BULAQ | بولاق

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 ta...

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 poe...

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...

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 Ghal...

“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 Evi...

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 w...

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...

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 mu...

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+...

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.c...

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...

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 r...

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...

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...

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 cann...

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...

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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 cr...

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 s...

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 n...

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...

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 Hadd...

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+...

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 refer...

We talk about Morocco's most infamous secret prison; about fathers and sons; about survivors who tell their stories and writers who borrow (or steal?) them. Show Notes: Johanna Sellman “ Memoirs from Tazmamart: Writing Strategies and Alternative Frameworks of Judgment ” gives an overview of the survivors' writing about Tazmamart through 2006. In 1999-2000, Mohamed Raiss published an account of his...