Banipal 39 featured “Modern Tunisian Literature” and 40 will showcase “Libyan Fiction.” If there had been a 39 1/2 on young Egyptian authors, I’d have suspected that editor Samuel Shimon had a really good set of voodoo dolls over there at 1 Gough Square.Continue Reading

The book presumably draws on Matar’s personal history: In 1990, his father, Jaballa Matar, was kidnapped in Cairo and extradited to Tripoli as a political dissident. Since then, his family heard little about Jaballa Matar’s fate; Hisham described the torturous silence this in a piece for the Gaurdian last January. You can find out more at freematar.org.Continue Reading