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We talk about the landscape and history of independent publishing in the region, our own experiences working for and launching publications, the conundrum of funding, and the magic of little magazines. 

Show Notes:

This episode is partly inspired by an exhibition at the MMAG Foundation in Amman: How to Reappear Through the Quivering Leaves of Independent Publishing

The exhibition was curated by the publishing platform Kayfa ta, founded by artists Maha Maamoun and Ala Younis 

Here is a review by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie of the same exhibition when it took place in Beirut 

The exhibition featured the work of the Post-Apollo Press, among others

Some of the contemporary magazines mentioned in this episode are: Rusted Radishes, Bidayat, Qadita, Ma3azef, The Public Source, Raseef22, Nejma, Mada Masr, 7iber, as well as comix collectives: Skefkef, Samandal, Toktok, Garage, Fanzeen, Lab 619

The Moroccan magazine Souffles, published from 1966 to 1971, was a hugely influential experiment 

Zahia Rahmani and other scholars at the French Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art have created an eye-opening archive of non-European critical and cultural magazines

City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut, by Robyn Creswell (2019) is “an intellectual history of Lebanon during the early Cold War” that focuses on the magazine Shi'r (“Poetry”) 

Another Lebanese magazine, Hiwar, was (in)famously funded by the CIA.

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This episode focuses on Driss Chraibi's The Simple Past (Le Passé Simple), a Moroccan novel about a very angry young man in revolt against his father's tyranny and the hypocrisies of his colonial education. Back in 1954, it was compared to an explosion – and it still packs a punch today. 

Show Notes:

The Simple Past was newly re-issued from NYRB Classics in Hugh A. Harter's 1990 translation, with a new introduction from Adam Shatz. Shatz's introduction is available online at the NYR Daily.

Excerpts from Chraibi's interview with Federico Arbós can be found at Fragmentos de la entrevista con Federico Arbós, El Mundo/La Esfera, 28/3/92.

This episode also references Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy and the father figure of Si Sayyed; Waguih Ghali's Beer in the Snooker Club; and Tayib Saleh's Season of Migration to the North.

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We recorded this episode in Cairo with author, translator, and Mada Masr culture editor Yasmine Zohdi. We talked about making art in difficult and precarious times; how to acknowledge the political context; censorship and self-censorship. 

“What we talk about when we talk about trees,” by Yasmine Zohdi, ran in Mada Masr in December of last year.

We also spoke about the shrinking of cultural spaces in Cairo.

Zohdi also translates, including her husband Muhammad al-Hajj's beautiful Nobody Mourns the City's Cats.

MLQ was in Cairo for the ARCE symposium on popular culture. Essays from and inspired by the symposium will be appearing at The Maydan.

An excerpt of the Egyptian novel Prizes for Heroes was translated as part of Mada Masr's translation series.

The Egyptian film Yomeddine (“Judgement Day”) was part of the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

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We discuss some of our favorite books from the past year, and some titles we're excited to get our hands on soon. 

Show Notes

•     Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World, ed. Zahra Hankir 
•     Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem, tr. Sinan Antoon
•     Palestine + 100, ed. Basma Ghalayini
•     Palestine as Metaphor, by Mahmoud Darwish, tr. Amira El-Zein and Carolyn Forché
•       Room 304 or How I Hid from My Dear Father for 35 Years by Amr Ezzat, tr. Nora Amin and Yasmine Zohdi
•     Souls of Edo, by Stella Gaitano, is available from Rafiki Printing and Publishing
•     Celestial Bodies, by Jokha al-Harthi, tr. Marilyn Booth; you can watch the clip from their CNN interview on Twitter.
•     Sentence to Hope: A Sa'dallah Wannous Reader by Sa'dallah Wannous, tr. Nada Saab and Robert Myers
•     Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide by Mohamed Elshahed
•     The Magnificent Conman of Cairo by Adel Kamel, tr. Waleed Almusharaf
•     Impostures by al-Hariri, translated by Michael Cooperson

·      In Pursuit of Enayat al-Zayat by Iman Mersal

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We talk about a newly released collection of five compelling and highly quotable interviews with the great late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, titled Palestine as Metaphor, translated by Amira El-Zein and Carolyn Forché. We also talk about recent protests in Lebanon and how they are being written about in Lebanese and international media, as well as the frightening day when the independent Egyptian news site Mada Masr’s offices were raided and editors detained. (All of Mada’s staff has now been released). This episode was partly recorded and produced in the offices of the Sowt network.

• The Great Lebanese Ponzi Scheme by Lina Mounzer

• The Lebanese Street Asks: ‘Which Is Stronger, Sect or Hunger?’ by Ursula Lindsey

• On Power, Machines, and Departures: Running Mada Masr in Today’s Egypt by Lina Attalah.

• A few things you might like to know about us, by Lina Attalah

• Palestine as Metaphor by Mahmoud Darwish, tr. Amira El-Zein and Carolyn Forché

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In the first half of the episode, we paid tribute to Jordanian poet, activist, novelist, travel writer, and editor Amjad Nasser (1955-2019), who died at the end of October. In the second, we talked about the political space occupied by Moroccan-French writers Tahar Ben Jelloun and Leïla Slimani, particularly in the wake of the trial against—and pardon of—Moroccan journalist Hajar Raissouni over an alleged abortion. What is a writer’s responsibility in a society, or between societies? And what about those of us who talk about, report on, and frame literature? (This episode partly recorded and produced in the offices of the Sowt network). 

SHOW NOTES

• A short English-language tribute to Amjad Nasser on ArabLit, and a longer one in Arabic on 7iber.

• Nassar’s recent poems are available on Facebookbutnot yet in translation.Other poems have been translated by Sinan Antoon and Fady Joudahand by the Poetry Translation Center. 

• The letter in Le Monde, co-composed by Slimani, « Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous sommes hors la loi,» and also the pieces about Slimani in The New Yorkerand LitHub. Since we aired the episode, another fawning profile of Slimanihas been published in Le Monde.

• Tahar Ben Jelloun, writing in Le Point: “Vous, obscurantistes, êtes en train de prendre le Maroc de la modernité en otage.”

• Also the criticism of both writers by Omar Brousky in Orient XXI.

• Ursula’s editorial in the New York Timesabout the Hajar Raissouni case.

• Ben Jelloun’s On Terrorism: Conversations with My Daughterwill be coming to English in February 2020.

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We discuss two novels set in Iraq -- one featuring a despondent policeman, and one featuring a determined grandma and her donkey. Also, how John Updike once dismissed the great Saudi writer Abdelrahman Mounif as "insufficiently Westernized" to write a novel.

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