BULAQ | بولاق

In this episode of BULAQ we highlight several new and forthcoming translations from Arabic to English. We also discuss the newly translated Concerto Al Quds by the renowned Syrian poet Adonis, as well as Adonis’ own status as an artist and public intellectual, and his stance on religion and revolution.

Show notes

ArabLit’s list of works forthcoming in translation Winter-Spring is available online. Do keep in mind that, with smaller publishers, release dates can shift.

Banthology, ed Sarah Cleave, part of Comma Press’s “banned nations showcase,” is appearing this January 2018 in the UK, and from Deep Vellum in the US in March. The stories are by Anoud (Iraq), Wajdi al-Ahdal (Yemen), Ubah Cristina Ali Farah (Somalia), Najwa Bin Shatwan (Libya), Rania Mamoun (Sudan), Fereshteh Molavi (Iran) & Zaher Omareen (Syria).

The Iraqi author Hassan Blassim has published several collections of stories with Comma Press, and edited the collection Iraq +100.

Frankenstein in Baghdad, by Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright, is forthcoming from Penguin Random this month, as we celebrate the 200-year anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein. It won the 2014 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

Arwa Salih’s Stillborn, translated by Samah Selim, is forthcoming from Seagull Books this month.

Jabbour Doauihy’s Printed in Beirut is forthcoming from Interlink this March, in Paula Haydar’s translation. His great liar-narrator referred to is Eliyya in June Rain (also translated by Haydar) and the Christian-Muslim confusion is in his Homeless, sometimes translated as Chased Away.

Pearls on a Branch: Tales From the Arab World Told by Women, collected by Najla Jraissaty Khoury, translated by Inea Bushnaq, is forthcoming from Archipelago. Used copies of Bushnaq’s delightful Arab Folktales, published in 1986, can still be found.

Concerto al-Quds, by Adonis, translated by Khaled Mattawa, was released this month by Yale University Press. Two essays we mentioned were “The Man Who Remade Arabic Poetry,” by Robyn Creswell, and Sinan Antoon’s “The Arab Spring and Adonis’s Autumn.” You can also read Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s response to Antoon’s essay, and Antoon’s critique of Mattawa’s previous translation, Adonis: Selected Poems.

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In this episode, we look back at 2017 about talk books published in the past year: notable books, favorite books, books we felt were overlooked, books we don't quite agree on, and books we can't wait to read. We also discuss how not to write about "discovering" Arabic and the Arab world.

Show notes

• ArabLit's "Arab Authors' Favorites of 2017" list is available online. Some of the most frequently mentioned books on the list were works of non-fiction: Haitham al-Wardany's Book of Sleep, Iman Mersal's How to Heal: Motherhood and Its Ghosts, and Charles Aql's Coptic Food.
• A translation of Mersal's book was funded by Mophradat as part of their Kayfa Ta series and brought to English-language life by Robin Moger, although the publisher is still TBA.
• Maan Abu Taleb's All the Battles was also translated by Robin Moger.
• Zeina Hashem Beck's poetry collection Louder than Hearts was one of MLQ's biggest discoveries of 2017.
• Ezzedine Choukri Fishere's Embrace at Brooklyn Bridge, translated by John Peate, was one of the underappreciated novels of 2017. Fishere's Exit Door has been signed by Hoopoe Fiction, and an excerpt from Fishere's 2017 novel All That Rot, translated by Jonathan Smolin, appeared at Words Without Borders.
• Omar al-Akkad's American War has already been translated to Arabic and published by the UAE-based Rewayat.
• American War was on the list of 2017 books of note Ursula made for the web site Al Fanar. Also on the list, Bad Girls of the Arab World, a collection of scholarly writing and essays edited by Nadia Yaqub and the late Rula Quawas, published by University of Texas Press.
• Mustafa Khalifa's devastating prison novel The Shell has been translated by Paul Starkey and was published by Interlink.
• "The Fine Art of Learning to Say Nothing in Arabic," by Adam Valen Levinson, excerpted from the Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah and recently published on LitHub, has come in for considerable criticism online.
• On the other hand, there is writing about learning Arabic that we have loved: "Matthew McNaught's Yarmouk Miniature," published in N+1; Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land; and I.Y. Kratchovsky's wonderful Among Arabic Manuscripts, translated from the Russian by Tatiana Minorsky.
• The Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature was presented on December 11 to Palestinian novelist, poet, and short-story writer Huzama Habayeb, for her 2016 novel Velvet. You can read a short profile and interview with the author in The National.

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President Trump just recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move that acknowledges only a single Israeli narrative. We discuss Palestinian writers and how they write about their relationships with Israelis; about living with trauma and danger; about coming of age under occupation. We also look at the emerging field of children’s and young adult literature in Arabic.

Show notes

• Raja Shehadeh is a Ramallah-based author and attorney who has written a number of celebrated books, including Strangers in This House (2002), Palestinian Walks (2008), winner of the Orwell Prize; A Rift in Time: Travels with My Ottoman Uncle (2010), and the book that was at the focus in this episode, Where the Line is Drawn: Crossing Boundaries in Occupied Palestine (2017). Ursula wrote recently about his life and his work for The Nation
• The Palestine Festival for Literature, created by writers Adhaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton, brings authors, bloggers and journalists from around the world to Palestine every year. You can learn about it here: http://palfest.org
• Ibrahim Nasrallah is a prolific Jordanian-Palestinian poet and novelist who has won numerous awards. His Time of White Horses, translated by Nancy Roberts, was shortlisted for the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and his Gaza Weddings, also tr. Roberts, has just been released in English. An excerpt is available online.
• The Drone Eats With Me, by Atef Abu Saif, was written during the summer of 2014, when Gaza was under siege. Abu Saif did a 2015 residency in London through the Delfina Foundation.
• Mahmoud Darwish’s Memory for Forgetfulness was translated by Ibrahim Muhawi, who has a gift for finding the rhythms in Darwish’s prose.
• Mazen Maarouf, Palestinian-Icelandic poet and short-story writer, won the inaugural Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story in 2016 for his Jokes for the Gunmen, forthcoming in Jonathan Wright’s translation from Portobello Books. This year’s prize, announced December 4, went the Syrian author Shahla Ujayli’s Bed of the King’s Daughter.
• Sam Wilder’s luminous translation of Ghassan Zaqtan’s Describing the Past was, disappointingly, not on this year’s four-book Banipal Translation Prize shortlist.
• Palestinian authors have also been leaders in the new movement toward Arabic Young Adult literature. Sonia Nimr is a past winner of the Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature, in the Young Adult category, and Palestinian YA writer Ahlam Bsharat has also been shortlisted. Bsharat’s Code Name: Butterfly was translated by Nancy Roberts and shortlisted fort this year’s Palestine Book Awards. The two other Arabic YA novels that have been translated into English are Fatima Sharafeddine’s Faten, translated by the author as The Servant and Emily Nasrallah’s What Happened to Zeeko, translated by the late Denys Johnson-Davies. Other works discussed include Rania Amin’s Screaming Behind Doors, winner of the 2016 Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature in the YA category, Sonia Nimr’s Thunderbird and Taghreed Najjar’s One Day the Sun Will Shine, Sitt al-Koll, and Mystery of the Falcon’s Eye.
• It was 2003 when Sonallah Ibrahim famously and publicly turned down the Egyptian Ministry of Culture’s 100,000LE State Prize, saying that the government hadn’t the credibility to grant it.
• Sidewalk Salon is the book of 1001 Cairo street chairs. Marcia was incorrect; editors raised half of their $19,000 crowdfunding goal.

Books mentioned in this podcast Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape By Raja Shehadeh Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine By Raja Shehadeh Where the Line Is Drawn: A Tale of Crossings, Friendships, and Fifty Years of Occupation in Israel-Palestine By Raja Shehadeh Time of White Horses: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction) By Ibrahim Nasrallah Gaza Weddings: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction) By Ibrahim Nasrallah The Drone Eats with Me: A Gaza Diary By Atef Abu Saif Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (Literature of the Middle East) By Mahmoud Darwish Describing the Past (The Arab List) By Ghassan Zaqtan Ghaddar the Ghoul and other Palestinian Stories (Folktales from Around the World) By Sonia Nimr A Little Piece of Ground By Elizabeth Laird Code Name: Butterfly By Ahlam Bsharat The Servant By Fatima Sharafeddine What Happened to Zeeko By Emily Nasrallah Sidewalk Salon Cairo: 1001 Street Chairs of Cairo (OMP) By Manar Moursi and David Puig

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In which we discuss the fictional underworlds of Rabee Jaber and other Lebanese novelists; and explore Saudi poetry, from a new translation of a famous pre-Islamic collection to the satirical poems of “a grumpy old man” in the Najd in the 18th century. At this time when women are denouncing male abuses of power the world over, we look at two Moroccan female writers who are critical of their societies and who face the question of how their work is received and represented at home and abroad. Asma Lamrabet proposes a progressive feminist re-reading of the Quran; Leila Slimani is an award-winning novelist who has written a book on “sexual misery” in Morocco.

Show notes:

• Beit Beirut cultural center is in the restored Barakat building, built in 1924, devastated during the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) and used as a vantage for snipers.
• Rafic Hariri is the father of current Lebanese yes-no-yes-I’m-the-prime-minister Saad Hariri, and was assassinated in an explosion on February 14, 2005, along with twenty-one others. His assassination was the focus of a UN special tribunal.
• The Mehlis Report, by Rabee Jaber, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is set in the Beirut of the living and the dead in 2005, just before the release of the titular UN report, overseen by public prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.
• Confessions, by Rabee Jaber, also translated by Abu-Zeid, won this year’s PEN USA translation prize, and is told by a man who was raised by those who killed his family during Lebanon’s Civil War.
• Limbo Beirut, by Hilal Chouman, translated by Anna Ziajka Stanton, was published by University of Texas Press.
• It was also Kareem James Abu-Zeid who won a $25,000 NEA grant this week to produce a new translation of the Mu‘allaqat, or “The Hanging Poems,” a collection of works by seven pre-Islamic Arabic poets (although Abu-Zeid will be bringing together works by ten pre-Islamic Arabic poets).
• Arabian Satire: Poetry from 18th Century Najd, by Hmedan al-Shwe’ir, edited and translated by Marcel Kurpershoek, will be out December 1 from the Library of Arabic Literature. We read from Poem 19, which begins, “Our plowmen labored in the fields / while he was distracted by little Sarah.”
• The collection Adrenaline, by Ghayath al-Madhoun, translated by Catherine Cobham, is out this month from Action Books.
• Asma Lamrabet has been the Director of Studies and Research Centre on Women’s Issues in Islam of Rabita Mohammadia des Ulemas located in Rabat, Morocco since 2011. As it says on her website, “she focuses on rereading Holy Scriptures from a feminist perspective.” In English, you can read Women in the Qur'an: An Emancipatory Reading, translated by Myriam Francois-Cerrah. She recently won Le Prix Grand Atlas for Islam et femmes, les questions qui fâchent.
• Lullaby, by Leila Slimani, which won the Goncourt as Chanson douce, will be out in English translation by Sam Taylor in January 2018. Her new book is Sexe et mensonges. Ursula has a piece on Slimani here.
• Veil, by Rafia Zakaria, was published as part of the “Object Lessons” series from Bloomsbury. You can read M Lynx Qualey’s review on The National (UAE).
• Nawal El Saadawi has dozens of books available in English, including Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and Woman at Point Zero.
• You can message us at @bulaqbooks, where our DMs are open, or email at [email protected].

Books mentioned in this podcast: The Mehlis Report $9.31 By Rabee Jaber Confessions $10.53 By Rabee Jaber Limbo Beirut (Emerging Voices from the Middle East) $14.95 By Hilal Chouman Arabian Satire: Poetry from 18th-Century Najd (Library of Arabic Literature) $35.00 NYU Press The Perfect Nanny: A Novel $12.78 By Leila Slimani Veil (Object Lessons) $14.95 By Rafia Zakaria Woman at Point Zero $11.65 By Nawal El Saadawi Memoirs of a Woman Doctor $11.42 By Nawal El Saadawi

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In the midst of a crackdown on gay men in Egypt, we discuss Mohammed Abdel Nabi’s novel about being gay in Cairo, In The Spider’s Room. Also: a portrait of a love-hate relationship with a Cairo neighborhood, an award for Arabic Young Adult and children’s literature, a Saudi novelist under attack online, and a Palestinian poet whose trial hinges on translation.

Show notes

• In the Spider’s Room, by Mohamed Abdelnabi, was on the shortlist for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The novel has been translated by Jonathan Wright and is forthcoming from Hoopoe, an imprint of AUC Press, in 2018. You can read reviews on Mada Masr as well as the much-shared critique on “Notes from Over There.”
• The Apartment in Bab El Louk, by Donia Maher, Ganzeer, and Ahmed Nady was published in Arabic in 2014 and appears in English this month, November 2017, from Darf Publishers, translated by Lissie Jaquette.
• Ahmed Naji was recipient of the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award after his imprisonment on charges of “violating public modesty” for an excerpt from the Egyptian edition of Using Life, published in Akhbar al-Adab. University of Texas Press is releasing the English translation, by Ben Koerber, November 20. More about Naji’s ongoing trial from PEN America.
• Magdy al-Shafee’s Metro was first published in January 2008 and quickly banned on the ground of “offending public morals”; al-Shafee and his publisher were both fined. An English translation by Chip Rosetti was published in June 2012, and the book—in English and Arabic—is now available in Egypt again.
• The winner of the Etisalat Award for Arabic Children’s Literature, in the Young Adult category, was Fatima Sharafeddine’s Cappuccino. Yasmina Jraissati can be contacted about translation rights. There were several other fantastic shortlisted works, including Sonia Nimr’s Thunderbird and Taghreed Najjar’s One Day the Sun Will Shine.
• Thursday’s Visitors by Saudi novelist Badriya Albeshr was the target of trolls and then a banning in Saudi Arabia. You can read an excerpt at ArabLit.
• Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, who has been in prison or under house arrest for more than two years for a poem, has her next trial date November 9. You can follow her case at freedareentatour.org/trial. The poem, which is alleged to be incitement, is "Resist, My People, Resist Them."

Books mentioned in this podcast The Apartment in Bab El-Louk $14.95 By Donia Maher Using Life $16.34 By Ahmed Naji Metro: A Story of Cairo $4.54 By Magdy El Shafee Children of the Alley: A Novel $13.66 By Naguib Mahfouz The Yacoubian Building: A Novel $8.11 By Alaa Al Aswany

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