BULAQ

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 and translator Jonas El Busty about the unique subversiveness of Choukri's work, and why it still resonates so strongly today. We also talked about the reception of Choukri's work, and the power dynamics embedded in its translation. SHOW NOTESJonas El Busty is a professor of Arabic at Yale University. He has translated Choukri's short story collection Tales of Tangier, as well as the third installment of Choukri's autobiography, Faces, and is the editor, alongside Roger Allen, of the scholarly anthology Reading Mohamed Choukri's Narratives: Hunger in Eden. For Bread Alone was translated by Paul Bowles, in a process that remains contentious to this day. Choukri's writing about some of the famous Western writers – Jean Genet, Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles – who visited or lived in Tangiers is collected in In Tangier Ursula recently wrote an article in the New York Review of Books on Choukri, Tangier, colonialism and nostalgia. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 us from one of the rare public venues in which it is possible to access the internet in Gaza; the connection was less than perfect and there is some background noise). Batool's discussion of her new collection and the meaning of its title is at 16.46 and Batool and Marcia's reading of the poem Milad/Birth is at 20.24. Show notes:You can pre-order Batool's 48kg from Tenement Press. It's coming June 15. Batool also has poems in the new GRIEF issue of ArabLit Quarterly and in Modern Poetry in Translation's Salam to Gaza.Batool is one of the authors of Comma Press's forthcoming Voices of Resistance, set to appear in August 2025.You can also read work by Heba al-Agha at ArabLit.You can donate to Batool's GoFundMe at gofundme.com/f/donate-to-support-batools-causeYou can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you'd like to rate or review us, we'd appreciate that. If you'd like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq. BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more. For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at bulaq@sowt.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 account of her life and militancy, published in 1973, My People Shall Live.Show notes:You can find Leila Khaled's My People Shall Live available free through the Internet Archive.Afaf Mahfouz's من الخوف إلى الحرية is available from Kotob Khan.Links to Khaled Mansour's work can be found on his website. Memoirs by Nawal El Saadawi, Arwa Saleh, Huda Shaarawi, Latifa al-Zayyat, Radwa Ashour are available in English translation. A list of these and more is available at arablit.org. You can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you'd like to rate or review us, we'd appreciate that. If you'd like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq. BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more. For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at bulaq@sowt.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 can get One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This from Penguin Random House, where a sample of the audiobook is available, read by Omar El Akkad.Omar's first novel, American War, is also available from Penguin Random.You can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you'd like to rate or review us, we'd appreciate that. If you'd like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq. BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more. For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at bulaq@sowt.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 others are meeting this moment.Show notes:Get the Aftershocks anthology from McSweeney's at store.mcsweeneys.net.Malek's 2017 book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, is available from Bold Type Books.Read Malek's reflections on the death of her father, “‘He Didn't Want to Lie in a Grave That Couldn't Be Visited” and her recent “What Did the World Learn From Syria?” in the New York Times.Read a short conversation with Aftershocks contributor Rawaa Sonbol, “On Being a Writer in Syria Today” and her short story “The Noose Boy,” both at ArabLit.We mention the late Syrian writers Khaled Khalifa and Saadallah Wannous. The photo of Alia Malek in Damascus in January 2025 is by Sabir Hasko. You can subscribe to BULAQ on all your favorite podcast networks. You can also follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books, where we post about upcoming episodes and literary events. Please don't forget to rate and recommend BULAQ. We are a non-profit, listener-supported program. If you'd like to make a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq. BULAQ is a co-production with the podcast platform Sowt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Show Notes:You can find several of Rawand's books available from Maamoul Press: http://maamoulpress.com. Also read Rawand's “Being Illegal is Unbearable at The Nib, her ماذا نفعل في مواجهة استمرار العنف ضد النساء؟ at Jeem and her untitled work in Chime.And if you missed it, there's a discussion with Rawand and translator Amy Chiniara about Inside the Giant Fish at ArabLit.Samandal magazine is on Instagram (@samandalcomics), and you can find them at samandal-comics.org.You can buy copies of the magazine Corniche at the Sharjah Art Foundation website.Lab619 (@lab619), Skefkef (@skefkefmag/), and Fanzeen Comics (@fanzeencomics/) are on Instagram, while TokTok has a website, toktokmag.com.Rawand Issa (@rawand.issa_) and Amy Chiniara (@amychiniara) are both on Instagram, too.Lamia Ziadé's My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, from Pluto PressLena Merhej's We Will Be Calmer in the Next War is available online.Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 novel (The Guardian)An excerpt from Aziz Binebine's own account of Tazmamart, translated by Lulu Norman (WWB). Binebine's story was the basis for Tahar Ben Jelloun's This Blinding Absence of Light.Radwa Ashour's classic Granada Trilogy is finally out in its complete form, in Kay Heikkenen's translation. You can find the launch discussion at the AUC Press YouTube.The late Elias Khoury's Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea, translated by the late Humphrey Davies, was published in November by Archipelago Books.Maya Abu al-Hayyat's soon-to-be-classic No One Knows Their Blood Type is out in Hazem Jamjoum's vibrant translation this fall, from Ohio State University PressYou can get a free digital copy of And Still We Write from the ArabLit storefront, https://arablit.gumroad.com/ Those who want a print copy can get one through Mixam.The letter on refusing to work with Israeli publishers complicit in violence against Palestinians is on the PalFest website.Ahdaf Soueif responds to some criticism of the letter in the London Review of Books. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 culture, representations of the Arab world in Spain and much more. This episode of the BULAQ 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.The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for fiction titles that have won or been shortlisted for the award. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply. Find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Ahmet Yilmaz,” in Katherine Van de Vate's translation.Katherine also translated an excerpt of Karima's The Cactus Girls for The Markaz Review.You can read a conversation between Karima and Katherine about Cactus Girls on arablit.You can find more about all Karima's books at her website, karimaahdad.com.On the topic of the “political” novel, we mentioned Rabih Alameddine's new book, Comforting Myths.The Arabic Flash Fiction prize is funded by the British Council's Beyond Literature Borders programme corun by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions. Find all the finalists at ArabLit. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 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. The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for fiction titles that have won or been shortlisted for the award. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply. Find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.aeBassiouney is a professor of socio-linguistics at the American University in Cairo. She has won the State Award for Excellence in Literature for her overall literary works, the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature from the Supreme Council for Culture for her Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy (trans. Roger Allen), the Sawiris Cultural Award for her novel Professor Hanaa (trans. Laila Helmy), and a Best Translated Book Award for The Pistachio Seller (trans. Osman Nusairi). Dar Arab will publish Bassiouney's The Halva-Maker trilogy and her novel Mario and Abu l-Abbas. Both have been translated by Roger Allen.Bassiouney's Ibn Tulun Trilogy, also translated by Roger, was published by Georgetown University Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 uses a literal translation: “Your Wish Is My Command.”Find more of Deena's work at http://deenadraws.art and on Twitter and Instagram as @itsdeenasaur.The original Arabic three volumes were published by Dar Mahrousa and are available in the US through Maamoul Press. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 la lumière, entretiens," by Éditions de seuil, in 2022.An excerpt from Adnan's “Jebu” is available in the single issue of the magazine Tigris, hosted on ArabLit.Sitt Marie Rose is available in Georgina Kleege's English translation from the Post-Apollo Press.Adnan's essay “On Small Magazines,” where she writes of meeting Abdellatif Laâbi, is available on Bidoun.Adnan's “To Write in a Foreign Language” describes her journey with and through languages.All the images used in promotion of this episode are courtesy of the Sfeir-Semler Gallery. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.orgMore writing by Heba Al-Agha, translated by Julia Choucair Vizoso, is also available at arablit.orgYou can read more about the late author Walid Daqqa, who died in an Israeli prison, at JadaliyyaPalestinian prisoner Nasser Abu Srour's The Wall, translated by Luke Leafgren, is out now from Other PressA Mask, the Colour of the Sky, by Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji, won this year's International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Khandaqji is serving three consecutive life sentences; his novel is forthcoming in English translation from Europa Editions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 known than it should be. In 1970 he wrote a book of historical analysis: The Revolution of 1936-1939 in Palestine. Its translator, historian Hazem Jumjam, joined us for a conversation about this book on a failed revolution and everything we can still learn from it today. Hazem Jamjoum's translation of Kanafani's The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine is available from 1804 Books.Mahmoud Najib's translation of Kanafani's On Zionist Literature is available from Ebb Books.Kanafani's complete works in Arabic are available from Rimal Books.Kanafani's Men in the Sun was adapted to film as The Dupes (1972). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 NotesThis episode's cover art is by Chema Peral @chema_peralLetter 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 voyage out of GazaAtef Abu Seif's “Don't Look Left: A Diary of Genocide” is forthcoming from Comma PressFady Jouda's poetry collection [...] is forthcoming from Milkweed PressYou can read poetry in translation by Salim al-Naffar and Hiba Abu Nada, both killed under Israeli bombardment, at ArabLit. Other magazines that have been translating and sharing Palestinian poetry include Mizna, Fikra, LitHub, The Baffler, and Protean magazine.The book that was removed from the curriculum in Newark is the book Sonia Nimr co-wrote with Elizabeth Laird, A Little Piece of Ground. Ghassan Hages' essay “Gaza and the Coming Age of the Warrior” asks: “Is it ethical to write something ‘interesting' about a massacre as the massacre is unfolding?”Andrea Long Chu's essay “The Free Speech Debate is a Trap” calls for “fighting with words.”At the end of the episode, Basman Eldirawi reads his poem “Santa” in honor of Refaat Alareer, an educator and poet who was killed on December 7. #ReadforRefaat is part of a week of action being called for by the Publishers for Palestine collective. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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). 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 prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe. For more information about the award visit zayedaward.aeMoger's old website, Qisas Ukhra, is still available at qisasukhra.wordpress.com. The poem “The Translator's Soliloquy,” which was read on this episode, is also there. More information about his online and offline translations is available at his website: www.robinmoger.com/translations.You can read an excerpt of Traces of Enayat at ArabLit.Don't miss our previous episode with Iman Mersal, “The Books You Need to Read and Write.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 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, Said Khatibi, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2023 in the category of Young Author, for his novel نهاية الصحراء, or “The End of the Sahara.” Khatibi is a writer and journalist who is based in Ljublana, Slovenia.Khatibi's 2018 novel Sarajevo Firewood was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2020, and he won the Katara Prize for his 2016 novel Forty Years Waiting for Isabel. His Sarajevo Firewood was translated by Paul Starkey and is available from Banipal Books. Edith Maud Hull's 1919 novel The Sheik was adapted into a 1921 film of the same name starring Rudoph Valentino.The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for fiction titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 HamdyBooks available in translation are: Thieves in Retirement (translated by Marilyn Booth), A Dog with No Tail (translated by Robin Moger), and The Men Who Swallowed the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies.Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Show Notes:You can find several of Rawand's books available from Maamoul Press: http://maamoulpress.com. Also read Rawand's “Being Illegal is Unbearable at The Nib, her ماذا نفعل في مواجهة استمرار العنف ضد النساء؟ at Jeem and her untitled work in Chime.And if you missed it, there's a discussion with Rawand and translator Amy Chiniara about Inside the Giant Fish at ArabLit.Samandal magazine is on Instagram (@samandalcomics), and you can find them at samandal-comics.org.You can buy copies of the magazine Corniche at the Sharjah Art Foundation website.Lab619 (@lab619), Skefkef (@skefkefmag/), and Fanzeen Comics (@fanzeencomics/) are on Instagram, while TokTok has a website, toktokmag.com.Rawand Issa (@rawand.issa_) and Amy Chiniara (@amychiniara) are both on Instagram, too.Lamia Ziadé's My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, from Pluto PressLena Merhej's We Will Be Calmer in the Next War is available online.Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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, came out in February from AmazonCrossing. You can read reflections on the novel at Hadara magazine and listen to a sample at Amazon.Bushra al-Maqtari's What Have You Left Behind was published, in Sawad's translation, by Fitzcarraldo. As Sawad mentions, there is an audio long read at The Guardian.Stella Gaitano's Edo's Souls is forthcoming from Dedalus Press in August in Sawad's translation. You can read an excerpt and a review at ArabLit, as well as other work by Gaitano.You can find our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 2005-2006  An excerpt from Faleeha Hassan's memoir War and Me, tans. William Hutchins ran on Arablit.org. The Book of Trivialities, by Majed Mujid, trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid The only English-language collection of Sargon Boulous' self-translated poetry is Knife Sharpener from Banipal Books. You can find a list of his poems available online here. 

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 tearsAnd 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 roadI can't speak to him.O God, such afflictionAnd utter calamity!Whoever desires usWe scorn to desire,And whom we desireFeeble fate does not deliver.” The Núra al-Hawshán poem, translated by Moneera al-Ghadeer, has a modern musical adaptation on YouTube produced by Majed Al Esa. Yasmine Seale's translation of Ulayya Bint El Mahdi. This poem and others were set to music on the album “Medieval Femme.” Do'a al-Karawan (“The Nightingale's Prayer”) by Taha Hussein I Do Not Sleep, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, trans. Jonathan Smolin The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz (1956-57) Al-Bab al-Maftouh (The Open Door) Latifa al-Zayyat, trans. Marilyn Booth (1960)  All That I Want to Forget, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Michele Henjum. Rita and the Rifle, Mahmoud Darwish, made into a song by Marcel Khalife.  Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck

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 for Arabic Fiction recently announced their 2023 longlist, with a historically high number of women writers (half). Also in Jan 2023, Banipal Prize judges announced that two novels had won their 2022 prize. By coincidence, we did a joint episode on those two novels. PEN America recently announced their lit-prize longlists. Iman Mersal's The Threshold, translated by Robyn Creswell, made the poetry-in-translation longlist. In December 2022, Fatima Qandil's Empty Cages won the Naguib Mahfouz medal, and she said it was the first time she'd won a prize.

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 Instagram as @itsdeenasaur. The Arabic originals were published by Dar Mahrousa and are available in the US through Maamoul Press.

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 Philadelphia and D.C.  Follow Yasmin for updates about more events at @yasminelrifae. More writing by Yasmin El-Rifae is available on Mada Masr.

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, Professor Muhsin Al-Musawi, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of “Arab Culture in Other Languages,” for his book “The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures.” Al-Musawi is a professor of classical and modern Arabic literature, comparative and cultural studies at Columbia University. He is the author of 39 books and the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature.  The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children's Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae Professor Al-Musawi's biography and a description of his book can be found on the SZBA website.

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 Romaine, is forthcoming from Syracuse Press. Bread on Uncle Milad's Table, by Mohamed Alnaas, won the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.  

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 Close to Us, translated by Michelle Hartman (Interlink Books); Radwa Ashour's Heavier than Radwa (Dar Al Shorouk), although this is a memoir; Haifa al-Bitar's A Woman of This Modern Age (Dar Saqi); Hassan Daoud's No Road to Paradise, translated by Marilyn Booth (Hoopoe Fiction). We also mention some Saudi books that have won awards or attracted international attention, such as Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa Alsanea and The Dove's Necklace by Raja Alem.

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 Abdulqadir's Except for This Unseen Thread, translated by Mona Kareem (Ugly Duckling Presse) Ibn Arabi's The Translator of Desires, translated by Michael Sells (Princeton University Press) Yasmine Seale and Robin Moger's Agitated Air: Poems After Ibn Arabi (Tenement Press).

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 TheThousand 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 can download a free Arabic PDF of the Book of Travelson the Library of Arabic Literature website. You can read more about Diyab (and speculation about whether he was the “real Aladdin”) in Paolo Lemos Horta's Marvellous Thieves: Secret Authors of the Arabian Nights. You can read Yasmine Seale's stand-alone translation of Aladdin, introduced by Lemos Horta, or get her new Annotated Arabian Nights, edited and introduced by Lemos Horta, out this month from WW Norton.

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 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, Maria Dadouch, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of Children's Literature, for her novel لغز الكورة الزجاجية or "The Mystery of the Glass Ball." Dadouche is a screenwriter and children's author from Syria who has published over 50 books.  The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children's Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae You can find some of Dadouch's many childrens' books in Arabic here.  

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 The Baffler's series of lyric dispatches from Palestine, from which Marcia read Asmaa Azaizeh's Reflection.  We read Fady Joudah's poem Dehiscence, from his new collection Tethered to Stars.  And if you are interested in hearing much more Arabic poetry, check out the podcast Maqsouda, another Sowt production.

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! 

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 website. Participants will get a free copy of the book! Red Stars, by Davide Morosinottto, is available in Denise Muir's translation. You can find more about literature for young readers in translation at worldkidlit.wordpress.com. Rafael's next editing project is Sawad Hussain's translation of Djamila Morani's The Djinn's Apple, forthcoming from Neem Tree.

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! 

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 chart new imaginative territory. Show Notes Hot Maroc is available from Syracuse University Press in Alex Elinson's translation You can read an excerpt of the novel at Asymptote. Aida Alami contextualizes the novel at Middle East Eye. Adnan talks about the inspiration for the novel in an interview with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction

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! 

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 the Arab elite of Zanzibar, and fled to the UK after a revolution there in the 1960s. Show Notes In Episode 84, we discussed the colonial relationship between Oman and East Africa in Jokha Alharthi's The Bitter Orange Tree.  Abdulrazak Gurnah's Nobel lecture Excerpt on Kilwa from Ibn Battuta's RihlatTanzania-Oman Historic Ties: The Past and Present, by Oswald Masebo

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! 

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 May 2022. In this episode, we talk Omani literature, history, translation, and the extraordinary Bitter Orange Tree. Show Notes Six Languages, Six Covers: Celestial Bodies Around the World On Turning ‘Sayyidat al-Qamr' into ‘Celestial Bodies' and the Tyranny of the New New Yorker review: An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries Excerpt of Celestial Bodies on WWB: London Excerpt of Bitter Orange Tree on Carnegie Foundation website: Al-Rahma Interview with Jokha Alharthi More at Alharthi's website, jokha.com Our episode on Sonallah Ibrahim's novel Warda, also set in Oman.

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 the right answer will get a book in the mail! 

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 Literature Are Born   Mapping Exile: A Writer's Story of Growing Up Stateless in Post-Gulf War Kuwait Self-translation Never Lands Poetry by Mona Kareem Eleven poems on Poetry International  Three poems in The Brooklyn Rail More at Mona's website, monakareem.blogspot.com/search/label/Poetry Ahmed Naji's essay Taming the Immigrant: Musings of a Writer in Exile 

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! 

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 appearances and disappearances. Show Notes An excerpt of The Men Who Swallowed the Sunis available at the Hoopoe Fiction website. “The practice and culture of smuggling in the borderland of Egypt and Libya,” by Thomas Hüsken, is available on the Chatham House website. An excerpt of Slippingappeared at LitHub. Abu Bakr Khaal's novel African Titanics, translated to English by Charis Bredon, is available from Dar al-Saqi and Darf Books.

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! 

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 1950s through today.  The Story of the Banned Book: Naguib Mahfouz's Children of the Alley will be available soon from AUC Press. An excerpt is available at the AUC Press website, as is the book's table of contents.

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! 

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 out from The Feminist Press, while the UK edition, Something Strange, Like Hunger, is out from Saqi Books. There is also an audiobook, narrated by Amin El Gamal and Lameece Issaq. We talk about another important Moroccan author whose work was in danger of falling out of circulation, Ahmed Bouanani, in an earlier episode: Writing to Remember. The Arabic re-issue of the collection, which includes the late stories, is available from  منشورات الربيع, available online from a number of retailers.

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 Defeatedwas 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, Curly, was set for release in September 2021 by Dar Maraya. But on the eve of its publication, state security officials confiscated copies of the book. Read Elliott Colla and Ahmed Hassan's co-translations of a poem from this collection, and an excerpt from Douma's “Blasphemy,” on ArabLit.  Basma Abdelaziz's Here is a Body,which chronicles the Rabaa massacre and its aftermath, was published in Jonathan Wright's translation by Hoopoe Fiction. You can read an excerpt on the Hoopoe website. Also, join our #bulaqbookquiz for a chance to win a release from one of ten participating publishers. Send your answers to bulaq@sowt.com.

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 of Mourid Barghouti's I Saw Ramallah, in Ahdaf Soueif's translation, is available at Penguin Random. An except of Raja Shehaheh's Palestinian Walksis available through PBS. “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” by Nathan Thrall, is at the New York Review. The Present, directed by Farah Nabulsi and co-written by Nabulsi and Hind Shoufani, is streaming on Netflix.

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.