“But for me, it’s not necessary to put my hand in the fire to express its pain. What hurts my people hurts me.”
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Friday Finds: ‘Mosul, the City with Two Springs’
“I had learned from early childhood that Mosul was a city with two springs because autumn was like a second spring.”
Read moreBritish vs. American Dialect in Translating ‘The American Granddaughter’
One thing is bothering me. The narrator’s diction is quite high—a working-class girl from Detroit says, “I pulled into the spacious parking lot in front of Wal-Mart….” Fine. Something has elevated this character, putting her outside of ordinary American speech. I haven’t read so far that I can see the full effects, but I can appreciate the decision.
Read moreIraqi Literature in Translation: A Brief Introduction
Yet Iraqi literature continues, somehow, to blossom. There are older writers Fadhil al-Azzawi and Muhammad Khudayyir still at work (although the former in exile), and much younger ones, too: Thirtysomething Iraqi Hassan Blassim has been called “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive.”
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