“Art for me – whether my poetry or paintings – is an expression of my personal experiences; unbounded by time and place. I prefer not to make of art a utility and rather to allow it the utmost freedom to just be.”
“What is important in the novel is not succession, but crystallization.”
“After immigrating to Canada in 1998, and after the release of my second novel Heliopolis in 2000, the writer Hadya Said contacts me from London to offer that I write a joint novel with Edwar al-Kharrat.”
“You could not ask al-Kharrat about an Egyptian writer, dead or alive, without him going to a small room – perhaps the balcony that he closed to carve out more space for his library one day – and take out some of his or her works with care and sensitivity, or works that even its author may have completely forgotten.”
From our special section, edited and translated by Chihab El Khachab, on Edwar al-Kharrat and his library: By Montasser al-Kaffash My first encounter with Edwar al-Kharrat was in 1986, the […]
This viewpoint was that the stability of life lay in its capacity to change, in stitching the spread of weakness and strength together, not with the intention of achieving hegemony, but with a desire to look out for what is better, because things are not eternal and they erode to leave traces as the sole witnesses to them.
“Usefully, the Banipal list is not just a list, but also includes brief introductions to both the works and their authors, as well as some contextualization.”
Somehow, I thought I could quickly track down each of these 100 titles, translate them (roughly), note whether or not an English translation or excerpt exists, and be done with […]
