BULAQ | بولاق

An Interview with Maria Dadouch, who won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Children’s Literature this year. Dadouch’s book The Mystery of the Glass ball features two children becoming friends, fighting villains and protecting nature on a train ride in the near future. We talked about the need for more Arabic YA books; contemporary sci-fi; literary prizes; digital publishing and why writing for teenagers is the hardest thing to do.  

This episode is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe.

Today’s guest, Maria Dadouch, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of Children’s Literature, for her novel لغز الكورة الزجاجية or "The Mystery of the Glass Ball." Dadouche is a screenwriter and children’s author from Syria who has published over 50 books. 

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children’s Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae

You can find some of Dadouch’s many childrens’ books in Arabic here.  

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We read from the work of Palestinian poets Maya Abu Al Hayyat, Fady Joudah, Asmaa Azaizeh and Najwan Darwish, who writes: “Death has liberated me/ from the shackles of our small jailers,/ just as poetry has liberated us/ from the greatest jailer–time.”

Show Notes

Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s You Can Be The Last Leaf, Trans. Fady Joudah, is out from Milkweed Editions

Najwan Darwish’s Collection Exhausted On the Cross, Trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is out from New York Review Books. 

Fady Joudah curated The Baffler’s series of lyric dispatches from Palestine, from which Marcia read Asmaa Azaizeh’s Reflection. 

We read Fady Joudah’s poem Dehiscence, from his new collection Tethered to Stars. 

And if you are interested in hearing much more Arabic poetry, check out the podcast Maqsouda, another Sowt production.

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Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Send your best guesses to [email protected]. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!

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Guest hosts Rafael (age 11) and Milo (almost 10) take over this episode of Bulaq to talk about the evil aunts, time-traveling djinn, and scary checkpoints in the first book of Palestinian novelist Sonia Nimr's fast-paced fantasy trilogy: Thunderbird.

Show Notes

The first Thunderbird novel is available from University of Texas Press. The second is forthcoming this fall.

Educators interested in joining a launch event on Zoom with author and translator can sign up at the University of Texas website. Participants will get a free copy of the book!

Red Stars, by Davide Morosinottto, is available in Denise Muir's translation. You can find more about literature for young readers in translation at worldkidlit.wordpress.com.

Rafael's next editing project is Sawad Hussain's translation of Djamila Morani's The Djinn's Apple, forthcoming from Neem Tree.

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Another of our short book-quiz episodes. One of our astute listeners has given the answer to last week's question: What Koranic and Biblical story is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's “Paradise”? The answer to this week's question is within the Moroccan novel “Hot Maroc” — and our last episode about it.
Send your best guesses to [email protected]. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!

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Translator Alexander E. Elinson joins us to discuss Yassin Adnan's Hot Maroc, a sprawling satire of contemporary Morocco. The novel, set in Marrakesh and online, follows the story of Rahhal Laouina, aka “The Squirrel,” who finds his voice as an anonymous internet troll – and then has it co-opted by the country's security apparatus. While it paints a bleak picture of the possibilities of political dialogue, journalism, and self-expression, the novel itself is testament to literature's ability to chart new imaginative territory.

Show Notes

Hot Maroc is available from Syracuse University Press in Alex Elinson's translation

You can read an excerpt of the novel at Asymptote.

Aida Alami contextualizes the novel at Middle East Eye.

Adnan talks about the inspiration for the novel in an interview with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an island that was part of a Sultanate spanning Oman and East Africa, and that features in our last two episodes. And we ask about a Koranic and Biblical story that is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise. Send your best guesses to [email protected]. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!

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Paradise, by 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, is the coming-of-age story of Yusuf, a Tanzanian boy sent into debt servitude when his father can't pay back an Arab merchant. Yusuf travels into the interior with “Uncle Aziz” and other vivid characters, to trade with the “savages” there. The story takes place on the cusp of World War I, set in the wake of mass enslavement and the advent of European colonialism and interwoven with Yusuf's story from the Quran. Gurnah himself belonged to the Arab elite of Zanzibar, and fled to the UK after a revolution there in the 1960s.

Show Notes

In Episode 84, we discussed the colonial relationship between Oman and East Africa in Jokha Alharthi's The Bitter Orange Tree.

Abdulrazak Gurnah's Nobel lecture

Excerpt on Kilwa from Ibn Battuta's RihlatTanzania-Oman Historic Ties: The Past and Present, by Oswald Masebo

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Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an Arab poet who emigrated to the US and translated some of the Beat poets. And we ask a question about Oman, where Jokha Alharthi's “Bitter Orange Tree,” discussed in our last episode, is set. Send your best guesses to [email protected]. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!

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Jokha Alharthi burst to sudden international literary stardom in 2019, when her second novel, Sayyidat al-Qamr (tr. Marilyn Booth as Celestial Bodies), won the International Booker. The novel, touted as the “first by an Omani woman to be translated to English,” has since appeared in languages around the world. More novels by Omani women, including Bushra Khalfan's The Garden, are forthcoming in English translation, and Alharthi's Narinja (also tr. Booth, as Bitter Orange Tree) will appear in May 2022. In this episode, we talk Omani literature, history, translation, and the extraordinary Bitter Orange Tree.

Show Notes

Six Languages, Six Covers: Celestial Bodies Around the World

On Turning ‘Sayyidat al-Qamr' into ‘Celestial Bodies' and the Tyranny of the New

New Yorker review: An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries

Excerpt of Celestial Bodies on WWB: London

Excerpt of Bitter Orange Tree on Carnegie Foundation website: Al-Rahma

Interview with Jokha Alharthi

More at Alharthi's website, jokha.com

Our episode on Sonallah Ibrahim's novel Warda, also set in Oman.

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