OCTOBER 30, 2023 — We are pleased to announce the three short fictions that this year’s judges have selected for the shortlist of the 2023 ArabLit Story Prize. All three […]
“I was aware from the very start of the novel that one of its themes would be language, translation, and encounters between languages. This was one of the things that drew me to it, including the amusing and lyrical way the author describes the opening encounter between al-Kahina and the envoy sent by the Muslim general Hasan Ibn al-Nuꜥman.”
Coming in August: Books by Sonallah Ibrahim, Ibrahim al-Koni, and Faleeha Hassan.
“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.”
Nine translations from the Arabic — at least, translated from the Arabic in some roundabout fashion — forthcoming this month.
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 […]
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.
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.
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.
