Why Doesn’t Humphrey Davies Translate More Arab Women?

…And a Few Other Moments from Last Night’s Talk

Davies never did get around to answering this question, although moderator Samia Mehrez—head of the American University in Cairo’s new Center for Translation Studies—did ask during his presentation the AUC last night.

Davies’ list of translated works is, after all, markedly male.

There was nothing sinister about his non-answer answer; after all, it’s hard to keep track of all these six-part questions. He responded instead with an anecdote about an (unnamed) Arab woman writer whose novel he had translated.

This novel, unfortunately, has not seen the light of day. When Davies brought it to the U.S. publisher, he found that the author’s work did not fit said publisher’s idea of “how an Arab woman writer should sound.” After some wrangling, Davies (and, presumably, the author) withdrew the novel.

Davies returned several times to the theme of U.S. and U.K. editors’ expectations of Arab writers. He seemed particularly to point to American editors as having strong notions about just what sort of Arab world their reading public was prepared to buy.

Beyond that, Davies spoke quite entertainingly about the role of a translator—who he likened to an actor interpreting a playwright’s work—and his own translations. The talk was largely theory-free. He even, during the Q&A, got down to the nitty gritty of how a literary translator is paid.

Davies noted that he is not a writer and has never written. But he said that he was “brought up to revere books,” and advised young translators that this—not just competency with language—is core to a translator’s job.

“You have to be a connoisseur of language.”

Mehrez asked about his feelings about the translator’s “invisibility.” Davies said that, in general, he doesn’t mind—and perhaps even appreciates—his quieter role in the process. Still, he said, this appreciation only goes so far. Once he went to speak at a university along with an author he’d translated. He wasn’t expecting to be paid, but noticed that the author received a check.

“I was told that I was not to be paid, because I was, ‘Infinitely less creative.’”

More about Davies: I interviewed him, a while back, for The Quarterly Conversation.

If You’re in Cairo Today

Humphrey’s the award-winning translator of a number of books, including Ahmed Alaidy’s Being Abbas el-Abd, Gamal al-Ghitani’s Pyramid Texts, Bahaa Taher’s Sunset Oasis, and Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun, Yalo, and…well, I forget which of Khoury’s books Humphrey’s working on now. But it’s definitely one of Khoury’s books.

Will I make it downtown by 6 p.m.?

The 2008 Arabic Booker Shortlist: Which of the 6 in Translation?

Looking at the 2009 Arabic Booker shortlist (in translation) makes one wonder: What of 2008?

Bahaa Taher’s Sunset Oasis, the winner of the inaugural Arabic Booker, became available in English in fall 2009 (from Scepter in the U.K. and and McClelland & Stewart in North America) and was amply discussed in U.K. and Canadian publications. I have reviewed it; so have a number of others. Most other English-language reviewers seemed more swept away by the book than I was.

I also interviewed the book’s translator, Humphrey Davies.

Mekkawi Said’s Swan Song became available from AUC Press this winter, 2009. I should have a review of it coming out in Rain Taxi, for which reason I’m not supposed to breathe a word about it, yea or nay. Read the magazine, and all that.

As for May Menassa’s Walking in the Dust, an excerpt appeared in Banipal (and can be read online); perhaps Paula Haydar is working on a full translation?

English rights for Khaled Khalifa’s In Praise of Hatred have been sold to Transworld, a division of Random House. The book also will appear in Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch and Norwegian. I will have to scratch out more of the “whens” and “wheres.”

Jabbour Douaihy’s June Rain will appear soon in German, French, and Italian.  No mention of English.

As for Elias Farkouh’s The Land of Purgatory, the Raya agency has made no mention of rights in any language.

Sheikh Zayed Award for Children’s Lit to Manga-Inspired /Gold Ring/

The winner of the Sheikh Zayed Award for Children’s Literature was announced (yesterday?). It’s the “Arabic-manga” series Gold Ring.

I can’t quite tell what it’s about from this or this, or whether it’s fun for children or well-crafted, but it does (for better or worse) seem to have “subtle, but inspirational life lessons.”

The cover does look fun, though.

Idris Ali Book Confiscated at Cairo Book Fair

I missed this while at the Cairo International Book Fair on Friday: Egyptian security confiscated Idris Ali’s new novel, The Leader is Cutting His Hair.

The book is reportedly critical of the Libyan regime (and Ghaddafi’s hair?). Ali, who’s Egyptian, lived in the neighboring North African nation from 1976-1980.

All copies of the book were reportedly seized; it was unclear what action would be taken against the publisher, Wa’ad.
But the AFP reported that police arrested the book’s publisher, Gumeili Ahmed Shehata, and took him to a nearby station.

“They accused him of insulting Ghaddafi and said his book contained immoral phrases,” Gamal Eid, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, told the news organization.

Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression lawyer Ahmed Ezzat suggested to Daily News Egypt that the book’s seizure might constitute an act of “flattery” to please Libya.

Idris Ali is also the author of Dongola and Poor, available in English from AUC Press. I am lukewarm about Poor, but the government has certainly whet my appetite for The Leader is Cutting His Hair.

Meanwhile, Libya is apparently banning all of YouTube.

Which of the Shortlisted 6 from Last Year’s Arabic Booker in Translation?

Fawwaz Haddad’s The Faithful Translator is reviewed this week by Al Ahram regular Youssef Rakha. The review does not mention when the novel—on the ‘08-’09 “Arabic Booker” shortlist—might appear in, er, translation.

Of the six shortlisted books from 2008-2009, Mohamed al-Bisatie’s Hunger was out from AUC Press like a shot, in 2008, translated by the quick and prolific Denys Johnson-Davies. Habib Selmi’s The Scent of a Woman will be out this spring, also from AUC Press. The prize’s 2008-2009 winner, Yusuf Ziedan’s Azazeel, should be out from the rather uncommunicative Atlantic Books in the coming months.

Of the remaining two:

The very good translator William Hutchins must be working on Inaam Kachachi’s The American Granddaughter; an excerpt has appeared on Brooklyn Rail under the title If I Forget You, Baghdad.

That leaves Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses, about which I’ve seen nothing. I suppose I’ll have to ask.

Photos from the Cairo International Book Fair

I assume that Ian Jack is exaggerating a bit when he speaks of the violent intimacies of European book fairs.

Jack probably has not experienced the intimacies of the Cairo Book Fair—on a Friday, no less—where thousands crowd in to by 1LE tickets, and then crowd into the gates, and then crowd in to see the books.

It is an exhilarating event, full of bargains for the intrepid, and people-watching for everyone else. We came away with a modest number of good deals: I bought several copies of Taxi, in English and Arabic, as gifts for friends. My son got, among other things, an excellent deal on an illustrated Arabic-English “my first dictionary” for kids.

I did not attend any author events. After all, that’s hardly what the Cairo Book Fair is about. I glanced at the author table at the AUC’s Naguib Mahfouz pavilion, but then had to keep moving.

My son Isaac took some of these photos; my husband took the rest. You’ll find a lot more book-fair photos at the Alternative Entertainment blog; from the Arab News Blog a funny piece about the police book exhibit; Bebasata’s round-up of the fair.

Crowd shot; Dar el Shorouk tent in the background.

My son took lots of photos of the stacks.

Crowd shot, taken by my six-year-old

My elder son and I choosing a puppet for the younger one.

A final crowd shot: Someone setting up a video camera (left), others wandering with books, holding children.

One-minute Review: Khaled Al Khamissi’s /Taxi/

Taxi. By Khaled Al Khamissi, trans. Jonathan Wright. Aflame Books: London, 2008. 218 pages.

I’m not the sort of person who “laughs out loud” while reading.

My people hail from extraordinarily cold places. And when we fled our (old) world for someone else’s (new), we quite humorlessly moved to the coldest patch we could find.

While reading a novel, I might smirk. I might snicker. Anything more? It would be a waste of stored warmth.

But Al Khamissi’s Taxi cracked through this readerly ice, giving me surprising, genuine fits of laughter. It is, in this way, quintessentially Egyptian: yes, there’s what the Chicago Tribune found, “the petty, daily frustrations of Egypt’s working poor” and what the CS Monitor found, “sharp social and political commentaries,” but what makes all this heady, depressing commentary bearable—no, wonderfully, even guiltily enjoyable—is Al Khamissi’s humor.

My critic-half wants to talk about the flaws: He didn’t make enough of the narrator, who is scattered and mostly blank. If this is fiction (and not reportage) then the man who “hears” all these taxi stories must take on more force. Why does he care? Why is he collecting these moments?

But my appreciator-half responds: Was there a moment when you wanted to put this book down? (Well, except chapter 57, where a driver describes the process of renewing a license in Egypt. I’ve been through enough Egyptian bureaucracy in person, thank you very much.)

The blogger Baheyya perhaps was most on point, noting that Taxi takes the stale ideas we each have about Egypt and “reawakens our dulled sense of wonder, outrage, and sorrow.” And that, she says, “is an awesome achievement.”

But, of course, don’t trust me. Read some excerpts for yourself:

African Writing Online: Chapters 3 and 42

PBS Frontline: Intro, 29, 33

A Fictional Home

I am supposed to be reading a book by an American right now. (I am American. I love the older work of J.E. Wideman to pieces, and the older work of Toni M., and Alice Munro—oops, she’s Canadian. And Roberto Bolano and Derek Walcott—oops, wrong America.)

Anyhow, it’s a good book; a well-received book. It’s a book that was sent to me by a magazine so I could review it. Ergo, it’s my job.

So, showing responsibility, I started. I see that this book is slickly constructed. I see the plot advancing, the characters unfolding. It’s got shape and movement. It’s got small observations about life; it’s got nice turns of phrase. It all the ingredients. It speeds over the surface like a hydrofoil.

But here I am, bored somehow, abandoning my assigned reading and picking up Khaled al Khamissi’s Taxi, which no one has asked me to read, and no one will care if I read, (except perhaps the author’s mother, bless her).

Taxi doesn’t have the same slick opening (the opening is perhaps too chatty) and it doesn’t have the same clean-as-snow language, but immediately I feel: Ahh. Here I am, home.

New Words Without Borders: Graphic Lit from Lebanon, Cairo

I am as much a Joe Sacco fan as anyone—no, that must be wrong; I am an average Joe Sacco fan. Perfectly run-of-the-mill.

What Sacco excels at is storytelling, and in examining himself as he examines the world around him. His drawings journalistic. They are appealing enough, but they’re not  the appeal.

With Zeina Abirached’s A Game from Swallows excerpt in the latest Words Without Borders, I don’t feel I’m learning new facts about Beirut. The war fractured the city: check. But Abirached’s stark, sometimes veined, sometimes deathly life-portraits of a city don’t require an exciting narrative. I’m reading just to see where the imagery will go next.

Albert Cossery’s Proud Beggars is set in the “squalid underground” of Cairo and billed as a classic, although I suppose I find it more of a period piece myself.

Ah, and I’m still mourning Magdy Shafee’s Metro. While it perhaps wasn’t high literature, it could’ve heralded a new way of reading in Egypt.