Yesterday, organizers announced the seven-book shortlist of the 2023 Palestine Book Awards, and among them was ArabLit Books’ debut title: Samira Azzam’s Out of Time, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman.
In addition to Out of Time: The Collected Short Stories of Samira Azzam, translated by Ranya Abdelrahman, we also recommend these five collections.
Slowly, we raised our heads as hellish cries echoed in our ears, and we looked up in awe and fear.
“When I asked when they sang this song, they said: ‘at weddings!’”
There goes the bell. I’ve been waiting for so long! I quickly pull my hand from the tub of water where the empty bottles are piled up, ready to be washed and refilled with beer, then loaded up and taken to the city’s bars and nightclubs. There, they’re poured straight into mouths whose thirst will never be quenched. They soon come back to me, empty, waiting to be washed.
“My little watch is the first to sense the change, going into and out of Palestine.”
Today, we are launching our first crowd-supported translation: Ranya Abdelrahman’s translation of thirty-one selected stories by the great cult-classic Palestinian writer Samira Azzam.
“The collection — being translated by Ranya Abdelrahman — will draw from the collections published during Azzam’s lifetime.”
“I would love for her entire corpus to be translated, particularly given that what little has been so far is highly unrepresentative of her overall body of literature.”
