of how choices are made on the level of word, phrase, syntax, diction, metaphor, image, so on. Such examples of precision and multiplicity are ideal for student writers."
Adania Shibli’s ‘Touch’ Makes Longlist for Best Translated Book Award
All right, back to my real job for a minute: The longlist for the "Best Translated Book Award" is out, and one translation from the Arabic has made the 25-title cut. It's Adania Shibli's Touch, rendered into lovely English prose by Paula Haydar.
New Arabic Literature & Politics Website, Qadita, Launches
An exciting new Arabic website launched yesterday, shepherded into being by Palestinian-Israeli author Ala Hlehel and Palestinian-Israel journalist and culture critic Anton Shalhat, Ha'aretz reported. Similar in some ways to the Arabic literary website Kikah.com, Qadita---named for a village in Upper Galilee destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948---is younger, faster, more challenging, and has fresher … Continue reading New Arabic Literature & Politics Website, Qadita, Launches
I’m Not to Talk About Adania Shibli’s /Touch/
I have begun to despair of my review of Adania Shibli's lovely Touch ever seeing daylight. (Yes, yes, it will...next issue....) And, as one is not supposed to write about a book before one's review has seen daylight, I can't say much about it here.
Tolstoy and Shakespeare Are Palestinians
I'm a bit late in finding it, but Claire Falcon on FREE THE BLOG apparently wrote about Adania Shibli and Ala Hlehel's Beirut39 reading in London last month. There were the sorts of questions and answers to be expected (Don't you want dialogue with Israeli authors? When they recognize my rights), and then a question … Continue reading Tolstoy and Shakespeare Are Palestinians
