‘Arsène Lupin,’ a Short Story by Sonallah Ibrahim
“His mouth discharged a second snort. I worried he might attack me, or tear me apart, but he settled his body back into the chair and sighed. “
“His mouth discharged a second snort. I worried he might attack me, or tear me apart, but he settled his body back into the chair and sighed. “
Two very different Egyptian novels appear in translation this month: They are Sonallah Ibrahim’s “provocative masterpiece” Warda, translated by Hosam aboul-Ela and Mohamed Kheir’s “musical and parabolic” Slipping, translated by Robin Moger.
“Like I say, it’s fleeting, but I could write a whole memoir, I think, just about getting that sentence translated.”
“Oman, which is not often in the media spotlight, appears to the reader of Warda not only as a country with a rich tradition and heritage, but also the scene of a violent power struggle between its different political factions.”
“Look, there’s no novels,” a voice suddenly boomed directly above my head. “We don’t sell novels.”
“To write about [1967] is to foreground it yet again; not to write about it is to consign oneself to live with the illusion of its insignificance. . . . The way out of this double bind is to do both at the same time: this may explain why the 67 war is invoked in the title of the novel but is almost entirely absent from the preoccupations of the narrative.”
The Summer 2020 issue of ArabLit Quarterly — our issue of summer insight & delight — is now available.
Be sure to listen before the live Zoom discussion, open to the public today at 2 p.m. EST, 6 p.m. GMT.
The €20,000 prize is for both author and translator. Two runners-up and their translators will also receive a prize of €1,000 each.