Encouraged by translator/scholar/writer Elliott Colla—who had an interesting short essay about Ibrahim al-Koni in yesterday’s Ahram Online—I thought we’d make this an al-Koni week. Although not an “Arab” writer, al-Koni is one of the giants of contemporary Arabic literature, and has a unique and world-encompassing literary vision.
Leading Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni yesterday received the 100,000LE “Arabic Novel Award” at the closing ceremony of the Cairo Novel Conference.
At the end of this month, a School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)-organized translation conference will kick off in London with a discussion of Arabic-English “translation and the post-modern.”
To celebrate (and promote, one would think) their new Rafik Schami release, The Calligrapher’s Secret, Interlink has sent out downloads of Schami’s essay on Arabic calligraphy, “What I Create Will Outlast Time: The Story of the Beauty of Arabic Script.” The essay—like Schami’s other works—is translated by the very-award-winning Anthea Bell.
I often—perhaps too often—think about translation. Lately, I’ve been mulling the penchant of book reviewers to sigh about any text not originally in English (that they didn’t entirely love): Well, who knows, this was probably the fault of that translator. (The translator is invisible, the reviewer doesn’t know much about him/her, but—anyway—it was probably that person’s fault.)
If you want your own Ahmad Yamani—in print, in English—you can of course pick the Beirut 39 collection (which features a few of his early works), or head back to issue No. 32 of Banipal. Or you can hop around… Read More ›
Shakir Mustafa Mustafa is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures at Boston University; he is also the editor and translator of the excellent Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. Mustafa chose: Tayeb Salih, Season… Read More ›
