Football and Arabic literature haven't always had an easy relationship. Football has inspired famous authors like Mahmoud Darwish, and anonymous fans who have composed powerful stadium chants. But the sport is sometimes looked down on by writers. We celebrate the sport and its chroniclers, featured in the FOOTBALL-themed fall 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly.

SHOW NOTES

Today, we talk our way through the Fall 2021 issue of ArabLit Quarterly, which is all about literature and football. We open with a chant from the Casablanca team RAJA, “Fi bladi delmouni,” or “I Was Wronged in My Own Country,” in the original and then translated by Hicham Rafik.

For more background, read Aida Alami's “The Soccer Politics of Morocco,” in The New York Review of Books.

We go out on the Ultras Ahlawy chant “Hekayetna,” or “Our Story,” translated by Mina Ibrahim.

We also talk about Mina Ibrahim's moving essay “Egyptian Football's Missing Archives.”

Mid-way, we read from Syrian author Luqman Derky's “Knocking on Blue Freedom's Door,” translated by Daniel Behar.

You can find the issue at arablit.org/store

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We're back! Catch up on everything you missed over the summer, including Women in Translation Month and a Fall reading list full of intriguing new titles. 

Show Notes: 

In our opening, Marcia reads "Four Years Without You" (For Mahmoud Darwish) by Samar Abdel Jabar, trans. Zeina Hashem Beck

August was Women in Translation Month with ArabLit highlighting Arab women authors you may not have heard of yet. 

The Female Voices in Arabic Literature webinar featured writer Iman Mersal, translator Sawad Hussain and scholar Dr. Marlé Hammond. 

Melanie Magidow's translation of a (small portion) of the epic poem of Dhat al-Himma is out from Penguin Press as The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman. 

Warda, by Sonallah Ibrahim, trans. Hosam Abul-Ela, is out from Yale University Press

Slipping, by Mohamed Kheir, trans. Robin Moger, was published in June by Two Lines Press. 

The Library of Arabic Literature is behind the bilingual edition of Hanna Diyab's Books of Travels (trans. Elias Muhanna) and al-Baghdadi's A Physician on the Nile (trans.. Tim Mackintosh-Smith). Diyab is the source of some of the stories Antoine Galland added to his version of the 1001 Nights, including the story Aladdin. 

Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay (trans. Leri Price) is forthcoming from World Editions. 

The Egyptian writer Basma Abdel Aziz's 2016 novel The Queue (trans. Lissie Jacquette) was a widely praised work of dark political fantasy. Her follow-up, tr. Jonathan Wright, is Here Is A Body.

Ursula's article on Edward Said -- on his own account of his life and those of others, including a recent biography -- can be found at The Point.  

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Iman Mersal's work spans poetry and scholarship, personal essay and biography. In 2021, Mersal received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for her deeply insightful prose work In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat. 

SHOW NOTES

This podcast 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, we talk with SZBA-winning Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal. In 1993, Mersal picked up an unknown novel by a forgotten writer from the 60s. And so began her long wanderings in search of Enayat El Zayat. El Zayat killed herself in 1963, four years before her book “Love and Silence” was finally published. Mersal's portrait of El Zayat is a remarkable work of research, empathy and imagination. 

Iman Mersal's In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat (في أثر عنايات الزيات) was published by Kotob Khan Books in late 2019. We read excerpts from Robin Moger's forthcoming English translation. You can also listen to our previous episode on this book, titled “Cold Trail.”

Richard Jacquemond's translation, Sur les traces d'Enayat Zayyat, was published in the spring of 2021.

The only novel by Enayat al-Zayyat (1936-63), Love and Silence ‫(الحب و الصمت) ,‬ was recently republished and is available on Google Play.

Other works in English translation by Iman Mersal include How to Mend: Motherhood And Its Ghosts, tr. Robin Moger and a forthcoming poetry collection, translated by Robyn Creswell. ArabLit has gathered links to poems by Mersal in English translation. Her co-translation of Waguih Ghali's Beer in the Snooker Club (بيرة فى نادى البلياردو) is widely available.

You can read “Qāl wa Qulnā: What the Letter Qāf means in Spoken Jordanian” on 7iber. Mersal's “The Displaced Voice” is available via Scribd.

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The Maqamat of Al-Hariri is a story collection from 11th century Iraq that showcases the Arabic language's dazzling, disorienting possibilities. Michael Cooperson received the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his ground-breaking translation. 

SHOW NOTES

This podcast 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, Michael Cooperson was awarded the SZBA in 2021 in the category of Translation, for the book Impostures: A Rogue's Tale Translated Fifty Ways by Al-Hariri, translated from Arabic to English and published by the Library of Arabic Literature in 2020.

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: https://www.zayedaward.ae/en/translation.grant.aspx.

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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 talk to humorist Karl Sharro about the origins story of his Twitter alter-ego Karl ReMarks and about finding the ideal online nemesis. Marcia takes issue with a new book listing the “hundred best novels in translation.” 

Show notes

• Karl Sharro spoke about Karl ReMarks' new book, And then God Created the Middle East and Said ‘Let There Be Breaking News' (and Analysis). The book is forthcoming July 9.
• Boyd Tonkin's The 100 Best Novels in Translation was released June 21. The two Arabic novels that made the list were Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, and Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan. The translation was overseen by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, along with Martha Levin, and their notes on the manuscript can be found at the Lilly Library Manuscript Collections.
• You can read the Amazon press release online about how the mega-corporation has (finally) launched some 12,000 Arabic ebooks into the Kindle system. You can find and purchase them on Amazon.com.

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In Aziz Muhammad's The Critical Case of a Man Named K, an unnamed narrator is diagnosed with leukemia. His 40-week journal, shaped by his readings of Kafka, Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway and Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, sarcastically and movingly documents his alienation from his body, his surroundings and even, eventually, from books.

Show Notes: 

An interview with translator Humphrey Davies.

We also talked about a few other works where protagonists are diagnosed with cancer:Shahla Ujayli's A Sky So Close to Us, translated by Michelle Hartman (Interlink Books); Radwa Ashour's Heavier than Radwa (Dar Al Shorouk), although this is a memoir; Haifa al-Bitar's A Woman of This Modern Age (Dar Saqi); Hassan Daoud's No Road to Paradise, translated by Marilyn Booth (Hoopoe Fiction).

We also mention some Saudi books that have won awards or attracted international attention, such as Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea and The Dove's Necklace by Raja Alem.

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An earthquake inspired Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine's Agadir, published in French in 1967 and translated to English by Jake Syersack and Pierre Joris. Part playtext, part novel, part political essay, part poem, this insurrection of a book takes as its starting point the devastating 1960 earthquake that struck the Moroccan city. 

Show Notes: 

We also talked about a few recently published and forthcoming poetry collections.

Mohamed Stitou's Two Half Faces, translated by David Colmer (Phoneme Media)

Ra'ad Abdulqadir's Except for This Unseen Thread, translated by Mona Kareem (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Ibn Arabi's The Translator of Desires, translated by Michael Sells (Princeton University Press)

Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger's Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press).

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