The Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri grew up poor and illiterate on the streets of Tangier in the waning years of colonialism. He told the story of his childhood in his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone – El Khubz El Hafi in Arabic, Le Pain Nu in French. Choukri went on to write much more, chronicling life in post-independence Morocco during the “years of lead,” and the marginalized underclass of Tangier: its barflies, prostitutes, petty criminals, day-to-day survivors. We spoke to scholar a...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 114
Batool Abu Akleen is a poet and translator in Gaza, Palestine. Her home in Gaza City and her university have been bombed and she has been displaced multiple times. We talked to her about refusing to write and then choosing to write through the genocide; about the importance of mentors; and about creating a community of literary translators in Gaza. Her first full-length collection, 48 kg, is set to appear from Tenement Press in June of this year. (Apologies for the sound quality; Batool spoke to...
May 22, 2025•48 min•Ep. 113
Author, commentator and human rights advocate Khaled Mansour joins us to talk about how reading Arab women’s memoirs can help one gain a new understanding of the region’s collective history. After he worked with Egyptian psychoanalyst and feminist Afaf Mahfouz to write her autobiography, Mansour began a journey through Arab women’s memoirs set to culminate in his forthcoming podcast, المرآة (The Mirror). One of the many books he discusses with us is Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled’s accou...
Apr 10, 2025•59 min•Ep. 112
Journalist, novelist, and memoirist Omar El Akkad talks about his latest book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a blend of memoir, social criticism, and moral philosophy. The book creates and shares space for everyone who is full of grief and rage, who cannot be at home in institutions that support or ignore genocide. We discuss the linguistic obfuscations around Gaza, El Akkad’s critique of Western liberalism, and the possibilities for a different future. Show notes: You c...
Mar 06, 2025•54 min•Ep. 111
Journalist, author and editor Alia Malek tells us about her recent visit to Damascus and about the anthology of Syrian writing she edited for McSweeneys. Aftershocks was released in December 2024, just days after Bashar al-Assad fled Syria and the country's political prisons began to crack open. The collection brings together work by sixteen Syrian authors who write from diasporic and refugee experience, as well as from inside Syria. We discuss these key Syrian literary voices and how they and o...
Feb 06, 2025•54 min•Ep. 110
Comics artist Rawand Issa joins us to talk about her book Inside the Giant Fish ( trans. Amy Chiniara, Maamoul Press); her path from journalism to graphic art; artist groups and collectives across the region; the “new school of Arab comics,” and the challenges of making a living as a comics artist. We also talk about a few other Lebanese graphic novels, particularly Lamia Ziad é ’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, and Lena Merhej’s I Think We’ll Be Calmer in the Next War...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 6Ep. 110
In this episode, we talk through some literary news from Algeria and France, discuss two big translations out this fall from towering authors, as well as a new favorite by Maya Abu al-Hayyat. Then we turn to Read Palestine Week and the new collection focused on writers in Gaza, And Still We Write, before a discussion on refusing to work with Israeli publishers that are complicit in the violence against Palestinians. Show notes: Author Kamel Daoud sued over claim he used life of wife’s patient in...
Dec 05, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 6Ep. 109
Today’s guest, Irene Lozano, is the director of a Spanish cultural institution, Casa Arabe . It received the 2024 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Cultural Personality of the Year. As we’ll discuss, Casa Arabe is a center of learning, discussion and exchange between Spain and Arab countries. It offers Arabic language classes and a myriad of cultural initiatives and programs, including hosting talks by many prominent Arab writers. In this episode, we discuss the connection between Arabic and Spanish c...
Nov 07, 2024•39 min•Season 6Ep. 108
Moroccan author Karima Ahdad was the winner of this year’s Arabic Flash Fiction contest run by ArabLit and Komet Kashakeel, which saw more than 900 entries from around the world. We read her award-winning story in Katherine Van de Vate’s discussion and discuss patriarchy, story creation, and what it means to write “feminist” work. Show Notes: Karima was also shortlisted for an earlier edition of the ArabLit Story Prize. You can read her shortlisted story, “ The Baffling Case of the Man Called Ah...
Oct 17, 2024•47 min•Season 6Ep. 107
An epic historical novel set in Fatimid Cairo, Reem Bassiouney’s The Halva-Maker trilogy won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and is forthcoming in English. The book explores the founding of Cairo, by a Shia dynasty and a set of generals and rulers who all hailed from elsewhere. We talked to Bassiouney about balancing research and imagination; shining a light on women in Egyptian medieval history; and the heritage (architectural and culinary) of the past. This episode of the BULAQ podcast is produced...
Oct 03, 2024•42 min•Season 6Ep. 106
We recorded this interview with Deen in January 2022, just as her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”) was coming out in English. This original and beautifully illustrated story imagines that wishes of varying quality can be bought and sold in contemporary Cairo, with unpredictable and poignant results. It has been widely celebrated and nominated for a Hugo Award. While the US edition from Pantheon keeps the title “Shubeik Lubeik,” the UK edition from Granta use...
Aug 15, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Art critic and journalist Kaelen Wilson-Goldie joins us for a sweeping look at the life, writing, and art of singular Lebanese author-artist Etel Adnan (1925-2021). Kaelin Wilson-Goldie’s Etel Adnan is available from Lund Humphries. Adnan’s Time , translated by Sarah Riggs, is available from Nightboat Books . The Beauty of Light , a collection of interviews with Laure Adler, is available from Nightboat Books in Ethan Mitchell’s translation. It was initially published in French, as "La beauté de ...
Jul 04, 2024•1 hr 7 min•Season 6Ep. 105
Majalla 28 is a literary magazine out of Gaza co-producing an issue with ArabLit. We talk about the work by co-editors Mahmoud al-Shaer and Mohamed al-Zaqzouq and read excerpts from that issue. After that, we talk about a particular kind of Palestinian literature – by writers serving life sentences. Find out more about the Gaza issue at arablit.org More writing by Heba Al-Agha, translated by Julia Choucair Vizoso, is also available at arablit.org You can read more about the late author Walid Daq...
May 02, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 104
Ghassan Kanafani is best known for his famous novellas, but he was many things besides a talented writer: a prolific journalist, an insightful critic and editor, a heterodox Marxist, a spokesman for the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He wrote and lived like he had no time to waste (which turned out to be true: he was assassinated in an Israeli car bombing at the age of 36). He remains one of the most respected and beloved of Arab icons, but his non-fiction work is less k...
Mar 14, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 103
This episode features writing from and about Gaza, and explores the imperative to write, between hope and hopelessness, at a time when words both seem to count enormously and to not be enough. Show Notes This episode’s cover art is by Chema Peral @ chema_peral Letter from Gaza by Ghassan Kanafani was written in 1956. Mahmoud Darwish’s Silence for the Sake of Gaza is part of his 1973 collection Journal of an Ordinary Grief. The poet Mosab Abu Toha has written about his arrest and his family’s voy...
Jan 18, 2024•1 hr 9 min•Season 6Ep. 102
We talk to Robin Moger about how he became a translator from Arabic and about what has changed in recent years in the field of Arabic literature and translation and what has stayed the same. Moger’s first book-length literary translation was Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s 2008 novel الفاعل, which became A Dog with No Tail. His most recent is a translation of Iman Mersal’s في أثر عنايات الزيات, which appears as Traces of Enayat from And Other Stories in the UK (2023) and Transit Books in the US (2024). Sho...
Oct 12, 2023•53 min•Season 5Ep. 101
Said Khatibi’s detective novel نهاية الصحراء ( End of the Sahara) is set in a remote desert city in Algeria in the Fall of 1988, when the country’s October Riots are about to break out place. The book is one of the winners of this year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Khatibi explained how his writing is also a way of exploring larger historical crimes. Show Notes: 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 pr...
Sep 14, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 100
Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel died last month at the age of 56. In this episode, we remember Hamdi and his one-of-a-kind literary career, telling the story of Egypt’s laborers, Bedouin, and migrants. Show Notes: Egyptian Novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel Dies at 56: ‘There Was No One Like Him’ A Special Section at ArabLit on Abu Golayyel, Bedouin Poetry, and ‘The Men Who Swallowed the Sun’ Mohamed Kheir remembers Hamdy Books available in translation are: Thieves in Retirement (translated by Mar...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 19 min•Season 5Ep. 99
Comics artist Rawand Issa joins us to talk about her book Inside the Giant Fish ( trans. Amy Chiniara, Maamoul Press); her path from journalism to graphic art; artist groups and collectives across the region; the “new school of Arab comics,” and the challenges of making a living as a comics artist. We also talk about a few other Lebanese graphic novels, particularly Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, and Lena Merhej’s I Think We’ll Be Calmer in the Next War. ...
Jun 15, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 98
Translator Sawad Hussain joins us to talk about the challenges of making a living as a translator, the art of co-translation, her focus on Arabic literature from Africa and the Gulf, and the advice she gives to her translation mentees. We also highlight three of Sawad’s recent and forthcoming translations: Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind, and Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Souls. Show Notes: Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, co-translated by Sawad Hussain and M Lynx Qualey,...
May 11, 2023•58 min•Season 5Ep. 97
Twenty years after the disastrous and mendacious US invasion of Iraq, we take a look at writing from Iraq: memoirs, poems and blog posts. Shalash the Iraqi is a collection of such posts – a satirical, surreal, and affecting panorama in life in a Shia suburb of Baghdad in the early years of the occupation. Show Notes: An excerpt from Gaith Abdul-ahad’s memoir A Stranger In Your Own City ran recently in the Guardian Shalash The Iraqi , trans. Luke Leafgren, is a collection of blog posts written in...
Apr 06, 2023•57 min•Season 5Ep. 96
We wandered through Arabic poetry and prose to talk about many different forms of literary love: regretful love, unreciprocated love, bad love, vengeful love, liberating love, married love. We read this poem by Núra al-Hawshán: “O eyes, pour me the clearest, freshest tears And when the fresh part’s over, pour me the dregs. O eyes, gaze at his harvest and guard it. Keep watch upon his water-camels, look at his well. If he passes me on the road I can’t speak to him. O God, such affliction And utte...
Mar 02, 2023•1 hr 7 min•Season 5Ep. 95
It’s literary prize season! When the Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at the start of 2023, novelist Shady Lewis Botros turned his novel award down, launching a storm of criticism, defense, and discussion. Is it bad manners or good politics to turn down a prize? How do different prizes affect the literary landscape? How is the 2023 prize season shaping up? Show Notes: Mada Masr published “ A conversation with Shady Lewis Botros on the genealogy of literary refusal ” The International Prize...
Feb 02, 2023•58 min•Season 5Ep. 94
Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed talks about her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”). A product of playful self-translation, it’s coming to English as a single volume. It will be unbottled by Pantheon (US) and Granta (UK) on January 10, 2023. Show Notes: While the US edition keeps the title “Shubeik Lubeik,” the UK edition will use a literal translation: “Your Wish Is My Command.” Find more of Deena’s work at http://deenadraws.art and on Twitter and Inst...
Dec 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 4Ep. 93
El-Rifae’s book Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution tells the story of a movement that mobilized in Egypt to protect female protesters from mob sexual attacks in 2012 and 2013. Based on interviews with friends and comrades, the book explores memory, truth, gender, violence, political organizing, trauma, and possible futures. Show Notes You can order the book directly from @ VersoBooks . Read an excerpt at Granta . The book launches October 24 in New York City; there will also be events in Phi...
Oct 27, 2022•1 hr 11 min•Season 4Ep. 92
In this sponsored episode, we talk to Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner Dr. Muhsin Al-Musawi about his life-long scholarship on the 1001 Nights. 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, P...
Sep 30, 2022•50 min•Season 4Ep. 91
We’re back to talk about books we read over the summer and books we’re looking forward to this fall. Including poetry from Iman Mersal, Hadiya Hussein’s novel about looking for a lover disappeared in Saddam’s Iraq, and Mohamed Alnaas’ novel about the pressure to be a certain type of Libyan man. Show Notes: Iman Mersal’s The Threshold , trans. Robyn Creswell, is a selection from four of her poetry collections, forthcoming from McMillan. Hadiya Hussein’s Waiting For The Past , trans. Barbara Romai...
Sep 15, 2022•46 min•Season 4Ep. 90
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 C...
Aug 25, 2022•54 min•Season 2Ep. 68
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 ...
Aug 11, 2022•56 min•Season 2Ep. 67
We talk to scholar Elias Muhanna about translating a magical, delightful eighteenth-century travelogue. In 1707 Hanna Diyab journeyed from his native Aleppo as translator to a rapacious and sometimes ridiculous Frenchman. He survived a shipwreck and a pirate attack, met King Louis XIV, and gave The Thousand and One Nights translator Antoine Galland a dozen new stories. Cheated out of a promised job in Paris, he eventually returned to Syria, where he wrote it all up in his old age. Show Notes You...
Jul 21, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 77
