“Before singer-songwriter Yousra Hawwari, who made great use of the accordion, it was nobody’s favorite instrument despite being widely used. Perhaps it earned a kind of universal dislike precisely because it was overused in Egyptian songs from the 1990s, songs from other Arab countries that imitated Egyptian songs, and Turkish songs that either plagiarized Egyptian ones or vice versa.”
This month, Hoopoe Fiction (an imprint of AUC Press) publishes Charles Akl’s debut novel Red Like Orange, which won a 2023 Sawiris Cultural Award. Now, three years later, Sarah Enany’s translation of this novel is available to a new readership.
This month, find classic works by Alis al-Bustani and Hussein Barghouti, a YA novel from Palestine, a short-story anthology from Damascus, and a new award-winner from Egypt.
“A study of Coptic school sandwiches – or how to get your mother to make you the best chicken sandwich in the world.”
In this panel, moderated by Nour Kamel, writers reflect on the various tastes that make up food writing in and through Arabic. Kamel is joined by writer, researcher, and filmmaker Salma Serry; the genre-spanning author of Food for Copts (2017) Charles Akl; and Mariam Boctor a member of Botoun’s curatorial team who helped facilitate “The Taste of Letters” workshop and translated some of its texts into English.
‘BILA HUDOOD: Arabic Literature Everywhere,’ an inaugural online literary festival funded by the Royal Society of Literature, is pleased to announce out full schedule of events, set for July 9-11.
