An Interview with Maria Dadouch, who won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Children’s Literature this year. Dadouch’s book The Mystery of the Glass ball features two children becoming friends, fighting villains and protecting nature on a train ride in the near future. We talked about the need for more Arabic YA books; contemporary sci-fi; literary prizes; digital publishing and why writing for teenagers is the hardest thing to do. This episode is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Boo...
Jun 30, 2022•44 min•Season 4Ep. 88
We read from the work of Palestinian poets Maya Abu Al Hayyat, Fady Joudah, Asmaa Azaizeh and Najwan Darwish, who writes: “Death has liberated me/ from the shackles of our small jailers,/ just as poetry has liberated us/ from the greatest jailer–time.” Show Notes Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s You Can Be The Last Leaf , Trans. Fady Joudah, is out from Milkweed Editions Najwan Darwish’s Collection Exhausted On the Cross , Trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid, is out from New York Review Books. Fady Joudah curated ...
Jun 19, 2022•59 min•Season 3Ep. 75
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Jun 09, 2022•3 min•Season 4Ep. 87
Guest hosts Rafael (age 11) and Milo (almost 10) take over this episode of Bulaq to talk about the evil aunts, time-traveling djinn, and scary checkpoints in the first book of Palestinian novelist Sonia Nimr's fast-paced fantasy trilogy: Thunderbird . Show Notes The first Thunderbird novel is available from University of Texas Press. The second is forthcoming this fall . Educators interested in joining a launch event on Zoom with author and translator can sign up at the University of Texas websi...
Jun 02, 2022•30 min•Season 4Ep. 87
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. One of our astute listeners has given the answer to last week's question: What Koranic and Biblical story is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's “Paradise”? The answer to this week's question is within the Moroccan novel “Hot Maroc” — and our last episode about it. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
May 26, 2022•2 min•Season 4Ep. 86
Translator Alexander E. Elinson joins us to discuss Yassin Adnan's Hot Maroc, a sprawling satire of contemporary Morocco. The novel, set in Marrakesh and online, follows the story of Rahhal Laouina, aka “The Squirrel,” who finds his voice as an anonymous internet troll – and then has it co-opted by the country's security apparatus. While it paints a bleak picture of the possibilities of political dialogue, journalism, and self-expression, the novel itself is testament to literature's ability to ...
May 19, 2022•58 min•Season 4Ep. 86
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an island that was part of a Sultanate spanning Oman and East Africa, and that features in our last two episodes. And we ask about a Koranic and Biblical story that is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah's Paradise. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
May 12, 2022•2 min•Season 4Ep. 85
Paradise, by 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, is the coming-of-age story of Yusuf, a Tanzanian boy sent into debt servitude when his father can't pay back an Arab merchant. Yusuf travels into the interior with “Uncle Aziz” and other vivid characters, to trade with the “savages” there. The story takes place on the cusp of World War I, set in the wake of mass enslavement and the advent of European colonialism and interwoven with Yusuf's story from the Quran. Gurnah himself belonged to th...
Apr 28, 2022•57 min•Season 4Ep. 85
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an Arab poet who emigrated to the US and translated some of the Beat poets. And we ask a question about Oman, where Jokha Alharthi's “Bitter Orange Tree,” discussed in our last episode, is set. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Apr 21, 2022•3 min•Season 4Ep. 84
Jokha Alharthi burst to sudden international literary stardom in 2019, when her second novel, Sayyidat al-Qamr (tr. Marilyn Booth as Celestial Bodies ), won the International Booker. The novel, touted as the “first by an Omani woman to be translated to English,” has since appeared in languages around the world. More novels by Omani women, including Bushra Khalfan's The Garden , are forthcoming in English translation, and Alharthi's Narinja (also tr. Booth, as Bitter Orange Tree ) will appear in ...
Apr 14, 2022•49 min•Season 4Ep. 84
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question from Episode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features Bedouin migration from Egypt to Libya. In our last episode with guest Mona Kareem we talked about self-translation and “writing in Arabic in the US” and our next question is about a writer who did just this. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with th...
Apr 07, 2022•3 min•Season 4Ep. 83
Mona Kareem's essay “Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations” lit up debates among translators and poets. In this episode Kareem talks about poetry, the power dynamics of translation, and the relationship of both to migration, exile, self-censorship, and publication. She also reads from her poetry, both in her own translation and in translation by poet @SaraFarag. Essays by Mona Kareem Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations Bidoon: A Cause and Its Literatur...
Mar 31, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 4Ep. 83
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question from Episode 81, “Naguib Mahfouz's Banned Book” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding one of the books we discussed in Episode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features Bedouin migration from Egypt to Libya. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Host...
Mar 24, 2022•2 min•Season 4Ep. 82
Two very different Egyptian novels – Hamdi Abu Golayyel's The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Mohamed Kheir's Slipping – both circle around issues of migration in different ways. Abu Golayyel's Men (originally The Rise and Fall of the Saad Shin ), translated by Humphrey Davies, is an anti-epic epic told in a rough, powerful storyteller's voice, following men as they move from Egypt to Libya and Italy. Mohamed Kheir's Slipping, translated by Robin Moger, is a beautifully crafted sonic landscape of ...
Mar 17, 2022•59 min•Season 4Ep. 82
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 80, “Just Different: Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding the subject of Episode 81, Nabuig Mahfouz. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more i...
Mar 10, 2022•4 min•Season 4Ep. 81
What was so controversial about Children of the Alley, leading to it being banned for years in Egypt and to an attempt on the author's life? How and when was it published, criticized, understood? Mohamed Shoair delves into all of this in his literary investigation The Story of the Banned Book: Naguib Mahfouz's Children Of The Alley (trans. Humphrey Davies). It's a study of literary censorship and of the fight between artistic expression and religious and political authority in Egypt from the 195...
Mar 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Season 4Ep. 81
All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 79, "Not Yet Defeated," and a new challenge for listeners around our Episode 80 focus, Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf. After you've listened, send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com . The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more ...
Feb 24, 2022•5 min•Season 4Ep. 80
She was an outsider, an experimenter, a “rebel realist” and a feminist. You may not have read the short stories of Malika Moustadraf (1969-2006), since her work fell out of print after her untimely death. But tales of Moustadraf's fierce talent never stopped circulating, and now her work is back in print in Arabic and also set to appear in Alice Guthrie's English translation. The US and UK editions of this collection have different titles. The US edition of Moustadraf's stories, Blood Feast , is...
Feb 17, 2022•55 min•Season 4Ep. 80
Egypt's January 25 revolution was 11 years ago. Since then many of its young leaders have been persecuted and the history of what happened distorted or denied. We look at writing that remembers and resists. Alaa Abd El-Fattah's You Have Not Yet Been Defeated was translated by a collective, and is out from Fizcarraldo Editions in the UK. A US edition is forthcoming in March 2022 from Seven Stories Press. There is also an Italian translation by Monica Ruocco. Ahmed Douma's second poetry collection...
Feb 03, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Season 4Ep. 79
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...
Jan 20, 2022•57 min•Season 3Ep. 65
Raph Cormack is author of 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: The Amar Foundation has an archive of Mounira al-Mahdiyya songs such as the one we end the show with, " اسمع اغاني المهدية " Raph also wrote about “ Queer Life in Cairo in the 1920s ” for the Gay and Lesbian Review. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Jan 06, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 63
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 Nights , with Richard van Leeuwen, Marina Warner, and Yasmine Seale, on YouTube. You can read Seale's talk with Veronica Esp...
Dec 23, 2021•55 min•Season 3Ep. 61
For our end-of-year book list, we made up our own categories -- from “best poet I hadn't heard of before” ” to “best book about cannibalism” to “best book that lived up to the hype” -- and added a few more along the way. It's a journey through 10 books that struck us and stayed with us this year. Show Notes Best literary cookbook for children (MLQ): Arab Fairy Tale Feasts , Karim al-Rawi, ill. Nahid Kazemi. Read the review by Marcia and her 10-year-old. Best book I've been waiting for years to s...
Dec 09, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Season 3Ep. 78
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...
Nov 25, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 77
We look at new writing from Syria and about the experiences of Syrian refugees, including Ramy Al-Asheq's Ever Since I Did Not Die , a book he categorizes not as poetry or prose but as “pieces of my body, haphazardly brought together in a paper bag.” Show Notes Ramy Al-Asheq's Ever Since I Did Not Die was translated by Isis Nusair and edited by Levi Thompson. Samar Yazbek's Planet of Clay was translated by Leri Price and is on the shortlist for this year's National Book Award , in the Translatio...
Nov 11, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 3Ep. 76
We read from the work of Palestinian poets Maya Abu Al Hayyat, Fady Joudah, Asmaa Azaizeh and Najwan Darwish, who writes: “Death has liberated me/ from the shackles of our small jailers,/ just as poetry has liberated us/ from the greatest jailer–time.” Show Notes In Palestine these days, the olive harvest is under assaul t from Israeli settlers. Six prominent Palestinian human rights and civil socierty NGOs have jus t been designated terrorist organizations. Maya Abu Al-Hayyat's You Can Be The L...
Oct 28, 2021•59 min•Season 3Ep. 75
The Egyptian feminist writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi always spoke her mind. Her early books were explosive testimonials, based on her medical practice and personal experience, about sexual double standards and the abuses women faced because of them. She went on to write many more books, including novels, plays and several memoirs. Over the course of her life she was jailed, censored, fired, admired, and attacked by Islamists as an unbeliever. She is still one of the best-known and most trans...
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 3Ep. 74
Sonallah Ibrahim's Warda is the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her. We discuss the vibrant and mysterious female character at the heart of one of Ibrahim's most ambitious literary projects with scholar, editor and translator Hosam Aboul-ela. As Aboul-ela writes in his introduction to his new translation, Warda is someone who “somehow manages to embody both...
Oct 03, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 3Ep. 73
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 wit...
Sep 16, 2021•52 min•Season 3Ep. 72
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 Hus...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 3Ep. 71
