Judges today announced joint winners of the 2022 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation: the late Humphrey Davies, for his translation of Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Robin Moger, for his translation of Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping.
AUC Press is holding a memorial for translator Humphrey Taman Davies (1947–2021) that will also be livestreamed via Facebook.
Egyptian writer Muhammad Aladdin’s short story “Season of Migration to Arkadia” (tr. Humphrey Davies) is available as a free e-book from publisher mikrotext.
“For us readers of Arabic that are thirsty for a more inclusive canon that has room for queers, peers, poors, boors, mamas and other sisters, Humphrey’s translations have been central in planting the idea that such a canon does exist and that our search will yield some exciting results, as his search so far has done.”
“I do know what kind of writer I like – the marginal and contrarian, and those who deal with real life.”
Humphrey Davies produced many translations and gave many interviews on a wide range of work, medieval to contemporary, in his 24 years as a literary translator. These are a few of our favorites.
“He seems to me a truly in-between character – in between autodidact and man of letters, in between conman and upstanding citizen, in between chancer on the streets of Damascus and provincial court hanger-on in the provinces.”
” In a world of where everyone from gormless mark to greedy king is ready to believe his dreams long before he believes his eyes, al-Jawbari keeps his beady gaze trained on the trickster’s hand, not his mouth.”
“Humphrey Davies discusses how he came to the novel, why this isn’t your woo-woo cliché of Kafka, and how coronavirus came to appear in a novel published in 2017.”
