Omar Taher’s ‘The Last Cassette Tape in Egypt’
“After his father died, they found an old English biscuit tin at the bottom of the wardrobe. What lay inside it puzzled him greatly.”
Ali Layth Azeez
Haneen al-Sayegh on Writing Women and Collective Solidarity
International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted writer Haneen Al-Sayegh talks with ArabLit about the novel that “began as an intimate letter” to her daughter, the collective solidarity of women, and how “many depictions of Arab women in literature remain confined to reductive tropes: the broken, submissive woman pleading for freedom or awaiting salvation.”
Azher Jirjees: Writing the Country That Lives In Him
Last month, International Prize for Arabic Fiction judges announced that Iraqi writer Azher Jirjees had been shortlisted for the 2025 prize for his The Valley of the Butterflies, a novel set in Baghdad between 1999 and 2024 that tells the story of Aziz Awad, a government archivist who loses his job and struggles to keep his small family alive. Here, Jirjees talks about the power of satire, writing in exile, the Iraqi literary scene, and about how he and other Iraqi writers wanted to make “our voices heard, mine and those of my generation, who had lived through the ordeal from beginning to end.”
Two Poems by Haitham K. Al-Zubbaidi
A Helmet of Brass By Haitham K. Al-Zubbaidi Translated by Ali Layth Azeez Nothing in me betrays the clouds’ expectations except that I am so deep in aridity. Nothing in […]