This year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction went to debut novelist Mohamed Alnaas for his examination of masculinity, Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table.
Read moreKhaled Nasrallah: Censorship is Not Exclusive to Kuwait; It’s a Global Issue
“But I didn’t decide to avoid setting The White Line of Night in Kuwait so that I could write freely and refer to anyone or anything without getting into trouble. Censorship is not exclusive to Kuwait; it is a global issue and it still exists in reality and practice even in the countries that theoretically nullified it.”
Read moreFrom Khaled Nasrallah’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘The White Line of Night’
“The censor would often read a sentence and claim that he had read it elsewhere.”
Read moreExcerpt from Mohsine Loukili’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘The Prisoner of the Portuguese’
“From the seven children my father slaughtered in the cellar of our house, I was the sole survivor. Our mother, who could have stood between us and death, died of hunger and sorrow a day before the tragedy.”
Read moreMohsine Loukili: I Do Not Use the Novel to Serve History, But History to Serve the Novel
“History is important with regard to the novel, as is philosophy, for example, but in the end, it is nothing more than a tool, a means that the novel harnesses to serve artistic, aesthetic, and humanist purposes.”
Read moreFrom Tareq Imam’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘The Cairo Maquette’
Tareq Imam’s The Cairo Maquette, shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction, explores the lives of three main characters: Uriga, Noud, and Billiards.
Read moreMiled Faiza and Karen McNeil, ‘On the Merits of Tunisian Literature’
“The few Tunisian novels which are available in translation made it into English thanks to the prizes that they won, or because of the curiosity the country attracted after the Arab Spring.”
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From the Archives: Shahla Ujayli on Getting Raqqa Back Through Writing
“It is not easy for me to summarize in these lines my emotional relationship — with all its fluctuations — with Raqqa!”
Read more‘Notebooks of the Booksellers’ Wins 2021 International Prize for Arabic Fiction
“In intensely poetic language, Jordanian writer Jalal Barjas throws light on a totally schizophrenic reality in his country, which lies on a fault line prone to frequent tremors.”
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