A Physician on the Nile Lives Among the Dead: A Talk with Tim Mackintosh-Smith
2022-12-13
“There is a scene where a woman is eating her husband’s thigh and she says, ‘It’s alright, he is my husband.’”Continue Reading
Sunday Submissions: Call for Pitches for the LAL’s Blog
2022-10-02
The Library of Arabic Literature is looking for contributors to their blog. Pitches are read on a rolling basis.Continue Reading
Humphrey Davies and the ‘Tabloid Touch’ Demanded by Translating a 13th-century Charlatan
2021-11-10
“He seems to me a truly in-between character – in between autodidact and man of letters, in between conman and upstanding citizen, in between chancer on the streets of Damascus and provincial court hanger-on in the provinces.”Continue Reading
Alexander Key: On Domesticating Al-Jurjani 110%
2021-11-08
“I’m trying to translate al-Jurjani so that he sounds like a literary critic writing in English, writing in his native language. I don’t want the reader of al-Jurjani’s experience with metaphor to think this guy is foreign – because al-Jurjani didn’t think he was foreign.”Continue Reading
Yasmine Seale to Translate Al-Khansa for LAL Series
2021-07-31
The poetry of Al-Khansa (~575-646) has been little-translated, although notably it appeared in the slender and beautiful chapbook of reflections Loss Sings, by author and translator James Montgomery, one of the executive editors of the Library of Arabic Literature project.Continue Reading
Humphrey Davies and the ‘Tabloid Touch’ Demanded by Translating a 13th-century Charlatan
2021-07-20
” In a world of where everyone from gormless mark to greedy king is ready to believe his dreams long before he believes his eyes, al-Jawbari keeps his beady gaze trained on the trickster’s hand, not his mouth.”Continue Reading
Enass Khansa and Bilal Orfali on Editing a Series of Classical Arabic Texts for Young Readers
2020-11-12
“Something that I was aware of growing up in Syria, but more now that I’m in Lebanon, is that classical Arabic literature is associated with many things, but it’s not associated with being a space for creative and experimental thinking. So I think the main idea for both of us with this is experimental.”Continue Reading
Al-Yūsī’s Discourses: Situating a Sufi Scholar in a Vivid 17th-Century Morocco
2020-04-16
“It’s not quite the same as a purely autobiographical text, but it’s almost more interesting for that. They’re more like mini-essays. I do think that the work, for that reason, can be read by people who aren’t interested in seventeenth-century Morocco.”Continue Reading
New: Library of Arabic Literature Podcast Channel
2019-10-19
Current discussions include talks with Bilal Orfali on wise fools, Maurice Pomerantz on the magic of words, and Marcel Kurpershoek on Nabati and classical poetries.Continue Reading
