“The wave of days rises / and recedes, bidding farewell to / shells of love and hate / upon the body / resounding with the echoes of words.”
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On Banipal’s ‘100 Best Arabic Novels’
“Usefully, the Banipal list is not just a list, but also includes brief introductions to both the works and their authors, as well as some contextualization.”
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.”
Read moreDenys Johnson-Davies Remembers Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
I missed this in last week’s Al Ahram Weekly, but I suppose it wasn’t “timely” in any case: these are memories of a Palestinian who died in 1994 and whose […]
Read moreRemembering Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
I have known Jabra Ibrahim Jabra—whose relatives and Baghdad home were lost to a car bomb last month—as a novelist and memoirist. However, the great Palestinian writer, who died in […]
Read moreThe Best 100 Arabic Books (According to the Arab Writers Union): 1-10
Somehow, I thought I could quickly track down each of these 100 titles, translate them (roughly), note whether or not an English translation or excerpt exists, and be done with […]
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