The Latest

On Translation, Love, and Israeli Prison

On Translation, Love, and Israeli Prison

Interviews /
Addie Leak talks with Tugrul Mende about the translation process, literary awards, and two very different translations processes: translating one book through a riot of multilingual voicenotes and another by an author who was inaccessible, in an Israeli prison ...

Dima Wannous’s ‘Damascus: A Tomb and a Prison’

Dima Wannous's 'Damascus: A Tomb and a Prison'
Nonfiction /
"We passed a vast area near my house in Mazzeh, its surface covered with unfinished cement buildings. The driver told me it was a residential and commercial development owned by Asma al-Assad. The next day, one torture survivor told me the purpose of the project was to hide corpses[.]" ...

Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces 2026 Winners

Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces 2026 Winners
News /
Organizers at the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) today announced their 2026 winners across ten categories ...

Fiction

Classic Short Fiction: ‘The Funeral of the Machine’

Classic Short Fiction: 'The Funeral of the Machine'

“So you are still determined to sell the three mules?”

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Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s ‘The Wall’

Ahmed Khaled Tawfik's 'The Wall'

“The Wall,” by the massively popular Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (1962-2008) is from his collection “Now I Understand.”

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From Mohamed Abd ElGawad’s ‘A Report on the Pussycat’

From Mohamed Abd ElGawad's 'A Report on the Pussycat'

“It was ridiculous, the way the battle of tuk-tuks and microbuses began.”

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Poetry

New Poetry in Translation: ‘Obituaries’

New Poetry in Translation: 'Obituaries'

“The city wakes up in obituaries.”

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Rasha Omran: ‘I Want to Smile’

Rasha Omran: 'I Want to Smile'

“I want to step out on my balcony and hang my laughter out on the clothesline, so that passersby can catch hold of it, scale the wall to the fourth floor, and laugh with me.”

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New Poetry in Translation: ‘Who Am I?’

New Poetry in Translation: 'Who Am I?'

“Who am I? / I am not myself.”

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Interviews

On Translation, Love, and Israeli Prison

On Translation, Love, and Israeli Prison

Addie Leak talks with Tugrul Mende about the translation process, literary awards, and two very different translations processes: translating one book through a riot of multilingual voicenotes and another by an author who was inaccessible, in an Israeli prison.

...

Moneera Al-Ghadeer Answers: ‘Why Saudi Poetry?’

Moneera Al-Ghadeer Answers: 'Why Saudi Poetry?'

Tracing the Ether Contemporary Poetry from Saudi Arabia, ed. Moneera Al-Ghadeer, came out late last year from Syracuse University Press. The anthology brings together 26 poets responding to — and writing a new future for — a rapidly changing Saudi Arabia. Moneera answered a few questions about the collection.

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On the Field of Arabic Studies

On the Field of Arabic Studies

Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies.

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In Focus

From Gaza
Between Two Arabic Translators with Yasmeen Hanoosh
2024 Flash Fiction Finalists

From the archives

Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship

Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship

“In Ways of the Lord, Christians are mistaken for being Jews and are accused of spying for Israel, which demonstrates the lack of recognition of Copts and their conflation with other minorities.”

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Safia Ketou: The First Algerian Sci-fi Novelist of Post-independence Algeria

Safia Ketou: The First Algerian Sci-fi Novelist of Post-independence Algeria
For Women in Translation Month, our Algeria editor writes about one of her favorite discoveries, whose La Planète Mauve et Autres Nouvelles should ...

The Story of a Poem: Refaat Alareer’s ‘If I Must Die’

The Story of a Poem: Refaat Alareer's 'If I Must Die'
By Salih J Altoma  “And in Gaza and the West Bank, a new generation of poets persists. The most famous, ...