Coming in August: Historical Fiction from Egypt and Libya & an Iraqi Memoir
2022-08-02
Coming in August: Books by Sonallah Ibrahim, Ibrahim al-Koni, and Faleeha Hassan.Continue Reading
‘A Giant Multi-room Museum Piece’: Ibrahim al-Koni’s ‘The Fetishists’
2019-03-16
“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.”Continue Reading
9 Forthcoming in November 2018
2018-11-01
Nine translations from the Arabic — at least, translated from the Arabic in some roundabout fashion — forthcoming this month.Continue Reading
Friday Links: Emirates Lit Fest, (Revolutionary?) Poetry in Saudi Arabia, More
2011-03-11
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 world. Gulf publications continue to report steadily from the festival, although mostly about the festival’s non-Arabic-writing guests. Emirates 24|7: MohammedContinue Reading
Who Will You Find in ‘Banipal 40: Libyan Fiction’?
2011-02-24
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
A Celebration of Ibrahim al-Koni, the Desert, Russian Literature, and ‘Swiss Sufism’
2010-12-23
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.Continue Reading
Was the Arab Novel Prize Given to Al-Koni for Bad Reasons? (And Then, We’ll Forget All That And Talk Poetry)
2010-12-22
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.Continue Reading
Ibrahim al-Koni Wins Arabic Novel Award, Donates 100,000LE Prize to Touareg in Mali and Niger
2010-12-16
Leading Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni yesterday received the 100,000LE “Arabic Novel Award” at the closing ceremony of the Cairo Novel Conference.Continue Reading
Who Wins the Arab Nobel, 2010?
2010-10-02
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 of the academy, declined to give the AP reporter any hints about the academy’s choice. He did acknowledge a trendContinue Reading
