The Latest

A Victorian gothic novel and an Ottoman-Arabic context – could such a peculiar combination be the ultimate manifestation of early Nahda production? Sa’iba, Alis al-Bustani’s first and only novel, is a product of Arab modernity, born from the introduction of European literature to the Arab intellectual during the renaissance of the nineteenth century, a context very familiar to the author.

This short fiction comes from Ansam Abu Sitta’s collection Bench of the Reserves.

“The Mouse That Cheated Death” is a short story by Qatari writer Huda Al Naemi from her collection “Kaleela and Huda.”

“So we open our mouths, / not to scream, / but to release the silence.”

There are events around the world this September 25-27 celebrating the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish, after the Arab World Institute and Centre Pompidou declared September 25 to be “Mahmoud Darwish Poetry Day.”

“I’m sitting alone in my room / my clothes scattered around me”

“Barakat is forthright, crude, and uncensored in his writings, and he was the same in his responses to my questions. He paints a prophetic picture, neither for himself nor for anyone else.”

Born in the mid-1980s, Ahmed Alhokail is among the most distinctive Saudi writers of his generation. In this exchange, he talks about placing the ordinary at the center of the story, classical Arabic narratives as a living model, Najdi oral storytelling and the uncanny, and the “global reader.”

“Music is one of the arts most connected to place, as it is a physical vibration in a space.”

“My book really is an examination of how he participated in the coup ,and how he believed fundamentally that the Free Officers were going to install democracy, and—once he realized that they were actually installing military dictatorship—the way he dissented, in the editorials and in person, the way that he was jailed, and the way he turned to fiction to express his dissent directly to Nasser.”