Tunisia is this year’s guest of honor at the CIBF, although it’s not particularly obvious as you walk the fairgrounds. (Egyptian author Youssef Rakha writes here about his search for the Tunisian presence.) Nonetheless, while the Tunisian display was rather tucked away, the Tunisians who staffed it — particularly Tijane Zayed — were jubilant at their reception by Egyptian fair-goers.

Several major Tunisian writers also visited the fair, including rising star Kamel Riahi and acclaimed author Arousia Nalouti. Riahi has been an interesting commentator on literature and uprising, and noted at the CIBF – according to Ahram Online – that Tunisian literature since the revolution had become a sort of “hasty literature.”

He felt high-quality writing needed priority now as much as ever: “It’s better to read a good story about insects than a poor novel about Palestinian suffering…Poor literature only strengthens the values of ugliness and stupidity fostered by oppressive regimes…Literature must side with beauty even if it’s speaking differently than the rest of the crowd.”

Over at the Tunisian pavilion — which was, once one found it, quite a pleasant if smallish place to visit –Tijane Zayed said Egyptian visitors weren’t so interested in Tunisian books this year. Instead, most people were “looking for the revolution,” he said, and many wanted to photograph themselves with one of the large displays, particularly with Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi. (Yasmine and I had our picture taken with him too, why not?)

Some of my (awful, oh well!) photos:

So people stood here and had their picture taken with al-Shabbi. Indeed, taking your photo with various revolutionary icons seemed to be one of the major sports of the fair.

A bilingual Arabic-French children's book about the uprising in Tunisia.

The displays here were very pretty. It seemed quite quiet to me, but Tijane assured me that "many, many" Egyptians had sought out the Tunisian pavilion.

"The people want..."

I missed the main shot at the entrance, but never mind, I know Yasmine got it.

ArabLit: What made you decide that it would be possible to translate this book? I read the preface, where you say that you decided to translate al-Jubouri based on her poem “The Veil of the Religions.” But what factors made it seem…possible?

Rebecca Gayle Howell: Well, I think there are two answers to that question. First, when in my early twenties I started reading poetry with some seriousness, I was reading versions by Stephen Mitchell, Chana Bloch, and Coleman Barks alongside original works by Louise Glück, Carolyn Forché, and CK Williams. My ear heard all of it as absolutely contemporary―even though some of what I was reading was absolutely ancient. So, maybe it’s enough to say that it has never not seemed possible to me.

I’m not interested in a Tower of Babel. I don’t believe in the existence of ‘literal translations.’ I do find solace in Willis Barnstone’s idea that the act of translation makes it possible for poetry to be a ‘living text,’ a text that continually moves forward into new communities, new places, new times. That we have been ‘confounded’ is a blessing, I think. Ellen Doré Watson, my mentor, taught me that translation was more about work than theory, she taught me to work the language like a bread dough. I like the idea that we are all doing our best. That we make mistakes, that our mistakes meet our successes. That others will try again.

So I like that there is a struggle, that in order to share meaning and experience, we must work and work together. In Sarah Maguire’s sharp essay ‘Singing About the Dark Times: Poetry and Conflict’ she writes that “translating poetry is the opposite of war.” In that I hear something about the work of empathy, understanding, collaboration, compromise―the work of human relationships―that’s involved when one sits down to translate a poem. I know that translating Amal’s book changed me and for the better. Just as there is no such thing as a literal translation, I suppose that there is no such thing as a literal understanding. But as a human I have to believe that it’s worth the trying.

AL: Many translators work with a “native informant,” but Husam Qaisi seems to be rather more than that. How did you decide to work with Qaisi? Why him vs. another poet, for instance?

Also: You call him the “literal translator,” much as the Poetry Translation Centre refers to literal translators. But I’ve always felt dubious about the possibility of “literal” translation. In what ways do you think Qaisi did (or didn’t) color the process?

RGH: I chose to work with Husam because he is a family friend, and I knew the level of integrity he would bring to the project. Calling him the ‘literal translator’ was our compromise of semantics; you are right that in literary translation circles his role is more accurately called ‘informant.’However, an informant is often a contractor who offers a literal version of the poem and advisable notes on synonyms. Although Husam’s job was to provide my access to the Arabic, he went well above his call of duty in that capacity. As I explained in the translator’s introduction to the collection, he and I moved the traditional process one step back and worked instead with lexicon tables. I have a background in linguistics, and I wanted to have access to what the language was doing―not just what it was saying. Husam took the time to teach me about Arabic and also about all of the relevant cultural and religious histories referenced in Amal’s poems. We worked over Skype after his children were asleep, and he would review my drafts, correct my misunderstandings, read the Arabic to me so that I could have access to Amal’s music…he gave many hours to this project. I suspect I will never be so lucky again. I wanted to properly thank him; sharing translator credit was the best way I knew how.

This collection was a collaboration―between he and I, between the two of us and Amal, between languages and histories. We all colored the process. Amal reviewed the manuscript before it was sent to press, and she and I worked together to make this change or that…mostly issues of dialect. That she approved of the manuscript doesn’t tell me that it’s right, or that there is such a thing as ‘right,’ but it means a lot to me to know she is pleased and proud. Translation is probably a colored process by definition. Happily so.

AL: You mention in the preface that he’s a Palestinian-American and a devout Muslim…did these things matter in choosing him for the project? Or are they just incidentally mentioned?

RGH: Incidentally mentioned. His nationality and religion are at the center of his life; aside from mentioning his life as a devoted father and husband, I couldn’t think of a better way to help the reader get to know him a bit.

AL: Would you do this again? What do you think the pitfalls are in working with a partner-translator who knows the source language much more thoroughly? Are there benefits, do you think, to this manner of working?

RGH: By ‘pitfalls’ do you mean something like the overwhelming and years-long anxiety that I might be making unknown and egregious errors? Sure. But as I mentioned earlier, I am drawn to translation because the process of it asks me to be a better person. Collaborating with Husam taught me much about trust. And also about compromise and generosity.

I think it also has made me a better poet. As a person who only has full access to her native language, I essentially had to deconstruct my relationship to English and my pre-conceived notions of how poetry behaves, in order to go as deep into the Arabic and into the Arabic poems as I could. When I emerged to construct these version of Amal’s poems, I emerged, not just a different translator, but a different poet. My own poems have significantly changed. So welcoming what is foreign has challenged me, changed me, and blessed me. And yes―I would do this again, and I hope to.

AL: Why did you decide to make it bilingual? Or will all the books in the Alice James translation series be bilingual?

RGH: To publish the book as a parallel text was Alice James’ decision to make, and I remain grateful to them for it. I mean, can you imagine? It must double the cost of producing the book. Still, AJB is a press that understands literary translation as a necessary art, one that we are poised, now more than ever, to practice and benefit from. They are wonderful.

As I think I’ve said, I have a lot of faith in the word ‘version’ to describe a literary translation. Meaning, this is my version of Amal’s book. My intention was to produce an English elegy that would sing with a power equal to Amal’s Arabic elegy. One that would create the opportunity for sharing the grieving process. This was particularly important to me because of our subject matter―war, this war. We have quite a lot to sort out now, all of us. But English has different needs than Arabic. So, you know. I made my decisions. For whatever they’re worth, I stand by them. Some of these poems already exist in other versions, and I’m sure there will be still more versions and other translators of her other books. I hope so. She’s a special poet writing during an auspicious time for her community. Incidentally, I also hope that we are now at the beginning of a great opening between Arabic poetry and English poetry, much in the way we’ve seen between English and Russian and English and Spanish in years past.

By publishing this version as a parallel text, it welcomes readers who have access to both languages into an ever unfolding experience. I know for me, in translating it, I was often amazed at how the collection opened out into new and further meanings as it traveled between Arabic and English. That AJB published a parallel text provides the original poems their opportunity to stand that test of travel, and hopefully, to invite others to make their own versions. For this particular collection, I love how the Arabic and English poems seem to stand side-by-side, as if in solidarity. ‘The opposite of war.’ Exactly.

Rebecca Gayle Howell’s poems and translations appear in such publications as Ninth Letter, 32 Poems, Ecotone, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Poetry Daily. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center and the Jules Chametzky Prize in Literary Translation from the Massachusetts Review. Her translation of Amal al-Jubouri’s ‘Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation‘ was chosen to inaugurate the Alice James Books Translation Series in 2011.

The title of Bensalem Himmich’s 2008 novel, “Haza al-Andalusi!” (“This Andalusian!”), is as subdued in Arabic as it is attention-grabbing in English. In translation, it becomes “A Muslim Suicide,” a title that sprawls across the book’s cover in bright block letters.

But this new title, translator Roger Allen explains, is not a betrayal of the author’s intentions. In fact, it hews very closely to the author’s original wishes. According to Allen’s afterword, Himmich had wanted to call the book “Al-Intihar bi-Jiwar al-Ka’aba” (“Suicide Beside the Ka’aba”) for the way his protagonist reportedly died in AD 1269.

Himmich isn’t sure that his main character was a suicide. “A Muslim Suicide,” like Himmich’s celebrated “The Polymath,” is a carefully crafted historical novel that takes a philosopher as its hero. “A Muslim Suicide” follows 13th-century Sufi philosopher Ibn Sab’in as he struggles to maintain his independence from authorities. Ibn Sab’in is forced first out of Spain, and then Morocco, and is finally killed — or commits suicide — in Mecca.

“A Muslim Suicide,” which was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2009, doesn’t offer a realistic portrait of Ibn Sab’in’s peculiarities, loves and companions. As in previous novels, Himmich diverges sharply from European literary and artistic traditions that value giving the impression of three-dimensional reality.

Certainly, contemporary artists are aware of the limits of “realism,” both in the visual arts and in literature. But the European novel tradition nonetheless still creates the expectation that a book will present the “real” and “individual” flaws of its characters. Indeed, beginner novelists are told to make their characters “round,” or to give them the appearance of dimensionality.

Himmich’s novel doesn’t do this. We don’t learn much about the individual natures of his characters, and none of his characters could be called “round.” They are far more like the human figures in Islamic art than the “realistic” images of European portraiture.

The figures in “A Muslim Suicide” are thus not to be enjoyed because we relate to the woes of this 13th-century sage and his companions. It’s true that we can see similarities between the rulers and revolutionaries in Himmich’s book and rulers and revolutionaries today. But Himmich’s book is mostly to be enjoyed for the wonderful florescence of beautiful ideas and details. Go on; keep reading. 

Caption and image are The Economist's fault, not mine.

A (satiric) collage*

What do you know about how people live in Cairo or Beirut or Riyadh?

The Middle East has a bad reputation when it comes to books; nowhere else do so few people read them. Statistics show that most Arabs do not read more than six minutes per year and children do not visit libraries or book clubs.

Compounding this is the dearth of translated works, which limits the extent to which the global conversation seeps into the Arab world, hindering intellectual curiosity, access to knowledge and development. In fact, it found that in the past 1,000 years only about 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic – equivalent to the number of books translated in Spain each year.

There are still plenty of pious women around who wear a veil or headscarf.

But what about literature? There will be good books and not so good ones, just as with American fiction. But the great novel of the Arab spring has yet to be published.

It is no accident that Arab countries are mucking up democracy, and it is no accident that Japan and Germany have the No. 1 and No. 2 carmakers. It is too soon to say that the Arab Spring is gone, never to resurface. But the Arab Winter has clearly arrived.

Good art, like revolutionary change, takes time.

*Sentences (and headline) borrowed in their entirety from:

The Economist: Revolution between hard covers

The New Yorker: Found in Translation

The Peninsular Qatar: Survey finds poor reading habit among children 

The Media Line: Obstacles to Reading 

NY Daily News: Autumn Settles Over Arab Spring

Inside Story: On the edge of the Arab Spring 

And, more importantly:

Debunking the “myth of the six minutes”: In al-Akhbar

Debunking the myth that “in the past 1,000 years only X novels have been translated, which means Arabs are dumb”:

ArabLit: Translation is Not Dialogue

RAYA: Yasmina Jraissati 

Al Masry Al Youm: Richard Jacquemond 

When I requested a copy of the book, written by Iraqi poet Amal al-Jubouri and translated by poet Rebecca Gayle Howell & Husam Qaisi, all I knew was that Hagar was written by al-Jubouri post-2003, making it one of only a handful of such works in translation. Most works in English that address the Iraqi occupation were written by Anglo journalists, politicians, poets, and/or soldiers. Oh, and I also knew that Rebecca Gayle Howell is not fluent in Arabic, and that Qaisi did a more “literal” translation and Howell largely worked from there.

My first reaction to the collection’s bilinguality was: Fan-tastic!

Bilingual collections are fairly rare, outside of academic texts. The Emerging Arab Voices: Nadwa 1 collection, ed. Peter Clark, was bilingual. Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Rising of the Ashes, trans. Cullen Goldblatt, was in English and French. I think it takes a certain bravery to publish bilingually. Yes, go on, check my work!

Patty Paine, one of the editors of Gathering the Tide, said that she and the other editors of Gathering had considered making their collection bilingual. Ultimately, they decided it would be too long as such. As I read through Gathering and looked up a few of the originals (and in one case an alternate translation), I wished that it had been bilingual. I regretted its monolinguality.

Then, as I read through Hagar, I realized there are downsides to bilinguality.

A translation is a sort of an interpretation of the poem. The translator must decide — more or less – what the poem “means” (yes, yes, I oversimplify) before she can render it in another language. She must weigh different possible connotations of a word or phrase, the other words and phrases they touch, the sound and feel of them, and ultimately she must make decisions.

When I read through Hagar the first time, I couldn’t stick to the English. I’d go back and weigh this phrase against that phrase, this placement on the page vs. that. Unlike Stephanie Fauver, I don’t think of translations as placeholders, as inadequate representations of an original. I consider them works of art in their own right. Rebecca Gayle Howell is a poet; she has made aesthetic decisions (as against repetition, for one); these poems have her fingerprints, and Qaisi’s, as well as al-Jabouri’s.

But instead of taking in the translations whole cloth, as a singular experience, I was hopping here and there, wondering what I would’ve done, wondering — if the poet “approved” the translation — if that means this view is “right”. An interesting experience, but, next read, I’ll have to block off one language.

Perhaps a better bilingual experience would come by presenting the whole collection together in one language, and this facing the whole collection together in the other.

This presentation and debate came on the heels of the release of a report, by Literature Across Frontiers’ Alexandra Buchler and translator/scholar Alice Guthrie, about Arabic-English translation in the UK from 1990-2010. (You can download a copy of the report here.) The report examines trends in Arabic-English  translation and features interviews with a number of professional translators.

The UK presentation and debate, set for Feb 2, will include a presentation by Guthrie and Buchler, as it did in Cairo. But it will also be followed by a panel debate and Q&A that will be chaired by translators Marilyn Booth (whose latest work is a translation of As Though She Were Sleeping, by Elias Khoury) and Peter Clark (who has recently worked with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and edited the first Nadwa collection). 

The UK debate, I imagine, will be a bit livelier than the one we had in Cairo. And perhaps with more pointed questions and disagreements. That is: We were far too dull and congenial. This (should) be more fun.

If you’re interested in attending, the presentation and debate will be held at the Free Word Centre in London, at 60 Farringdon Road. It’s set to start at 6:30 p.m., and refreshments will be served.  More details on the LAF calendar.

About September’s debate:

Should Egypt pay to promote its authors abroad?

A few of the issues raised in the report:

Should Arabic-English Translators Be Native Speakers of Arabic? Of English?

Which Books ‘Should’ Be Translated from Arabic to English?

Arab Novels: Not as Good as the Russians, Latin Americans?

‘But We Don’t Know Who Else to Ask!’: Lit Festivals & Arab Writers

‘Go and Look Properly’ for the Best of Arabic Fiction

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, who was runner-up for the Banipal Prize in 2010 for his translation of Tarek Eltayeb’s Cities Without Palms, will translate the book. Abu-Zeid said, in an email, “I’m excited to have a press with broader distribution, and also because this is the first time I’ve ever selected the novel/author I wanted to translate, approached the press with it, and had them accept.”

Abu-Zeid has had his eye on Jaber for a while. In a 2009 feature on Quarterly Conversation called “Translate This Book!“, Abu-Zeid had said, “The single Arab author I believe to be the most in need of translation is the Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber, born in 1972. He has published a host of novels in Arabic, several of which have been translated into French, yet none of which have been translated into English. He captures the life and spirit of the city of Beirut in unforgettable ways.”

Now Abu-Zeid will have his chance to bring Jaber’s work into English. Although Jaber’s work has appeared in excerpts — in the Beirut39 collection and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) “book of excerpts” — no full-length translation has yet been published. And, even though he is not yet 40, Jaber has written seventeen novels, including two that have been IPAF shortlisted (2010 for Amreeka and 2012 for The Druze of Belgrade).

Abu-Zeid described the novel he’s begun to translate in an email:

…The Mehlis Report revolves around the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, and charts the psychological effects of the series of explosions that rocked Beirut at this time. As a very palpable tension builds, the novel’s first protagonist, Saman Yarid, wanders through the city, ruminating on its past and the massive reconstruction projects undertaken largely by Hariri’s own company, Solidere. Yet this “surface” narrative is accompanied by a more fantastical one, as the voices of the dead quite literally begin to take over the text. A second Beirut emerges here, the Beirut of the dead that exists in the bowel’s of this turbulent city, and slowly begins to impose itself on the first. The detailed topographies of Beirut that emerge are one of the most remarkable aspects of this novel – the reader is left with the impression of having truly lived this place and this moment in time. Yet Jaber’s novel is also ultimately about people’s impossible needs for answers, for narratives that would explain all those unfathomable aspects of our lives and deaths. This desire is symbolized most directly by the impossible hopes Saman pins on Detlev Mehlis, the German judge appointed by the UN to investigate Hariri’s assassination.

And yes, ¡Viva la Revolución!

The entrance looked just like old times: Only the banner is different. Tickets are to the right, still just 1LE.

The area immediately inside looked very much like 2010.

Dar al Shorouk still has their prime spot right near the main entrance. (At the moment, it seems to be the only entrance.) In 2010, I was fighting for air and afraid my children might be crushed. This year, crowds were decent-sized near the entrance but not overwhelming by any stretch.

Searching for Hall 3. The boy in the orange sweater was not pleased by the fresh rubble. Father: "Oh, give me your hand, ya basha."

AUC Press has a much-reduced presence way back in Cairo-fairgrounds Siberia this year. Presumably, after the mysterious disappearance of $10,000 worth of shelving and such, they decided not to re-invest. Here, a small revolution display.

Our friends at Dar al Balsam were even deeper in Siberia, particularly since the Salah Salem entrance was closed. "It's very peaceful," publisher Balsam Saad said, a bit chagrined. She surmised that people were staying away from the fair until after January 25 (Part II) shook out.

Nope, no shortage of religious texts. Although plenty of secular ones, too.

I didn't go into the Saudia Arabian...castle. I did see lots of kids waving paper flags with the KSA flag on one side and the Egyptian on the other. Saw a few kids with flags that were green, orange, and white (Ireland?). No Tunisian flags that I saw (Tunisia is the guest of honor).

The Dar el-Ain booth seemed pretty quiet as well. Copies of Ezzedine Choukri Fishere's "Embrace at the Brooklyn Bridge" prominently displayed.

Hall 1 seemed to be for religious publishers.

The Azbekia Hall! Basically, the paper market excerpted and relocated.

Comics.

There was more foot traffic here than elsewhere. And, it seemed, a bit more buying.

Still, the Azbakia Hall wasn't doing great business. No one was, for instance, elbowing anyone out of the way. No one was even in my line of sight as I scanned titles.

If you head all the way to the back, you'll see this revolutionary mural. It's a little broken back here.

Things seemed a bit more broken than in the past. Or perhaps, with fewer people around, I had more opportunity to look at the grounds. More revolutionary muraling.

There was a children's art area hidden way in the back.

An organizer explained to me that on display here was the results of a competition called "Egypt in the Eyes of Children of the World."

The project was juried in 2010 (and perhaps in storage last year), thus held under the Suzanne Mubarak regime. One imagines that children's impressions of Egypt have globally changed since then.

Contrary to popular belief, there is an information booth. And while there are no maps (or schedules), the woman in the booth was supremely nice. (Although yes, she sent me off in the wrong direction.)

The food area smelled lovely. And lots of seats available this year.

Don't let it be said that government-owned Al Ahram didn't get a nice, fancy-looking tent.

The green spaces were none too crowded: Plenty of space for football!

Brueghel's Tower of Babel

In reading through the rich “Arabic double issue” of the journal Metamorphoses, guest-edited by Mohamed el-Sawi and Hassan & Nahla Khalil, I came across a re-translation of Dhu al-Nun Ayyub’s “A Pillar in the Tower of Babel” by Stephanie Fauver.

Fauver’s comments on the translation precede the story, and they spurred me to read her work with particular attention. This was because of two passages. First, Fauver asserts that a translation that “gives preference to the source language over the target language, and perhaps at the expense of a smooth reading experience, allows for peculiarities of the source to appear as stumbling blocks to casual reading and as pointers to the fact that a translation must be considered a place-holder, always pointing to the need to engage the original.”

And later: “A translation, which essentially can never fully substitute for the original but rather serves as a placeholder for it, always merits revisiting and reconsidering.”

Overall, the translation-as-placeholder seems a rather mechanistic view of the translator’s job, with none of the joy of creating a new object of beauty. Indeed, Fauver almost seems to suggest that a translator should go out of her way to be un-beautiful, that Khaled Mattawa has done us a disservice by rendering Adonis’s poems in such gorgeous English, and that the compliment “it was so lovely that it didn’t seem translated!” isn’t a compliment at all.

Surely I agree that translations always (or, well, often) merit revisiting and reconsidering. A fresh translation might bring out fresh beauties, fresh ideas, fresh felicities. Still, I would hate to have a new translation just for the purpose of throwing up more stumbling blocks and reminding the reader (again) that this is not the original.

Now, if Fauver’s goal was to make an un-smooth translation of Ayyub’s work, I don’t see that she succeeded: “A Pillar in the Tower of Babel” remains an enjoyable, satiric read. And if there are some sentences that are more difficult to parse, I am not sure how — as she suggests — this will “clue the reader in to the flavor of the source language text.” If the Arabic text was smoothly satiric for an Arab reader, shouldn’t the translator try to replicate this flavor?

I do think some of her fresh language choices work — it grounds the work nicely to have more specific religious terminology — but I’m afraid that thinking of one’s translation as a “placeholder” is probably not the impetus a working translator needs to spur her to a great, visionary translation.

The “Middle East / North African” literature club is an active part of the global GoodReads community with some 400 members. I asked one of the founders & leaders of the group, who calls herself “Nile Daughter” online, a few questions about this online book group.

ArabLit: What was the motivation to start this group? Who were you hoping would join?

Nile Daughter: First of all, I did not create the group, it was there in Goodreads for two years before I joined it. It was started by an American in order to gather reads from “the Middle East – North Africa ” (MENA) by native authors, and that was the definition of the group from the beginning. She left the forum, and when I joined there were about 60 members (multiple nationalities). There were no activities at all except for exchanging of some book recommendations.

I thought that was a good sign; I mean, these are people who do not belong to our region who are interested in reading our literature, trying to hear us and to understand us. I contacted the administration of the forum asking for a new moderator of the group and they assigned me. So with the cooperation of my friends that I appreciate much, we created a moderation team and moved on. We are three moderators “NG, Marieke, and I”: two Egyptians and one American. Now the group is trying to cover Arabic literature, also Turkish and Iranian, we even reached central Asia zone partially in our way.

ArabLit: What sort of reader(s) would you want to join the group? What do you think participants have gotten out of the group?

ND: We have just started the second year running this group and we have four hundred members now. We have Americans , Europeans, and Arabs, and that is the formula we hoped for. It is a group where members with different cultural backgrounds can read, discuss, and interact. After several reads, it was amazing how many non-native members indicated not only that they did not know much about us (socially, culturally or politically) , but that most of what they already knew was biased or superficial to some point. Besides they also have enjoyed our literature, for example: I Saw Ramallah affected a lot of readers, The Yacoubian Building was a shock, and Cities of Salt had the highest following rates in the group.

We are hoping that more diversified members will interact in the group and talk. Two-sided discussions (sometimes opposite ones) proved to be very productive, and the group created a positive communication area which is rare to locate in general—just to find different individuals exchanging points of view while reading the Middle East. That is the main benefit our participants get in our group.

ArabLit: Why an online reading group vs. one that’s in person?

ND: We never discussed how it would be as “in person group.” We could have never reached this number of various members or being internationally featured group if it was not online.

We have open threads for ever where members can join and post their comments at any time, we have official reads, corners for individual reads, and corners for music, movies and Oriental cuisines. We tried so much to achieve high level of flexibility and diversity that I wouldn’t imagine it possible in real life.

ArabLit: Has it been different from your expectations? In what way?

ND: Yes, It was different and there are several items that surprised me :

- I never expected the group would be that active: We are covering on average three books every 2 months, books are not always easy to find; yet members choose them through polls and do their best to find them or at least follow the discussions.

- At the first year, we were covering the region geographically, moving from a zone to anther exploring it. This year we had a different project: a historical tour. When Marieke suggested it, I was afraid members would not be interested as before, yet members followed, it seemed interesting to them to read history from the other side point of view and explore our heritage .

- I never expected that finding various options of Arabic books in several fields (mainly history) in English versions would be that difficult, that is why we had to read some books by non-native authors, which was tricky or a difficult task keeping in mind that our first read in the group was Orientalism by Edward Said.

ArabLit: Have you had any interaction with the authors of books you’ve read? Would you want to?

ND: Unfortunately no! because the authors of the books we read are not members in “Goodreads” and we have not tried to reach them by other methods, it was not an issue to think of at the beginning, we were only hoping that readers will increase in number and that discussions become richer among them . Now I think this would be a new addition to the group. But it is important to note that one of our policies is not to turn the group into a promotional device .

Some native authors already joined the group, also we have member authors who are not native , some of them lived in the region or just write about it from study or imagination – which is not the target of the group. Yet we made an exception that we read – and discussed with a non native author – an American memoir Fast Times in Palestine by Pamela J. Olson because it was requested by members after her interactions during “Arabic-Israeli conflict ” discussions.