“But I also gave the male characters, like the father, individual voices, not just to show how their chauvinist mentality harms women, but also to emphasize that men are poor and marginalized too; they have to fight to survive too.”
Read moreFiction in Translation: ‘The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz’
“Ahmet felt his face flush. He picked up his passport and stalked off through the crowds in Atatürk Airport, jerking his suitcase violently behind him. It was the first time he’d been embarrassed by his Turkish name, the one he’d chosen when he turned 30, after living in Turkey for six years.”
Read more#TranslateThis: Badr Ahmad’s ‘Black Rains’
As Ahmad wrote in his interview with al-Riwayah: “I wanted to write, to scream, to protest, to put my imprint on the forehead of this world. I wanted my sons and daughters to know, a decade or two from now, that their father rejected this war, he rejected all this destruction and exposed the thieves who rode on the wave of the revolution.”
Read more2021 ArabLit Story Prize: Shortlisted Translator Katherine Van de Vate on Great Storytelling
““The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ahmet Yilmaz” was actually written at my request. Karima is primarily a novelist, though she published an award-winning collection of short stories at the age of only 18. I asked Karima if she had any short stories I could translate, and she wrote this one in response to my question. It was based on an event she heard about while she was working as a journalist in Istanbul.”
Read moreJudges Choose Inventive, Varied Shortlist for 2021 ArabLit Story Prize
ArabLit is delighted to announce that this year’s judges selected five stories for the shortlist of the 2021 ArabLit Story Prize, by five writers from four countries: Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Morocco.
Read more3 Arabic Translators Longlisted for John Dryden Prize, One ‘Highly Commended’
At the beginning of this week, organizers of the John Dryden Translation Competition announced the winners of their 2021 award.
Read moreNew Fiction: Excerpt from Badriya al-Badri’s ‘The Last Crossing’
“Lights are running towards me. It’s the first time I’ve seen lights with legs. It’s not a cartoon, these are actual lights, running so fast they are panting; I see their tongues lolling out, drooling as if they are about to leap on someone and shred him with their sharp fangs.”
Read moreRelease Party for Winter 2020 ArabLit Quarterly: Dreams
“One of the trickiest, most mysterious secrets of the Arabic language is the root h-l-m.”
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Lock-in Literature: Tareq Emam’s ‘The Tale of the Woman with One Eye’
“Long ago in the City of Walls, you could see the enormous mountain of dark-blue kohl towering over the city no matter where you stood.”
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