“Yet if al-Koniʹs shorter ‘Bleeding of the Stone’ and ‘Gold Dust’ are small paintings you can hang on a living-room wall, then The Fetishists is a giant multi-room museum piece.”
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9 Forthcoming in November 2018
Nine translations from the Arabic — at least, translated from the Arabic in some roundabout fashion — forthcoming this month.
Read moreFriday Links: Emirates Lit Fest, (Revolutionary?) Poetry in Saudi Arabia, More
Emirates Lit Fest Ends Tomorrow Regional and international coverage of Emirates Lit Fest has been subdued this year, in part—one assumes—because there’s so much else going on in the Arabic-writing […]
Read moreWho Will You Find in ‘Banipal 40: Libyan Fiction’?
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.
Read moreA Celebration of Ibrahim al-Koni, the Desert, Russian Literature, and ‘Swiss Sufism’
Encouraged by translator/scholar/writer Elliott Colla—who had an interesting short essay about Ibrahim al-Koni in yesterday’s Ahram Online—I thought we’d make this an al-Koni week. Although not an “Arab” writer, al-Koni is one of the giants of contemporary Arabic literature, and has a unique and world-encompassing literary vision.
Read moreWas the Arab Novel Prize Given to Al-Koni for Bad Reasons? (And Then, We’ll Forget All That And Talk Poetry)
Let’s grit our teeth and get this over with: Did (the extremely talented and worthy) Ibrahim al-Koni win Egypt’s “Arab Novel Prize” because judging chair Gaber Asfour wanted to return a chit to Moammar Ghaddafi? After all, Libya awarded Asfour the Ghaddafi Prize for International Literature earlier this year.
Read moreIbrahim al-Koni Wins Arabic Novel Award, Donates 100,000LE Prize to Touareg in Mali and Niger
Leading Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni yesterday received the 100,000LE “Arabic Novel Award” at the closing ceremony of the Cairo Novel Conference.
Read moreWho Wins the Arab Nobel, 2010?
The Swedish Academy has chosen the winner of the 2010 Nobel literature prize, according to the Associated Press. However, they won’t announce their decision until October 7. Peter Englund, secretary […]
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