Stories from the Middle East
“The book is a classic, but that word is loaded with all kinds of connotations that don’t really suit the book. Kamel has a light, satiric, tragicomic tone. He has a sense of humor that is colored by…
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I have taken up gardening on my balcony. I also started to become more house proud. For the first time in my life I spring-cleaned the flat, and I am sweeping and cleaning more often. I think, somewhe…
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Marcia Lynx Qualey is the founding editor of the “ArabLit” website (arablit.org), which won a 2017 London Book Fair “Literary Translation Initiative” prize. She also publishes the experimental ArabLit…
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Much awaited is the release of Adel Kamel’s rediscovered 1940s classic The Magnificent Conman of Cairo. Praised by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, but never before translated, this literary gem propels…
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Yasser Abdel Hafez is an Egyptian journalist and novelist, and is an editor at the literary magazine Akhbar al-Adab. His first novel On the Occasion of Life was longlisted for the International Prize…
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Last December, the New York Review of Books reviewed three of Khaled Khalifa’s novels, including No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, translated from the Arabic by Leri Price (Hoopoe, 2016).
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Muhammad Abdelnabi’s novel In the Spider’s Room, a sensitive and courageous account of life as a gay man in Egypt, continues to weave an ever larger web of intrigue, reaching a growing international r…
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Shelf Awareness, a widely-circulated ,US-based online newsletter about books, recently interviewed the Egyptian novelist Ezzedine C. Fishere, author of Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge, translated by John P…
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In this powerful short film, Exiled at Home, Beirut-based Syrian filmmaker and journalist Lina Sinjab features the award-winning Syrian writer Khaled Khalifa, author of No Knives in the Kitchens of th…
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Donia Kamal, author of Cigarette Number Seven, translated by Nariman Youssef (Hoopoe, 2018) participated in a wonderful discussion in late September, addressing students and professors of the Common R…
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In December 2017, the Palestinian author Huzama Habayeb was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, for her powerful work Velvet, described by the judges as “a new kind of Palestinian novel.”…
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Sudanese author Hammour Ziada’s short story Sleeping at the Foot of the Mountain was adapted by director Amjad Abu Alala for his film You Will Die at 20. Screened at the 76th Venice International Film…
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The French edition of Muhammad Abdelnabi’s Egyptian novel In the Spider’s Room (Hoopoe), translated into French by Gilles Gauthier (Actes Sud), under the title La Chambre de l’Araignée, has just been…
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Acclaimed Palestinian novelist Raba’i Al Madhoun was invited last month to attend the Shubbak Festival in London. The author of The Lady from Tel Aviv and Fractured Destinies (translated by Paul Stark…
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“Thank you! I feel very encouraged and glad that readers are enjoying my first novel whose journey was not an easy one!” Those are the words of author Rana Haddad, whose book The Unexpected Love Objec…
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Last year Ibrahim Nasrallah won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel The Second War of the Dog, described by the jury as “a masterful vision of a dystopian future in a nameless cou…
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This week, at the 2019 Society of Authors’ Awards in London, The Watermelon Boys by Ruqaya Izzidien (Hoopoe, 2018) was one of the six winners of the 2019 Betty Trask Awards, bestowed annually by the p…
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In January of this year, when Omani author Jokha Alharthi’s novel Celestial Bodies, translated into English by Marilyn Booth, was longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, the veteran tr…
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This month Ruqaya Izzidien’s The Watermelon Boys (Hoopoe, 2018) was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize and Awards. When the news reached her, the young Iraqi-Welsh writer tweeted: “Dizzy, tearful,…
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Bothayna Al-Essa is the author of All That I Want To Forget, translated by Michele Henjum. “Al-Essa’s novel is lyrical and poetic,” writes Arab News in a recent review of the Kuwaiti’s book. Her novel…
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Kuwaiti-born Bothayna Al-Essa, author of the forthcoming Hoopoe novel All That I Want To Forget, translated by Michele Henjum, is giving two workshops and participated in two discussions at the upcomi…
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Veteran translator of Arabic fiction Nancy Roberts shared first prize of the 2018 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding, in the category of translation from Arabic into En…
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Seven Hoopoe novels made this year’s Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize For Arabic Literary Translation shortlist. “We are truly delighted that so many of our titles made the shortlist,” said Hoopoe commissio…
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Stunning in its simplicity, Cigarette Number Seven is a deeply intimate novel about family and relationship in turbulent times, translated by Nariman Youssef. Donia Kamal’s succinct, candid prose draw…
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Earlier this year, ArabLit launched a short-story contest, officially calling it “the arablit story prize.” Eligible entries are short-stories under 1500 words, translated from Arabic into English. “…
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Her sixth novel, Of Sea and Sand, is set against the stunning landscapes of Oman, the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland, and war-time Baghdad. “It is a story of remorse, exile, love and the unseen,” expl…
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Ezzedine C. Fishere is an acclaimed Egyptian writer, academic, and diplomat. He has written numerous successful and bestselling novels and he also writes political articles for Arabic, English, and Fr…
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Donia Kamal is an Egyptian novelist and producer. She has produced more than fifty documentary films and numerous television shows for various Arab networks. Cigarette Number Seven is her second novel…
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Her debut novel, The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor, is making a lot of noise. In their review of Rana Haddad’s Syrian novel, Arab News wrote: “[An] exceptional debut novel. Satirical and witty…
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Award-winning Iraqi author Sinan Antoon was in France last week for the launch of the French translation of his novel ‘Ave Maria’, published in English in 2017 by Hoopoe as The Baghdad Eucharist, tra…
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In his recent review Yasser Abdel Hafez’s novel The Book of Safety, translated by award-winning Robin Moger, Matthew Chovanec praises the author for writing “a novel that is thoroughly committed to f…
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The Jordanian-Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasrallah, author of the two Hoopoe novels, Gaza Weddings and Time of White Horses, and The Lanterns of the King of Galilee (AUC Press) won this year’s Interna…
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The New Yorker contributor Nicolas Niarchos hooked up with Hoopoe author Youssef Fadel last summer in his hometown of Casablanca. “I met with Fadel, who is in his late sixties, and his wife, Safia, a…
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Last week Mohammad Rabie, author of Otared, the grisly IPAF-shortlisted dystopian novel, translated and published by Hoopoe (2016), participated in two discussions and a master class at the Emirates A…
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In this article from The National, Marcia Lynx Qualey explores how translators such as Elisabeth Jaquette have played a critical role in shaping what Arabic literature is read in English and why it i…
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What is the definition of a dystopia? An attempted utopia that has gone wrong? It is time to stop using labels such as “dystopia” to describe certain Arabic novels that tell about the demise of the Ar…
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The Palestinian author Huzama Habayeb was awarded the 2017 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature last December in Cairo, for her powerful work Velvet, described by the judges as “a new kind of Palestini…
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The 2017 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation is awarded to Robin Moger for his translation of the novel The Book of Safety by Yasser Abdel Hafez, published last year by Hoopoe,…
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Early this month ArabLit and The Arabist launched a new podcast, BULAQ that is co-hosted by Ursula Lindsey (The Arabist) and Marcia Lynx Qualey (ArabLit), and produced by The Arabist’s Issandr El Amra…
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Maan Abu Taleb, author of the recently published Hoopoe novel, All the Battles, will be speaking at The Mosaic Rooms in London on November 8 at 7:00pm.
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Mohammad Rabie’s acclaimed dystopian novel Otared, appeared recently on Bookriot’s “100 Must Read Books About Revolutions, Rebellions, and Uprisings.”
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Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in The Kitchens of This City, translated by Leri Price, and published by Hoopoe, an AUC Press fiction imprint, features on the shortlist of the 2017 National Translation Awa…
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In this chilling piece for The Guardian, Iraqi novelist Khaled Khalifa, author of No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, describes what it feels like to see his friends and family flee Iraq and when…
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The acclaimed Iraqi poet, novelist, scholar, and literary translator Sinan Antoon was born and raised in Baghdad. In 1991 after the first Gulf War he left to the United States. Today he lives in New…
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They call it “a window on contemporary Arab culture.” London’s biennale Shubbak Festival brings together a multitude of new and unexpected voices from across the Arab world to large audiences in the E…
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Khaled Khalifa’s No Knives in the Kitchens of This City, translated by Leri Price, is among the two Arabic books to make this year’s ‘National Translation Award’ Longlists.
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Egyptian writer Mohammad Rabie is the author of the dystopian novel Otared (Hoopoe, 2016). “The novel explores notions of nationalism and the defense of one’s country, ideas which police officers talk…
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It is difficult to describe Asian and Middle Eastern languages and literatures professor Ezzedine Fishere’s career in just a few words. As an Egyptian diplomat, he served as a political advisor to sev…
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In keeping with the need, in this age, for thorough intellectual scrutiny of dearly held beliefs, Ibrahim Essa deploys his novel, The Televangelist, as a means of examining and contesting the hegemony…
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Named after a bird found across the Middle East, known for its distinctive crown of black and chestnut feathers, Hoopoe is a new imprint of the AUC (American University of Cairo) Press, which for over…
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In this perceptive and in-depth interview by Marcia Lynx Qualey, ArabLit asks Alex Elinson, translator of Youssef Fadel’s A Beautiful White Cat Walks with Me, how he would describe this book, what it…
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“This fall I’ll be assigning No Knives in the Kitchens of this City by Khaled Khalifa for Honors 101 – “Self, Society and Identity.” This is probably the best piece of literature I’ve had the chance t…
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Born in 1978, Mohammad Rabie is the author of three acclaimed novels. His first novel, Amber’s Planet, won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award in 2012. He lives…
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It’s as a playwright that Youssef Fadel appears at this year’s Paris book fair, Livre Paris (March 24-27), where Morocco is the guest of honor. Yet the Casablanca native is also a celebrated novelist:…
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Hammour Ziada, the Sudanese journalist and writer, author of the “enchanting” and “poetic” Sudanese novel Hoopoe The Longing of the Dervish, participated last October in a writers workshop retreat at…
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Vanity Fair finds your literary zodiac match for the month. The Books You Should Be Reading Now, According to Your Zodiac Sign Yes, we even included some for the Ophiuchuses. We look to stars to guide…
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Ibrahim Eissa’s bestselling novel Mawlana, (The Televangelist, translated and published by Hoopoe, 2016) has now been adapted into a screenplay. The film premiered at the Dubai Film Festival last Dece…
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“The desire to write is like the desire to walk or play, and that goes back a long time, when I would read novels and play football with the guys in the neighborhood. In the beginning the novels were…
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A man’s detention in a makeshift Moroccan prison serves as a beautiful metaphor for the country’s history. Feel through the darkness with Aziz, who is being held in detention; bits of cloth, a nail, a…
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“Khairy tries to show that novels don’t have to be explicitly intellectual, or about intellectuals, to handle important political and social questions in a very sophisticated way.” Egyptian novelist K…
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Once derided as inferior to more ‘serious’ literature, genres such as crime and sci-fi are saving the novel from what some maintain is its long-heralded ‘death’ as a cultural form. The novel, if criti…
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In its recent article about Hoopoe, The Caravan talks to Hoopoe marketing manager Basma El-Manialawi and some Hoopoe readers.
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A hoopoe is a beautiful bird found across the Middle East, known for its distinctive crown of black and chestnut feathers. Like the cuckoo, its name is derived from its unique call.
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Aleppo becomes a central character in this sad, beautiful portrait of a family psychologically scarred by war and tyranny.
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“It is a great honor for me to win the Mahfouz Medal because I am the first Sudanese to get it,” said Hammour Ziada when he received the 2014 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature award in the Egyptian…
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Hammour Ziada Hammour Ziada was born in Umm Durman, Sudan in 1977. He has worked as a civil society and human rights researcher, and is currently a journalist based in Cairo. He is the author of two n…
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Set in modern-day Tangiers, Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s Whitefly is a refreshing and refined crime thriller. The Moroccan Hamdouchi, also a successful film and television screenwriter, specializes in police…
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Last week, during their episode “Anthology: Utopians,” the American radio station WFIU read a selection of extracts by numerous international writers about “the costs of longing for an ideal society.”…
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The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation recently announced the 19 titles in contention for the 2016 prize. Among the list of eligible works are Jonathan Smolin’s translation of…
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A Sort of Mad Fantasy Nael Eltoukhy, born in 1978, is an Egyptian author and journalist who graduated from the Hebrew Department of Ain Shams University, and who has also translated several works from…
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A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me is set in the very real world of a dark period in Morocco’s history—the 1970s. Yet there are many instances in the novel where reality seems blurred with the surreal and…
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Youssef Fadel (3rd from right), Safia Zouaoui, Fadel’s wife, to his left, and to her left, Jonathan Smolin Jonathan Smolin is currently directing a study-abroad program for Dartmouth College…
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By Bonnie Nadzam An artistic practice that perpetually reinforces my sense of self is not, in my mind, an artistic practice. I’m not talking about rejecting m…
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Your Hoopoe does not have to be just white, black, and orange! Click on the panel below to print this high-resolution coloring panel. Art work by Dominique Navarro (Ancient Egypt: An Artist’s Coloring…
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The short story ‘City of Ashes’ by Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer, one of the Arab world’s preeminent short story writers, will be read and live-streamed on America’s National Public Radio member station…
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Abdelilah Hamdouchi, the author of Whitefly (Hoopoe, 2016) and forthcoming The Final Bet (Hoopoe), was born in Meknes, in northern central Morocco. “I realized that I wanted to become a writer after r…
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On his recent visit to Cairo, Hoopoe sat down with translator Jonathan Smolin to ask about how he first fell in love with Moroccan Noir and his rendering into English of two contemporary Arabic novels…
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On her well-known and trending blog, not surprisingly called ArabLit (short for “Arabic Literature (in English)”), Marcia Lynx Qualey modestly describes herself as “a freelancer writer and editor.” H…
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On January 23, 2014, Yasmeen Najjar and Mutussam Abu Karsh became the first two Arab amputees to reach Africa’s highest peak, Uhuru, at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, bringing pride and hope to kids al…
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In the chaotic aftermath of the Arab Spring, writers from the Middle East and North Africa have channeled their frustrations into novels that explore the political and social fallout that followed the…
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Ibrahim Nasrallah, author of Time of White Horses (Hoopoe, 2016), is considered one of the most influential voices of his generation. He was born to Palestinian parents in Jordan in 1954, and grew up…
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In your novel Whitefly you take on significant topics such as drug trafficking, domestic violence, unjust agricultural competition, but more importantly clandestine immigration from Africa to Europe….
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Hoopoe participated yesterday in Mada Market’s annual cultural event in Cairo. It was an opportunity for the Cairo community to buy our books and find out more about our Fall 2016 catalog titles.
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Tarek Ghanem, who recently joined the AUC Press team as commissioning editor, participated in last month’s ‘English Language Day Programme’ entitled “World Englishes: One Language, Different Cultures”…
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On December 11 each year the AUC Press celebrates its longstanding relationship with the great writer by awarding the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature to an outstanding Arabic novel. At its beginni…
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Nadie El-Hadi Hoopoe, the new fiction imprint of AUC Press, has today published its first titles in the UK. The imprint’s launch titles include three books previously shortlisted for the Intern…
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From Baghdad to Cairo, a neo-noir revolution has been creeping across the Middle East. The revival of crime fiction since the upheavals started in 2011 should not come as a surprise. Noir offers an al…
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Although commentators have often suggested Arab women’s literature is over-emphasized in the West, Arabic literature tends to experience a gender imbalance that’s similar to the other languages.
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Jonathan Smolin, translator of Youssef Fadel’s A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me, sets the political context of the novel in the foreword of the book.
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From a Syrian novel about Islamic State’s occupation of Raqqa to an Egyptian dystopian thriller, six books that “address the tragedy of the present-day Middle East” have been shortlisted for the Inter…
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There was an expectation that Ibrahim Nasrallah’s first UK book tour, which began last month, would focus on the invasion of Gaza instead of his new book, Time of White Horses, shortlisted for the Int…
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Jonathan Smolin is associate professor of Arabic and chair of the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College, with a keen interest in crime and police fiction, illegal imm…
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In this interview, Ibrahim Essa leads us into the world of his main character, deciphers the role that religion plays in today’s society, and warns of the mixed effects of televangelist preaching on a…
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In this interview, the bestselling Egyptian author Ibrahim Eissa explains, among other things, why as a prominent journalist he also writes fiction, what stories inspire him, and who his audience is.
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Moroccan author Abdelilah Hamdouchi is one of the first writers of police fiction in Arabic and a prolific award-winning screenwriter of police thrillers. Many of his novels address democratic and hum…
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Ibrahim Nasrallah is considered one of the most influential voices of his generation. Raised in a refugee camp to Palestinian parents, he became a journalist before turning to creative writing. He is…
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In the West, Arab literature is often considered to be political and nothing but. This misperception is itself politically charged and reinforces dangerous stereotypes about the Arab world. The catego…
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The Moroccan novelist Youssef Fadel was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014 for his novel A Rare Blue Bird Flies with Me, a masterful history of love, loss, and modern M…
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“When a sheikh becomes a televangelist the first thing he has to do is please the audience, the financial backer, the producer, and the director, and if he can please God too, then even better,” expla…
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Renowned blogger Marcia Lynx Qualey, aka ‘ArabLit’, selects her 16 to read this year.
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