the hoopoe blog

“I treat my writing time as a job”

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,…

“I don’t do secrets. I do symbols.”

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…

Bothayna Al-Essa’s discussions and workshops at the Emirates LitFest in March

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…

Hoopoe translator Nancy Roberts wins 2018 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation prize

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…

A handful of Hoopoe novels among entries for the Banipal Translation Prize

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…

Donia Kamal reads from her novel

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…

And the winner of the 2018 ArabLit Story Prize is….

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. “…

“Sometimes I see the end of a story before I can see the beginning.”

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…

“I can’t write in New York or in Cairo.”—Ezzedine Fishere

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…

“I write best when I feel that nothing is stable in my life”

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…

“Always do what they tell you not to do” — Rana Haddad

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…

“In times of war, family becomes more important as societies become more sectarian.”

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…

‘The Book of Safety’ goes beyond the dystopian fiction label

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…

Ibrahim Nasrallah wins 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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…

“Youssef Fadel illuminates Morocco’s past and present”—The New Yorker

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…

How Mohammad Rabie fits horror into his novel

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…

Determined to spread the word about Arab storytelling

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…

Rethinking framing devices for “dystopic futurist novels”

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…

Palestinian novelist Huzama Habayeb talks about “Velvet,” the Mahfouz medal, and Jerusalem

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…

Hoopoe translator Robin Moger wins 2017 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation

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,…

BULAQ, the new podcast about Arabic fiction in translation (and more!)

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…

Maan Abu Taleb speaks in London on Nov 8

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.

‘Otared’ on 100 Must Read Books About Revolutions

Mohammad Rabie’s acclaimed dystopian novel Otared, appeared recently on Bookriot’s “100 Must Read Books About Revolutions, Rebellions, and Uprisings.”

‘No Knives’ on 2017 National Translation Awards Shortlist

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…

Life in Khaled Khalifa’s Damascus

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…

How Sinan Antoon writes Iraq

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…

New wave of Egyptian writers at Shubbak Festival

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…

‘No Knives’ longlisted for 2017 National Translation Awards

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.

Mohammad Rabie’s writing process of “Otared”

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…

Questioning the writer’s political dimension

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…

The topic Ibrahim Essa dares to address

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…

Fiction with a distinctively Middle Eastern flavor

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…

The translator’s insight into Youssef Fadel’s writing

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…

Readings from outside a western perspective

“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…

In conversation with Mohammad Rabie

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…

Novelist Youssef Fadel Walks with A Beautiful White Cat

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:…

Hammour Ziada on writers workshop desert retreat

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…

Vanity Fair picks Hoopoe novel for its suggested zodiac reads

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…

An unorthodox TV preacher speaks out

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…

Youssef Fadel’s love and fear of writing

“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…

A beautiful metaphor for the country’s history

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…

He who wrote novels “of the Egyptian street”

“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…

The rise of genre fiction

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…

Contemporary Middle East among world fiction

In its recent article about Hoopoe, The Caravan talks to Hoopoe marketing manager Basma El-Manialawi and some Hoopoe readers.

About the Hoopoe Fiction logo

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.

“A sad but beautiful book”

Aleppo becomes a central character in this sad, beautiful portrait of a family psychologically scarred by war and tyranny.

“I am the first Sudanese to get it”

“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…

A deep longing for his country

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…

Whitefly: “An entertaining crime novel”

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…

A Syrian utopia

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.”…

Hoopoe fiction in the race for the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation

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…

Eltoukhy’s novel is “clearly an exciting and original work”

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…

The bleak reality behind Youssef Fadel’s blue bird

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…

US students read Hoopoe novel on summer study-abroad program

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…

What should fiction do?

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…

Coloring Hoopoe (fiction)

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…

Tune in for Syrian fiction on US radio on August 14

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…

“Writing is what allows me to be alive”

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…

How Jonathan Smolin fell in love with Moroccan Noir

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…

“2016 has been and will be a fantastic year for Arabic literature in translation”

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…

Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Climb of Hope: Two Palestinian Amputees Scale Mount Kilimanjaro

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…

After the Arab Spring: 5 Writers to Watch

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…

“I regarded this sentence as the greatest insult to the Palestinian people.”

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…

I asked myself the question: “Are tomatoes, sardines, immigration, and hashish ingredients for a good novel?”

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….

Hoopoe attends Mada Market cultural event

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.

The craft of translation

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”…

AUC Press Launches New Literary Imprint

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…

IPAF interviews Nadine El-Hadi, Hoopoe acquisitions editor

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…

The Arab whodunnit: crime fiction makes a comeback in the Middle East

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…

Women in Translation (from Arabic): Does It Matter?

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.

The translator reflects on Moroccan prison memoir

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.

Addressing the tragedy of the present-day Middle East

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…

Ibrahim Nasrallah’s novel attempts to safeguard Palestinian cultural identity

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…

Translator Jonathan Smolin’s investigation into Noir fiction

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…

“Religion is no longer a service, it has become a commodity.”

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…

“I Do Not Write Novels As a Political Act”

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.

Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s fast-paced thriller

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…

The voice of his generation

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…

“Arab Literature: Politics and Nothing But?”

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…

Youssef Fadel ‘s caged bird

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…

Ibrahim Essa’s troubled celebrity televangelist

“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…

“What’s new in Arab literature: 16 to read in 2016”

Renowned blogger Marcia Lynx Qualey, aka ‘ArabLit’, selects her 16 to read this year.

The hoopoe blog