I’m just wrapping up a late summer group read of: The Green Bicycle By Haifaa Al Mansour This is a light, fun read if you enjoy YA literature and you have any interest in what it would be like to grow up in Saudi Arabia. The text flows easily, and the main character is a…
This article translated from Moroccan press by Melanie Magidow (Hespress April 28, 2018, Wail Bourchachene) Abdelfattah Kilito, Moroccan writer and literary critic, deplored that his Masters students in the last several years before his retirement “really read nothing.” In an interactive lecture at Ibn Tufail University in Kénitra, he stressed that the students were not…
Today I learned of Emily Nasrallah’s passing. As a student at NYU, I used to shop at the Dahesh Heritage bookshop (since closed, sadly). The kind and helpful shopkeeper, Mike Masri, is the one who first mentioned her to me, placing her book Fi l-bal / In Mind, in my outstretched hands. This book of…
المقتبس التالي من صفحة ٣٤٦ من الباب المفتوح مصدر الصورة
This post celebrates and complements our first group read of 2018 in the Middle East North Africa Lit group on Goodreads.com: الباب المفتوح / The Open Door by Latifa al-Zayyat! This is one of the most enjoyable feminist classics in all of Arabic literature, as far as I’m concerned. As a historical novel, it transports…
Mortal Designs has been nominated for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation! More details here. See review of the book here. “…couldn’t put the book down. I felt richly immersed in a culture and atmosphere I barely know. The characters are so alive! I love how you left some words untranslated and…
A poem for spring–for thawing out, for growth, for warmth, for vacation. My husband and I recently learned that we are expecting a son in the fall. Facing the prospect of motherhood is complex for me: I don’t picture myself as a mother yet. Aren’t parents all grown up? This poem does a nice job,…
I have a new translated short story online at K1N here ! The author, Somaya Ramadan, and I discussed its publication ages ago. It’s nice to have it see the light of day at last. This story comes from a fun volume titled Qalat al-Rawiya / قالت الراوية / What She Said, which consists of…
One of the most inspiring couples I know of in contemporary Arabic literature are the writers Mourid Barghouti and Radwa Ashour. So it was hard when Radwa Ashour passed away in 2014: I would miss her writing and her activism. And I could only imagine how much her family would miss her. One of her…
Here’s a sneak peak from my new translation I have coming out this December. The following two excerpts introduce the three main characters in this social comedy / drama… Excerpt 1 Captain Murad’s house was crammed full of antique furniture and relics, like the Egyptian Museum. As Hazim’s eyes roamed the villa, he felt…
