In the City of Flies
Yahya Lababidi’s ‘If You Cannot Say Genocide’
Forthcoming November 2026: Dalia Taha and Sonallah Ibrahim
Fiction
In the City of Flies
Published by Dar al-Shorouk in January 2026, Ahmed ʿAbd al-Manʿam Ramadan’s novel “في مدينة الذباب” (In the City of Flies) presents a dystopian vision of a future city overwhelmed by accumulating rubbish and swarms of flies.
‘A Taste of Bitter Tea’, by Mohammed Alnaas
The title here is borrowed from the French edition, Un goût de thé amer, which was translated by Sarah Rolfo, while the Arabic original is titled العراك في جهنم. This satirical novella is set in a Libyan village called Hell and is a retelling of events our narrator claims took place there in the 1990s.
Alis al-Bustani’s ‘Sa’iba’ and the Arab Nahda
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.
Poetry
Mahmoud Darwish: ‘The End of Things’
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.”
Interviews
On BULAQ: Reflections on Twenty Years
This episode of the BULAQ podcast asks: What has changed in the last twenty years in Arabic literature, publishing and translation? What has not?
In Conversation with Salim Barakat
“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.”
‘Writing Is Rediscovering the Tangible’
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.”
In Focus
From the archives
For Valentine’s Day: The Many Loves of Nizar Qabbani
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,
The Second Erasure: How Do We Speak of (and with) Political Prisoners?
How do we speak of political prisoners while they are still inside, and how do we speak with them once they’re out? This is not a question about representation, but rather about production; about what we manufacture when we speak or write about political prisoners.
Another Road for Syrian Poetry
“The divide among poets has added a diaspora to the spatial diaspora, which scattered Syrians around the world.”