Poet-translators Pierre Joris and Habib Tengour have recently assembled a new anthology: Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four: The University of California Book of North African Literature (2013).* We exchanged emails with Pierre Joris about how it came together: ArabLit: Although the title is “poems,” you include… Read More ›
If we had statistics for these sorts of things — which we don’t — I might be able to say that Ahlam Mosteghanemi was the most popular living Arabic-language novelist: I was at first stunned to see the note from… Read More ›
Over at the Kenyon Review this week, I discuss who can (should? is willing to?) write about Iraq, and other US occupied / droned locations. The springboard was my reading of two newly released titles, both translated from the French: Rashid Boudjedra’s The… Read More ›
Waciny Laredj (واسيني الأعرج) is one of two Algerians on this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) longlist. Previously longlisted for the IPAF in 2011, for his The Andalucian House, Laredj is here this year for Lolita’s Fingers. Contrary… Read More ›
Algerian novelist Amin Zaoui writes both in Arabic and in French; obviously his novel The Goatherd, longlisted for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) was submitted in Arabic: Zaoui has switched back and forth between writing in Arabic and in… Read More ›
In his afterword to Rashid Boudjedra’s The Barbary Figs (afterwords! these are so much better than prefaces!), translator André Naffis-Sahely comments briefly that the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) has bestowed three of its five awards on “timid historical… Read More ›
Interested in the meditations of homicidal religious men revolting against wealth redistribution and threatening retribution? Tahir Wattar’s The Earthquake might be for you.
Weidner asserts that the choice is “cowardly,” because Sansal is not critical of any of the sacred German cows and further that Sansal is only “half Arab” because he does’t write in Arabic. (We’ll just ignore that second, odd bit of criticism.)
Algerian literature—both in its French and Arabic flowerings—is a rich one. Francophone Algerian literature has had a significant impact in France and other French-speaking nations; Arabic literature from Algeria has not been as regionally influential, although there are individual exceptions. In any case, both French and Arabic Algerian writing has been under-appreciated by English-language readers.
Al Arabiya reports that—since the start of Ramadan—top-selling Algerian novelist Ahlam Mosteghanemi has been posting advice to women about how to choose a husband.
Thanks to Pebble in my Shoe for alerting me. Tahar Wattar, one of Algeria’s leading Arab-language writers, has died, according to a friend and an Algerian news service. The friend, author Wassini Laaredj, told The Associated Press that Wattar died… Read More ›
Four men have won this year’s Sultan Bin Al Owais Cultural Foundation Awards: a poet, a novelist, a critic, and Galal Amin. (I’m not sure what to call him. An economist? A cultural commentator? The author of What Ever Happened… Read More ›
