Hanan Jasim-Khammas: On Writing the Body in Iraqi Literature After 2003
By Olivia Snaije Iraqi academic Hanan Jasim-Khammas was just 19 in 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse came to light. Later, as a student of comparative literature, she became fascinated by body and gender studies, which led her back to 2004, to examining the terrible and powerful representation of bodies in the Abu Ghraib scandal. “I couldn’t articulate how I felt about Abu Ghraib, how those images influenced me and other Iraqis. Up to this point, no one had asked the question of what the impact had been on the Iraqi psyche. What is a body, how is it formed in this society, and why this attack on the body during the military operations?” Jasim-Khammas ending up focusing her ...
Looking for Ghosts: On Said Khatibi’s ‘End of the Sahara’
You can also read an excerpt of the novel in Alex Elinson's translation and listen to an episode of the BULAQ podcast that features novelist Said Khatibi, talking about this book. By M Lynx Qualey Said Khatibi was three years old in the autumn of 1988, when the events in his latest novel take place. His literary murder mystery, The End of the Sahara, is mostly set in the central Algerian city of Bou Saada, where he was raised, in the days leading up to the country’s deadly October riots. It’s easy to imagine a young Khatibi toddling around the novel’s Trabando Market, holding onto his mother’s hand as he gazes curiously at the characters in his novel. Perhaps he ...
Why Should We Translate the Novels of Ahmed Khaled Tawfik?
By Melissa Krawczyk Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (أحمد خالد توفيق) was a prolific, celebrated, and beloved Egyptian author who wrote in both Egyptian and Classical Arabic. A trailblazing contemporary author of the Arabic horror, fantasy, science fiction, and medical thriller genres, Tawfik was known for his atypical heroes—ordinary people rather than the polished heroes of Arabic folk literary tradition. He aimed to turn young people into avid readers and enjoyed imbuing his works with scientific and medical knowledge, which should come as no surprise: Dr. Tawfik was a Professor of Tropical Diseases at Tanta University throughout his writing career. Yet despite having published hundreds of popular works—including three expansive series of pocket novels aimed at young adults (Paranormal, Safari, and Fantazia)—for ...
Reading Palestinian Children’s Literature, Recommending Picture Books
Reviews by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Ekram Abdelgawad, and Elisabet Risberg Translations from the Swedish by Shaun Whiteside, Faye Wikner, and Eva Apelqvist Palestinian picture books -- like picture books in most languages -- is about many things: asking questions, making discoveries, encouraging creativity, sparking joy and laughter, and helping children find a place for themselves in the world. Some of the picture books reviewed below reflect on life in Palestine. Some are just a delight, like Palestinian-Jordanian writer Taghreed Najjar's Watermelon Madness, illustrated by Maya Fidawi and published in English by Crackboom! Books. We have tried to include picture books that are about life in Palestine and books that are just by Palestinian authors; picture books available in Arabic and available in ...
Palestinian Prison Memoir Becomes Unlikely Topic at 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair
By Olivia Snaije This is a story about many stories. It begins with the Nakba, occupation, and imprisonment, but it’s also about courageous publishers and an upcoming memoir, The Tale of a Wall, translated from Arabic by Luke Leafgren -- a book that became an unlikely topic of discussion at last week's Frankfurt Book Fair. It is a “metaphysical and introspective voyage about being Palestinian,” says Judith Gurewich of Other Press, Nasser Abu Srour’s publisher in the US. Nasser Abu Srour’s family is originally from Bayt Nattif, northwest of Hebron, now in Israel, but their home and village were destroyed during the Nakba, after which they found themselves living in Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank ...
Recovering “Moroccan Other-Archives”: Reading Literature as a Space for Memory-Making
By Leonie Rau In his new monograph Moroccan Other-Archives. History and Citizenship After State Violence, Brahim El Guabli explores the possibilities of recovering historical narratives in the absence of a formalized archive by looking to the literary and cultural production of a society faced with multiple losses. Last month, Hoopoe Fiction released Alexander E. Elinson’s translation of Khadija Marouazi’s 2000 novel History of Ash, which is narrated in turns by two fictional political prisoners held during Morocco’s so-called “Years of Lead.” The period, which stretched between the 1970s and 1980s, was characterized by heavy state repression. Marouazi’s novel forms part of what Moroccan scholar Brahim El Guabli terms an “other-archive”: “neither academic history nor firsthand memory, nor […] conventional archives,” ...
‘They Fell Like Stars from the Sky’: Sheikha Helawy’s ‘Certain Understanding of Happiness’
By M Lynx Qualey ........They Fell Like Stars from the Sky & Other Stories ........by Sheikha Helawy, translated by Nancy Roberts ........Neem Tree Press, September 2023. Their bodies might be displaced, torn away from homes and villages. Yet the memories of women and girls in Sheikha Helawy’s short-story collection They Fell Like Stars from the Sky remain, haunting the spaces where they once lived. Helawy—an acclaimed short-story writer who won the Almultaqa Prize for her 2018 collection Order C345—knows the experience of being violently uprooted. Indeed, this book, translated by Nancy Roberts, is dedicated to “the contrary little girl I left behind under the oak tree in the village of Dhail El E’rj”—a village that was obliterated in the 1990s. The ...
‘The Common’ Issue 25 Launches Today with Kuwait Special Section
The Amherst, USA-based literary magazine The Common today launches its 25th issue, which features a special section of short stories and art from Kuwait ...
Publication Day for ‘Shalash the Iraqi’
It's publication day for Shalash the Iraqi's series of posts -- essays, short stories, satiric monologues, magical-realist sketches -- translated to English by Luke Leafgren nearly twenty years after their first appearance online ...
Kanafani and Shibli: Different Stagings of Palestine, Different Stagings of Death
In an essay that originally appeared in Turkish, novelist Süreyyya Evren explores the deaths in works by Ghassan Kanafani and Adania Shibli ...
