On Taha Hussein Day: 5 in Translation
Although Hussein’s works continue to be read and loved forty-odd years after his death, only a small corner of his broad oeuvre has been translated to English.
Taha Hussein
40 Years Gone: The Literary and Social Legacy of Taha Hussein
“I was privileged to touch his face, and how handsome, scholarly and full of inward light it was!”
5 Must-read Memoirs (and Not-quite-memoirs)
Assembly Journal, for their “five books” series, asked me to come up with a list of five Arabic books. The field was too dizzyingly wide.
Even when I narrowed my topic to “memoirs and not-quite-memoirs,” it was a difficult winnowing process: What about Galal Amin’s Nectar of the Years? Well, it hasn’t been translated into English, so that’s that, I suppose. Sayyid Qutb or Huda Shaarawi’s memoirs, for their historical and political importance? Taha Hussein’s classic The Days? (But hasn’t everyone already read The Days?)
Google Doodle Honors Taha Hussein
I didn’t see it yesterday, but Google Egypt reportedly celebrated the 121st birthday of Taha Hussein (the “dean of Arabic literature”) with the pictured “doodle.”
Friday Links: Facebook as the New Literature, Reviews, and Taha Hussein Defended
This may be the week of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, but the most delightful thing I read this week was Youssef Rakha’s “Virtually there,” in Al Ahram Weekly. (We’ll just blame an editor for the meaningless headline.)
Don’t Have a Father’s Day Gift? (Yes, Of Course, Literary Suggestions)
If your dad likes complex but ultimately heartwarming father-son relationships in (great) literature: Stealth, by Sonallah Ibrahim, has a touching father-son relationship at its core. It’s also an excellent, very […]
One-minute Review: Taha Hussein’s /The Call of the Curlew/
Ideally, you wouldn’t read the A.B. As-Safi translation of Taha Hussein’s masterwork, The Call of the Curlew, published by Palm Press in 1997. The edition (pictured) is riddled with typos […]
Taha Hussein on the Debate over Banning 1,001 Nights
All right, the dean of Arabic literature died in 1973, so I couldn’t have asked his opinion on the matter. And no, Taha Hussein did not appear to me in […]