Briefly, in their five-minute talks, Transworld’s Jane Lawson — the most commercially minded of the three — said that she’s always looking for “a platform.”

“Is there a voice, is there a story, are there characters, and most importantly, is there a pitch? If I were to explain this book in one minute, will I have persuaded that person to read this book?” Lawson said. “So there always has to be something a bit quirky and a bit different.”

Lawson added that they’re also interested in “rights income,” which means they’re looking for “authors published in their own language but not published anywhere else in the world, especially not in America.”

Unsurprisingly, she said, “I’ll be looking for authors who perhaps speak English. We’re all very publicity-driven.” So: “If we can bring an author over to the UK, and if they can enchant an audience, and blog, and write pieces for the Guardian and the Times and wherever, we’ve got ourselves a platform.”

She said they also “love books that are banned.”

Laura Barber, of Granta, said she was “looking for the kind of writing that might be read in five or six or seven years time.”

Barber said she’d probably already heard 30 or 40 books in translation described to her in the first few days of the fair, and that she had to keep in mind what a colleague once told her, that, “You publish things four times, not once.” You must “publish” the work first to yourself, then to your colleagues, then to the sales team, then to the outside world. “Each time, the story has got to be very strong.”

Barber said that she also publishes “books that are not best-sellers, but are great literature that need to be published.”

Chad Post, of Open Letter Books, was the least commercially minded, as he said Open Letter has a more educational mission, giving  access to books that readers wouldn’t otherwise have to “if left up to market forces.”

“We are genuinely looking for books that are unlike American writers in many ways.”

They went on to discuss more, and answer questions from the audience: The whole 50-minute session is above.

ArabLit: This is your first time at PalFest, yes? Why did you decide to go?

Omar El-Khairy: It is, yes. Well, I’ve watched PalFest grow over the years and have long admired the vision, determination and energy of all those involved. At a time when the idea of cultural exchange has either been totally consumed by today’s international culture industries or co-opted by states and institutions as a tool of cultural diplomacy, PalFest is a rare opportunity to connect and collaborate outernationally with fellow artists.

Moreover, the decision this year to reject stubbornly the border crossings, checkpoints, barriers and walls that cut up the land, and instead to imagine and help create an environment in which culture can roam all over historical Palestine is a really exciting prospect.

AL: What are you hoping comes of it, both for you & for audiences?

OK: The last time I was in Palestine was over three years ago for my PhD fieldwork. So, to return on different and somewhat freer terms wherein Palestine isn’t simply a research site is exciting for me.

I don’t really have any predetermined ideas of what I hope to bring or take from my time there. I simply hope to connect, share with, learn from and hopefully build collaborations with fellow artists.

AL: Are you making connections with theater/film people while you’re there? Are there things happening in the Palestinian theater/film world that are particularly exciting?

OK: I hope to, yes. On the last occasion that I was there, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with both the Freedom Theatre in Jenin and Idioms Film in Ramallah. There’s a real burgeoning collective of confident Palestinian artists who, while both recognising and accepting the historical burdens placed upon them, are also trying to find ways of responding to the particularities of both the present-day and quotidian.

AL: Your film, Tunnels, is currently in post-production. Can you say a little about that film, when/where it will be released? What was its inspiration/how did you go about creating it?

OK: Yes – I recently saw a first (very) rough cut of it. The idea for the film developed over a long period of time – more like two fairly rapid bursts over the course of a few years. The first was when I was fortunate enough to meet the film’s eventual director Mohanad Yaqubi. We just hung out, got to know each other and talked about a number of things – our loves and frustrations, our hopes and aborted dreams. The following year Mohanad spent some time in London for his MA and we got to talking about collaborating on a short together. Mohanad had a rough idea of what he wanted to explore – how Palestinians are always waiting – at checkpoints, for visas, for utilities, for family members, for their homeland. So, that was the starting point for our somewhat Beckettian film about a young boy from Gaza who meets an old man at a bus stop in this suspended world – somewhere between Gaza and London.

I plan to spend some time with Mohanad while I’m out in Palestine and get closer to completing the film.

Two years ago, when Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon estimated the percentage of women’s works being translated, he came up with a number of around 20%. This year, Anderson estimated a higher rate: “over the last two years, an average of 26% of the books of fiction or poetry published in the United States were by women.”

But the numbers get lower when it comes to prizes: For the Best Translated Book Award, 17% of the books on the longlist were by women, and 21% of the shortlists, fiction and poetry combined. The PEN translation prize hit 15%, and, Anderson writes, for “the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (IFFP): over the last three years, 13% of the longlist, and 16% of the shortlist (in other words, the “token” woman on the shortlist of six). No woman author has ever won this prize since its founding in 1990.”

In Arabic literature, this question also comes up. Egyptian novelist Salwa Bakr recently discussed this (“Women and Arabic Literature,” by Lissie Jaquette) and this question comes up nearly every year at the International Prize for Arabic Fiction press conferences: Where are the women? In its six-year tenure, 22 % of the authors on the IPAF longlist have been women.

You can make from it what you will: Women don’t choose to become authors; women don’t write good books; women’s good books aren’t promoted; women’s good books aren’t deemed prize-worthy; journalists these days will write about anything; statistics don’t belong in the literary world.

Counting is not my favorite thing, so I’m sure I’ve missed spots. I tried to avoid anthologies (unless they were all-women anthologies) and non-literary works.

AUC Press 38 / 170 = 22 % Arabic literature (in translation) by women.

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing 3 / 10 = 33 % Arabic literature (in translation) by women.

Interlink 11 / 37 = 30% Arabic literature (in translation) by women. (Note that I’m not counting excellent translations of work by Arab authors like Etel Adnan, Assia Djebar, and Leila Marouane).

There are many 0%-ers, like Archipelago, which Orthofer notes scores low on women-authored books in general. All Archipelago’s Arabic translations are from Mahmoud Darwish and Elias Khoury. But who could fault Archipelago for choosing Darwish and Khoury?

Over at the Literary Saloon, Orthofer says:

This seems to be a really deep-rooted problem/issue, and publishers really might want to look into this: I note, for example, that of the sixteen just announced 2013 English PEN grants for translation (see also below) two are anthologies, thirteen of the to-be-translated books are by men, and one is by a woman (Julia Franck). Seriously folks ?

I am not problematizing the issue here; just noting it.

Alaa Abdel-Aziz — who’s sparked several protests since taking office last week, including the egging of his car — struck back on Wednesday with a Facebook announcement that he was going to “fight corruption” in the ministry.

When the Morsi government announced Alaa Abdel-Aziz was Egypt’s new culture minister on May 6, many had never heard of him. In the scramble for information about the erstwhile cinema professor, one of the first things that came up was a piece he’d written for the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice portal, in which he supported Morsi against the media-”exaggerated” “counter-revolution” : المشهد السياسى ووهم استنساخ الثورة.

Despite immediate opposition to Abdel-Aziz’s tenure, the new culture minister didn’t start quietly. On Sunday, Abdel-Aziz fired Ahmed Megahed, the head of the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO), without official explanation. Megahed was replaced by Gamal el-Tellawy.

Megahed told Ahram Online that he had gone to his office on Sunday as usual and found the decision waiting on his desk.

The cause of the firing may have been a reported argument between Abdel-Aziz and Megahed over the new minister’s intention to change the name of the Maktabat al-Osra (The Family’s Library) book series to Maktabat al-Sowra (The Revolution’s Library).

The minister’s week did not go well after that. According to Ahram Online:

The minister was expected to participate in the opening of a new gallery at Hanager Arts Centre, but cancelled the event after he was informed that angry protesters are awaiting him. Instead, the minister spent his time that night in one of Cairo’s downtown restaurants. Protesters found him out, went to the restaurant and trapped the minister inside for a while before the workers managed to get him out through a back door. Protesters followed his car and egged it.

According to the Middle East Online, there were more than 300 people in front of the restaurant.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture’s Wednesday statement asserted that the staff of the culture ministry, particularly the “young employees,” supported Alaa Abdel-Aziz. The statement said that Abdel-Aziz will support any ministry employees in need of help.

Those who oppose the minister are set to hold a press conference at the Journalists’ Syndicate on Saturday May 18.

After 25 years of Farouk Hosni (who was recently cleared of illegal profiteering charges), Abdel-Aziz is Egypt’s sixth culture minister since January 30, 2011. Up until Abdel-Aziz, all have been well-known figures:

Gaber Asfour (Jan 30 – Feb 8, 2011)

Mohamed al-Sawy (mid-February, 2011)

Emad Abu-Ghazi (March – Nov 20, 2011)

Shaker Abdel-Hamid (Nov 2011 – May 2012)

Mohamed Saber Arab (May 2012 – May 6 2013)

Alaa Abdel-Aziz (May 6 – present)

As Ahram Online notes, “Abdel-Aziz is not only the sixth culture minister since January 2011, but also — without counting El-Sawy — the first to come from a completely different cultural background.”

ArabLit: What made you decide to go along? What are you hoping comes out of it, both for you & for audiences?

Tom Warner: I enjoy hearing new work and meeting writers and audiences. I hope to get a sense of Arabic poetry and offer something of UK poetry to PalFest audiences.

AL: You do a number of festivals (Cheltenham, Cambridge, Dhaka, Nottingham). What are you expecting to be different about PalFest?

TW: I don’t have any preconceptions about what PalFest will be, but I’ve heard great things from previous guests, the British Council others involved in the festival.

AL: You give creative-writing workshops at schools — I assume you’ll also be doing at least one creative-writing workshop as part of PalFest? What do you enjoy about teaching these workshops? Or…you do enjoy them, right?

TW: I will be delivering workshops at Palfest. I enjoy working with writers at all stages of their development. I feel I benefit as a writer as much as the participants do – again, a kind of trade. They’re an opportunity for poets to connect and discover other processes and share work. Editor’s note: You can sign up for Warner’s workshop, and six others, on Facebook.

AL: Your PalFest biography notes that you’re currently at work on a translation of poetry by Nouri al-Jarrah. Is that your first translation? How did it come about? Are you working with al-Jarrah? 

TW: I’m working on a translation of a small selection of Nouri’s poetry, supported by Arts Council England. It’s my first experience of translation and I’m still getting a feel for the process. It’s a process full of doubt and questions such as; What’s my role in this? Am I serving the original well? Am I producing something that stands up on its own? I’m still getting used to just accepting these questions as a natural part of translation.

I came into the translation after making contact with Najwan Darwish at a reading I did in the UK. We became friend and Najwan suggested I give translation a go. I don’t have any Arabic so Najwan kindly gives up his time to help me develop literal translations of the poems which I can then work with.

#

Note: Banipal has three of al-Jarrah’s poems, trans. Seema Atalla, available online. From “Summer Balcony”:

My words are dying.
Bringing them water,
I arrive to find them dead –
my words
which
were born
and lay on this balcony.
…
…
Days have passed
and I, as one drugged,
stare out
at yellow cars
on the hill.

The prize’s focus shifts from cycle to cycle. This year, the focus was on Syrian authors, because, according to prize committee, “Angesichts der Situation in Syrien, die die Ereignisse des arabischen Umbruchs derzeit am dramatischsten widerspiegelt, hat sich die Jury des Coburger Rückert-Preises 2013 für einen Blickpunkt auf Syrien und das dortige literarische Schaffen unter dem Gesichtspunkt seiner politischen Aktualität entschieden.“

Briefly*: Given the situation in Syria, which reflects the most dramatic events of the Arab uprisings, the Cobert Rückert jury has opted for a focus on that nation.

The four shortlisted authors were: Samar Yazbek, Rosa Yassin Hassan, Nihad Sirees, and Fawwaz Haddad.

Rosa Yassin Hassan was on the list for her novel Ebenholz (Ebony), Samar Yazbek for Schrei nach Freiheit: Bericht aus dem Inneren der syrischen Revolution (the German title of A Woman in the Crossfire), Fawwaz Haddad for his novel Gottes blutiger Himmel (the German title of Soldiers of God), and Nihad Sirees for Ali Hassan’s Intrige, (the German title for The Silence and the Roar).

The prize’s first winner was Egyptian writer Alaa al-Aswany (2008) and the second was Iranian poet Esmail Khoi (2010). From here forward, the award will be given every three years. Each prize brings its winner 7,500 euros, and, to be eligible, books must be available in German translation.

This year’s judges were Dr. Günther Orth, Dr. Claudia Ott, and Dr. Hartmut Fähndrich.

The winner was set to be announced on May 16, Rückert’s 225th birthday. However, the announcement seems to have come out bit early. The awards ceremony is set for my birthday, June 21.

*I don’t know German, and hope I have not made any grievous translation errors.

As Emma Cleave writes on her “come one, come all” post:

PEN Translates! will fund up to 75% of translation* costs for selected projects. When a publisher’s annual turnover is less than £100,000 we will consider supporting up to 100% of translation costs.

Work from all languages is eligible and it is not essential for publishers to have acquired the rights at the time of application.

Earlier this year, ArabLit interviewed Cleave about what sort of projects PEN supports. She said:

 Of the criteria, the most crucial is Literary Quality and we are also looking for books that speak to the PEN Charter in some way, whether by directly addressing freedom of speech or human rights issues, or by contributing in some way towards inter-cultural understanding. We also ask that publishers submit a strong publicity and marketing plan.

So, in short:

We measure applications to PEN Translates against the following criteria; Literary Quality, Strength of the Project and Contributing to Literary Diversity. This funding strand does not ask that books have a link to the PEN Charter, but we are still looking for books of outstanding literary merit. Submissions are independently assessed and then reviewed by an expert panel who select a balanced portfolio of books for support. The panel is currently chaired by English PEN trustee and professional translator, Ros Schwartz.

So, for instance, you might submit Fouad Laroui’s Une année chez les Français (2010), which was listed for the Prix Goncourt, or Najwa Barakat’s لغة السر or Huda Barakat’s ملكوت هذه الأرض or the graphic novel مدينة مجاورة الأرض by Jorj Abu Mhayya. Or something by Mazen Kerbaj!

It’s not entirely clear to me that graphic novels are acceptable, but ”fiction (including children’s literature), non-fiction, poetry, prose or plays (for print edition)” definitely are.

In any case, the deadline for submissions will be Friday, June 28.

You can download the Application Form and Guidance for Applicants from the PEN site.

Editor’s note: All bolding is Cleave’s.

Public events are scheduled to kick off at 8 p.m. on May 25 in Ramallah’s Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre with “Readings and words” from three authors: novelist and PalFest founder Ahdaf Soueif, poet and critic Ahmad Dahbour, and novelist Gillian Slovo. The evening will also feature a musical interpretation of passages of Slovo’s Red Dust. 

Indeed, The Corsair — written by Qatari journalist, engineer, and author Abdul Aziz al-Mahmoud — is built to be both edifying and widely read, in the tradition of one of the all-time most popular Arab novelists: Jurji Zaidan.

Al-Mahmoud’s debut novel is set in the Gulf in the early 19th century, and follows a number of characters and stories. Central to them is that of the pirate Erhama bin Jaber. The novel is thus a re-framing of world history that puts the concerns of the Gulf’s marginal “pirates” and their loved ones on an equal footing with those of the British government, the neighboring empires (Egypt, Persia), and the Dutch East India Company. Al-Mahmoud’s book also calls into question who can be called a “pirate”: Is it fellows like bin Jaber or invaders from other nations?

Occasionally, The Corsair is pedantic and instructional, as Zaidan’s historical novels sometimes were. But by and large it’s a romp through history, with lots of quick cuts between scenes and cities and plenty of high-level political intrigue. Midway through the novel, one of the book’s British government officials says of Persia, “I’ve seen little but conspiracies. People here live and breathe plots.”

Indeed, a casual reader of The Corsair could be forgiven for seeing life in the 19th century Gulf region as plots upon plots; they do keep the pages turning. But the inner lives of the book’s characters are also central to its appeal. Erhama bin Jaber is neither “good” nor “evil.” It could be said of him what translator Samah Selim has said of Zaidan’s central characters: “rather than being defined by scales of good and evil, they live in and through a combination of politics, self-interest, and emotional attachments.”

And even more like Zaidan, Al-Mahmoud uses his re-framing of world history to speak (almost) directly to contemporary issues. Where Zaidan was interested in education and enlightenment, al-Mahmoud seems focused on promoting trade and tolerance. We sympathize with the The Corsair’s Wahhabis, who are under attack by the Egyptian general Ibrahim Pasha. But we are also distanced from the Wahhabis’ strict religious views. Some of the book’s sympathetic characters believe the British are infidels, sure, but this is largely a reaction to British arrogance. Most characters believe in a positive relationship with the Brits. The good guys, like Erhama’s son Bashir, are anti-war and pro-trade.

Perhaps most interestingly, Bashir bin Erhama, son of the titular pirate, is mostly tightly allied in the end not with the Egyptians to the West nor the Persians to the East, but with the British. Bashir says to Major George Forster Sadleir:

“I lost my father, Sadleir.”

“Yes,” he said, “but you’ve gained a brother.”

The British certainly are not good guys in this novel — most are arrogant deal-breakers, bad listeners, bad friends, and bad husbands. Plus, they drink too much. But even the worst of the Brits are portrayed sympathetically, as are the Persians and Indians. Only the Egyptians, it seems, are not.

In the author’s Twitter tagline  (@aziz_almahmoud/), he calls himself a “Qatari journalist and writer, love to live in peace with everybody”. It will be interesting to see how al-Mahmoud follows القرصان, and whether he continues his inventing and re-inventing in the (fun, historical, pedagogical) tradition of Zaidan. I, for one, would welcome it.