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 advanc...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 70
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, researcher...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 69
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. Excer...
Jul 01, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 43
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 ...
Jun 17, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 42
This week we talk about how MLQ's latest passion project, the Arab Lit Quarterly , and the ups and downs of making a living (sort of) writing about books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 32
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 ...
May 20, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 17
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...
May 06, 2021•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 ...
Apr 22, 2021•56 min•Season 2Ep. 67
We Wrote in Symbols: Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers brings together fiction and poetry by more than 70 women over a span of more than 1500 years. Editor Selma Dabbagh talks about why it's hard to write about sex, and the difficult balance of reaching readers. Show Notes: The digital launch of We Wrote in Symbols , published by Saqi Books, is scheduled for April 29, hosted by the Arab British Centre. Hanan al-Shaykh, Yasmine Seale, Saida Rouass, lisa luxx, and collection editor Selma Dabbagh...
Apr 08, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 2Ep. 66
The Book of Ramallah collects stories set in and around Palestine's administrative capital, which, Maya Abu Al-Hayat writes in her introduction, “represents this mirage, this glimmer of hope that isn't real, to many writers.” Show Notes: Book of Ramallah , edited by Maya Abu Al-Hayat, is available from Comma Press. You can read “ Love in Ramallah ” by Ibrahim Nasrallah, translated by Mohammed Ghalaieny, at Bookanista. An excerpt from the introduction is available at The Irish Times. An excerpt o...
Mar 25, 2021•56 min•Season 2Ep. 65
“Writer, criminal, and ex-journalist” Ahmed Naji released two books in 2020: the speculative fiction novel ( والنمور لحجرتي ) And the Tigers to My Room (2020) and the nonfiction work ( حرز مكمكم ) Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison (2020). Show Notes: Find more about Ahmed's books, short stories, and essays in Arabic and in English translation at ahmednaji.net/ An excerpt of Rotten Evidence appeared in The Believer in Katharine Halls' excellent translation. Another excerpt appeared i...
Mar 11, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 64
Raph Cormack is author of the soon-to-be-released Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring ‘20s , which chronicles the lives of many of Egypt's biggest stars of the early twentieth century. Show Notes: Midnight in Cairo is coming from WW Norton on March 9, and Saqi Books and AUC Press on May 6. The Amar Foundation has an archive of Mounira al-Mahdiyya songs such as the one we end the show with, " اسمع اغاني المهدية " You can take an online class with Raph about “ Cairo in the Roaring ‘20s...
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 2Ep. 63
Emma Ramadan translated two Moroccan novels in 2020: A Country for Dying by Abdellah Taïa & Straight from the Horse's Mouth by Meryem Alaoui. They are very different books but they both feature sex workers. Show Notes: Find more about Emma's current and forthcoming translations at emmaramadan.com/translations-1 The Moroccan film Much Loved was released in 2015. You can read more about it from Aida Alami : Moroccan Film About Prostitution Creates Uproar . Najat Bensalem starred in the film Ra...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 62
We take a look at a new book about the architecture of twentieth century Cairo, and discuss the Egyptian capital's past, present and future, and the way writers have shaped our view of it. Show Notes: Mohamed Elshahed's architectural survey Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide is newly released from AUC Press, with a foreward by Mercedes Volait. Elshahed's longtime blog, Cairobserver , is a must-read for anyone interested in the built world. Another recent book that maps Cairo is Humphrey Da...
Jan 27, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Our guest this week was once told there were no Algerian crime novels. She begs to differ. We discuss the many examples of the genre and its evolution in Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. Show Notes: Nadia Ghanem regularly covers Algerian and Moroccan literature -- particularly crime fiction -- for ArabLit. She has a wonderful crime-lit overview, " The Story of 50 Years of Algerian Crime Fiction in 60+ Books ," and also a short translation of a work by Chawki Amari, ‘Murder at Algiers' Book Fair' . A ...
Jan 14, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 53
In this episode we explore the relationship between cooking and writing. With special guest Anny Gaul, we talk about the origins of national dishes such as couscous and koshary; medieval Arabic cook books; and representations of kitchens and cooking in Egyptian literature. Show Notes: Anny Gaul's writing and recipes, including the one on “bad translations” of hummus are online at cookingwithgaul.com . She wrote about Egyptian koshary as the dish we need right now for Eater . Her article on Abla ...
Dec 30, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Poet, artist and translator Yasmine Seale is at work on a fresh translation of the Thousand and One Nights . Show Notes: An abbreviated version of The Nights will be coming out in Fall 2021, in Seale's translation for W. W. Norton. The fuller Nights is currently set for 2023. You can follow the Nights Bot , with which Seale shares fragments of her translation, on Twitter. You can watch a recording of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2020 The Bookseller Webinar -The global influence of the Arabian Nig...
Dec 17, 2020•54 min•Season 2Ep. 61
The adaptation of the Egyptian writer Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's hugely popular horror/fantasy series into the Netflix show Paranormal has excited and in some cases disappointed the writer's avid fan base. Show Notes: Here is the trailer for Netflix's Paranormal series, and an article about Tawfik, a hugely prolific writer of sci-fi, horror and fantasy stories who passed away in 2018. We discuss this review by Ahmed Dia Dardir on the site 7iber and this one by Osama Youssef on MadaMasr. We also menti...
Dec 03, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 60
By listener demand, we re-read Season of Migration to the North , the 1966 classic by the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih. Its unnamed narrator returns to his village “on a bend of the Nile” after being educated abroad -- and confronts the enigmatic figure of Mustafa Sa'eed, who also once emigrated North, and whose string of sexual relationships with Western women ended in tragedy. This iconic novel was instantly acclaimed in Arabic and in the 1969 English translation by Denys Johson-Davies. But i...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Season 2Ep. 59
We're re-running one of our favorite episodes. In 1993, the Egyptian poet and writer Iman 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. Show Notes: This episode focuses on Iman Mersal's In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat...
Nov 05, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 48
We discuss the classic 1953 novel by the Jewish Tunisian Francophone writer Albert Memmi, who died this year. This sharp and beautiful book is many things: a coming of age story, an account of colonialism, and a World War II novel. Its driven, unhappy narrator breaks with his community and family in search of a new identity but is disappointed again and again. Like Lot's wife in the Bible, he cannot help looking back on the past he rejects. He asks: “is it possible for me to survive my contempla...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 58
Nazik al-Mala'ika was an Iraqi woman poet of great influence and renown through the 1940s, 50s and 60s. She pioneered new poetic forms and re-invented a heritage of feminine, emotional, elegiac poetry-making. We are joined by scholar and translator Emily Drumsta to discuss a new bilingual collection of al-Mala'ika's poetry, Revolt Against the Sun. The collection is coming out this month from Saqi Books in the UK and January 2021 in the US. We read from: “A Letter to Him,” from For Prayer and Rev...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 57
Ursula Lindsey and Marcia Lynx Qualey discuss books from across the Arab region and new translations from Arabic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sep 24, 2020•56 sec
This episode looks at the Fall 2020 issue of ArabLit Quarterly , which focuses on cats: in contemporary Arabic stories, in erotic poetry, in medieval scholarship, in Egyptian art, in Palestinian politics, and more. We read from: Ghada Samman's “Beheading the Cat,” translated by Issa Boullata. The poetry of Rasha Omran, in the issue in Arabic, French, and English. Al-Jawbari's advice on avoiding criminals with cats, translated for the issue by Dima El-Mouallem. We also focus on: Karim Zidan's ess...
Sep 24, 2020•55 min•Season 2Ep. 56
We only took a one month break but there are so many new (and a few old) books to talk about! We put together a list of ten titles of interest to start out the Fall with. 1) Etel Adnan's Shifting the Silence (out in September) is the latest by the 95-year-old Lebanese artist and poet. 2) The Fourth Shore , Alessandro Spina, tr. André Naffis-Sahely, is the latest volume of the author's monumental series, The Confines of The Shadow, to be translated. You can read about Spina -- who came from a Syr...
Sep 11, 2020•57 min•Season 2Ep. 55
We talk about the Syrian writer Dima Wannous' haunting novel The Frightened Ones, translated by Elisabeth Jacquette. It's a book about fear, panic and anxiety -- in one's body and society, between generations and lovers -- that is also somehow a great pleasure to read. Show Notes: The Frightened Ones was shortlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction ; its English translation is now out in the UK and forthcoming in the US . We discussed the work of Wannous' father, the brilliant...
Aug 26, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 46
We talk about a collection of essays by female journalists from the region. Guilt, anger, recklessness, determination. There are many different and movingly honest takes on reporting while Arab and female. Show Notes: You can also follow the contributors to this volume online: follow @ZahraHankir and @HindHassanNews on Lebanon; @Linaattalah, the editor of @madamasr, on Egypt; @AidaAlami on Morocco; and many more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Aug 12, 2020•40 min•Season 1Ep. 33
Beirut writer Lina Mounzer reads from her essay “Waste Away: Notes on Beirut's Broken Sewage System.” We discuss the current situation in Lebanon and literature that looks at the worlds beneath our feet. Show Notes: Lina Mounzer's “ Waste Away ” appears in The Baffler; a slightly modified version is set to be published next week in the anthology Tales of Two Planets , ed. John Freeman. Saleem Haddad's “Song of the Birds,” in the anthology Palestine + 100 , explores the problems of sewage at Pale...
Jul 29, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Our guest this week was once told there were no Algerian crime novels. She begs to differ. We discuss the many examples of the genre and its evolution in Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. Show Notes: Nadia Ghanem regularly covers Algerian and Moroccan literature -- particularly crime fiction -- for ArabLit. She has a wonderful crime-lit overview, " The Story of 50 Years of Algerian Crime Fiction in 60+ Books ," and also a short translation of a work by Chawki Amari, ‘Murder at Algiers' Book Fair' . A ...
Jul 16, 2020•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 53
We discuss a book that tells the stories of women who rallied to ISIS; one that focuses on a Franco-Moroccan family grappling with the end of colonialism; and a picaresque, satirical novel from 1940s Egypt that has been recently re-discovered. Show Notes: Ursula's review of Guest House for Young Widows, a book about women who joined ISIS, appeared in the last issue of The Point magazine . It references a few other books, such as Dunya Mikhail's The Beekeeper of Sinjar (which gathers the testimon...
Jul 02, 2020•59 min•Season 1Ep. 52
