The Latest

This short piece appeared, in a slightly different form, in the SONG issue of ArabLit Quarterly in the Spring of 2021.

Ibrahim al-Koni’s “The Desert Also Keened” was the winner of the 2023 ArabLit Story Prize in Dima El Mouallem’s translation. 

Libyan writer Najwa Binshatwan’s latest novel, شجرة الصابون (Tree of Soap, Dar Arab 2026) unfolds with her signature sarcastic-surrealism. In this world, the State encourages citizens to express themselves, ensures their participation, and provides them everything necessary to practice democracy. Nothing is forced, exactly; it’s just that absence is unwelcome and silence requires explanation.

“sometimes my soul is wild, / an egret flying far / beyond the ocean’s edge, // and sometimes I curl up, / tender as an anemone when touched, / as salty and as damp.”

“It is the free bird.”

“Alone / on a balcony with no air / I suffocate, grow intoxicated / Coffee cups multiply / stained with lipstick, overflowing with disappointment / taking me to a fresh bout of insomnia / and thoughts, buried before they could ever see the light.”

Today, Kawthar al-Jahmi talks about her writing and reading journeys, the role of literary prizes, submitting her novel to the publisher a day before giving birth, and developing a writing practice while working and raising children.

This month, Hoopoe Fiction (an imprint of AUC Press) publishes Charles Akl’s debut novel Red Like Orange, which won a 2023 Sawiris Cultural Award. Now, three years later, Sarah Enany’s translation of this novel is available to a new readership.

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Sarah Enany talk about some of the particulars about translating for the stage and, particularly, for song.

“The divide among poets has added a diaspora to the spatial diaspora, which scattered Syrians around the world.”

Your love has taught me… how to be sad.
And I have needed, for ages
A woman to make me sad
A woman in whose arms I could weep
Like a sparrow,