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 Shei ..read more

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 ..read more

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 w ..read more

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 Wa ..read more

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 information ..read more

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 utter calamity! Whoever desires us We scorn to desire, And whom we desire Feeble fate does n ..read more

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 ..read more

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 Pres ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more