A host of internationally celebrated authors and artists will be at this year’s Hay Festival Beirut, including Hanan al-Shaykh, Karl Ove Knausgård, Mohammed Hanif, Hanif Kureishi, Hyam Yared, Iman Humaydan, Joe Sacco, and Mazen Kerbaj, as well as three of the young shortlistees for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction: Mohammed Hassan Alwan, Jana Elhassan, and Saud Alsanousi.
The two books are very different. And yet the echoes between Waguih Ghali’s Beer in the Snooker Club (1964) and Dominique Eddé’s Kite (2003, English trans. Ros Schwartz 2012) are significant enough to have pestered me these last few weeks.
Lebanese graphic novelist Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows has made the United States Board on Books for Young People‘s (USBBY’s) ”2013 Outstanding International Books List“: According to organizers: All of the titles originated or were first published in a country other than the… Read More ›
The UT Austin has managed to attract Hoda Barakat as the inaugural scholar for the Department of Middle Eastern Studies’ new Arabic Scholar in Residence program for fall 2013.
Lebanese author Hyam Yared, who was one of the “Beirut39” — 39 celebrated Arab authors under 40 — will be the subject of a table ronde in Paris this week: Yared, as her PalFest biography notes, was born in Beirut… Read More ›
This week in Qantara, I have a piece about the historical novels of Jurji Zaidan. Here’s a bit from the middle: “George [Zaidan] came to me about five years ago,” Arabic literature professor and pioneering translator Roger Allen said, “because he realized… Read More ›
In the Chicago Tribune, I review Samah Selim’s new English translation of Jurji Zaydan’s Tree of Pearls. I also have a sidebar discussion with Selim on translating the novel (nearly) a century after its publication. As part of this, I spoke to… Read More ›
Elias Khoury’s Sinalcol is one of the few titles on the longlist for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) that already has been translated into French (available next month, trans. Rania Samara) and will soon be released in… Read More ›
Lebanese novelist Jana El Hassan (@Janaelhassan) was longlisted for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) for her second novel, I, She, and Other Women. El Hassan, who has worked for several Arab newspapers, and currently writes for The Daily Star, studied English literature, graduated in 2006 and is currently am pursuing a master’s degree. She answered a few questions about the IPAF-longlisted novel, and why she writes:
As part of the University for Seniors, a community outreach program at the American University of Beirut, Mishka Mojabber Mourani was asked me to organize a series of literary evenings to be held at AUB, with an emphasis on Arabic literature… Read More ›
It seemed a fairly safe bet that Rabee Jaber’s 2011 novel طيور الهوليداي إن (The Birds of Holiday Inn) would be on the 2013 longlist. And here it is, Jaber’s third time on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF)… Read More ›
Hoda Barakat is one of four Lebanese authors on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction longlist, for her 2012 novel, The Kingdom of this Earth.
