This month, Hoopoe Fiction (an imprint of AUC Press) publishes Charles Akl’s debut novel Red Like Orange, which won a 2023 Sawiris Cultural Award. Now, three years later, Sarah Enany’s translation of this novel is available to a new readership.
Addie Leak talks with Tugrul Mende about the translation process, literary awards, and two very different translations processes: translating one book through a riot of multilingual voicenotes and another by an author who was inaccessible, in an Israeli prison.
In this conversation with ArabLit’s Tugrul Mende, translator Alex Elinson talks about how literary prizes affect the translation landscape, the draw of detective novels, and how he hones voice in a novel with many starring characters.
Omar Khalifah’s fast-paced and funny debut novel, Sand-Catcher, was published in Arabic in 2020 and last year in Barbara Romaine’s English translation. Here, Tugrul Mende talks about this novel—which focuses on what it means to remember the Nakba—with author Omar Khalifah and translator Barbara Romaine.
This summer, Banipal Books published Huda Hamed’s The Cinderellas of Muscat, translated by Chip Rossetti. Here, Tugrul, Huda, and Chip talk through the Cinderella figure, the translation process, and the relationship between the author and translator. Huda Hamed’s answers were translated by Chip Rossetti.
In his new book “Syrian Poets and Vernacular Modernity,” Daniel Behar looks at a poetic movement that rose from under official state discourse in 1970s Syria. The text examines unknown poetic texts from Syria from the 1970s onward. In this conversation, Behar looks back on the work of his new book and how Monzer al-Masri gradually became its protagonist.
In short, this book can be integrated into any Arabic teaching curriculum as a supplement, and it can be enjoyed on its own by the linguistically curious, cultural enthusiasts, and art lovers of every description.
