It’s publication day for Mohammed Alyahyai’s The War, in Christiaan James’s translation. In this opening passage, Issa Saleh prepares for an evening gathering—only to find that something, or someone, has slipped out of reach.
In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Zia Ahmed discuss approaching Arabic translation via English and Urdu, the layers of “outsider-ness” in translation, and the boom of narrative fiction in Oman.
“I am somehow a slow writer, which means that it takes so long for the ideas to be processed internally. And as the idea itself is processing, a certain amount of research will be taking place, and that usually takes a few years.”
The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information yesterday condemned the detention of Omani poet and TV producer Nasser Al-Badri.
When Abdulaziz al-Farsi’s unusual but compelling Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs appeared in English last year (trans. Nancy Roberts), it was one of the first Omani novels to find an audience in English. But Omani literature isn’t just hard to find in English, but in Arab countries as well.
