Arabic fiction

‘Go and Look Properly’ for the Best of Arabic Fiction

Hanan al-Shaykh: I feel like saying to publishers, ‘Go and look properly for someone to advise you, and be serious about it – rather than being sloppy about it because it‘s foreign.’ Continue Reading

Best 100 Arabic Books (According to the Arab Writers Union): 61-70

This is where you’ll find 1-10 (and an explanation of this project), and here’s 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60. Please do help me out with errors and omissions. 61 Seeds of Corruption, by the Egyptian author Sabri Moussa, translated by Mona Mikhail, published by Interlink in 2002. 62 AlContinue Reading

Rewriting National History from a Personal Perspective: Hiyem Cheurfa on Arab Women’s Life Writing
This March, Hiyem Cheurfa’s new book Contemporary Arab Women’s Life Writing and the Politics of Resistance appeared as part of Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature series. In it, Cheurfa takes us on a journey through a number of women’s memoirs, written in the context of twenty-first century uprisings. In this conversation, the author talks about the challenges and the difficulties of writing this book and how the texts she studied changed her life.
Lit & Found: ‘Sudanese Novels Through Time’
Over at Kotobli, they have posted a new list; this time, of Sudanese novels through time. The list was curated by Sudanese-American writer Razan Idris.
Najwa Barakat’s ‘Mister N’ Shortlisted for 2023 EBRD Literature Prize
Today, organizers announced the ten-book shortlist of translated literature for the 2023 EBRD Literature Prize.
Iman Mersal & Robyn Creswell Make 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize Longlist with ‘The Threshold’
Organizers of the Griffin Poetry Prize — one of the world’s biggest international poetry prizes — have announced this year’s ten-book longlist. Among them was Egyptian poet Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, beautifully translated by Robyn Creswell.