Mahdi Issa al-Saqr (1927-2006) was born in Basra and published his first short-story collection, مجرمون طيبون (Criminals with Kind Hearts) in 1954. That same year, he and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab […]
Each stood combing their hair and tidying their clothes and looking at themselves; some admiring themselves and some gazing at their reflections in despair.
Over the last two decades, the term less translated languages has emerged to describe languages that are less often the source of translation in the international exchange of linguistic goods, […]
“I remember another waterfall—how we left the dirt road and walked down towards the shore. Clear water flowing over the pebbles deepened in the middle of the river, so that leaving the shore became an adventure, and made the small island packed with trees appear distant, despite how close it actually was.”
“In the last week of our series on Iraq’s diverse literary scene — curated by Hend Saeed — we focus on Diaa Jubaili’s The Lion of Basra, which is set amongst the fragmentation of Iraq’s different religious communities.”
“I appreciate the hard work of the translator Ghassan Hamdan, who translate tirelessly all the modern Iranian, Afghan, and Kurdish literature into Arabic.”
“In the quiet, slow-growing love between Elias and Helen, the reader experiences the polar opposite of the slave market and the horrors in Ayash’s house.”
“Madeen’s character is inexhaustible, and I like to keep my characters alive, especially the ones I wrote in my early years; now I can add some reality to give them life again. Like a journalist or someone looking for the truth.”
“Why was I sitting here, wearing this uniform, with these people whose language I hardly understood?”
