BULAQ: Recent Episodes
Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey
BULAQ is a podcast about contemporary writing from and about the Middle East and North Africa. We talk about books written in Aleppo, Cairo, Marrakech and beyond. We look at the Arab region through the lens of literature, and we look at literature -- what it does, why it matters, how it relates to society and history and politics -- from the point of view of this part of the world. BULAQ is co-produced by ArabLit and The Arabist and is hosted by Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey.
"I chose to be a Trojan poet. I'm resolutely in the camp of the losers. The losers who are deprived of the right to leave a trace of their defeat and deprived of the right of proclaiming it. I'm inclined to speak of defeat, but there is no question of surrender." So said Mahmoud Darwish, as we learned from a new collection of poetry with the late, great Palestinian poet. We also talk about protests in Lebanon and freedom of the press in Egypt.
A tribute to Jordanian poet, activist, novelist, travel writer, and editor Amjad Nasser (1955-2019), who died at the end of October. In the second, we talked about the political space occupied by Moroccan-French writers Tahar Ben Jelloun and Leïla Slimani, and how radical their calls for personal freedom really are.
We discuss two novels set in Iraq -- one featuring a despondent policeman, and one featuring a determined grandma and her donkey. Also, how John Updike once dismissed the great Saudi writer Abdelrahman Mounif as "insufficiently Westernized" to write a novel.
We talk about Palestinian literary festivals (one old and one new); an author who lost a prize for supporting BDS; and a novel that asks: What would happen if all the Palestinians disappeared?
Ursula Lindsey and MLQ are back for another season of Bulaq. In this episode they discuss Egypt, exiles, protests and how hard it is to translate humor.
On less-than-fun translation work, the Shubbak literary festival, and plans for the future
We have novelist Ruqya Izzidien as our guest on this episode, to discuss her debut novel The Watermelon Boys, her blog Muslim Impossible and the need for more narratives in English that accurately reflect Arab and Muslim voices and history. We also talk about George Orwell’s 1939 essay “Marrakech.”
We spend most of today’s episode talking about a forthcoming collection of essays by female journalists from the region. Guilt, anger, recklessness, determination. There are many different and movingly honest takes on reporting while Arab and female.
This week we talk about how MLQ’s latest passion project, the Arab Lit Quarterly, and the ups and downs of making a living (sort of) writing about books.
MLQ is back from Abu Dhabi, and we talk about the recently awarded International Prize for Arabic Fiction — and an unfortunate controversy this year, involving leaks, no-shows, and calls for prosecution — and the book fair. We also share excerpts from the winning book and from several of the short-listed ones.
We talk about the career of the best-selling Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany – who like many other artists is on the outs with the country’s military regime now. Also, about Shakespeare productions and censorship in Gulf countries; and book reviews in the age of online algorithms and the culture of positivity.
In this episode we rave about an Omani novel – a multi-generational saga that is “anti-romantic and anti-nationalistic.” We also discuss a dark family road trip through Syria, and works from Lebanon and Morocco. And we delve into the larger question of how much a writer’s identity and experience gives him or her the right, or the ability, to tell certain stories.
We spend most of this episode discussing the work and life of the Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous, and how strongly it relates to repression, resistance and art in the Arab region today.
What should you recommend to someone who is interested in exploring Arabic literature? We tackle this big question this week; we also talk about the authors short-listed on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and about North African literature in English translation.
We’re back! And ready to talk about two poets who have moved into prose: the Egyptian Iman Mersal and the Palestinian Mazen Maarouf, who have written books that explore the bonds between children and parents, among other things. We also talk about the Cairo book fair’s recent make-over, and about the vibrant but struggling cultural scene in Casablanca.
Ursula and MLQ look back at notable books from 2018 and at reads they are looking forward to catching up on over the holiday break.
This episode is almost entirely dedicated to the work of the Moroccan film-maker, novelist, artist, and poet Ahmed Bouanani – much of which has yet to be released, and much of which was censored or destroyed in his own life.
We overcame communication blocks and interrupting children to speak to the poet Zeina Hashem Beck about how she’s given herself permission to write poems that move between English and Arabic. We also discuss James Montgomery’s heart-breaking essay on grief, memory, trauma and translating a 7th century Arabic poet famous for her elegies.
In this episode we talk about recent developments in Cairo, kids’ literature in Arabic, Naguib Mahfouz, and the launch of Marcia’s new project, the literary magazine ArabLit Quarterly .
This week we talk to an old Cairo friend, acclaimed Egyptian artist Ganzeer, about art, propaganda, publishing and how much damn work it is to put out a graphic novel.
We talk about looking down on dialect; passing literary theft off as “salvation”; the beginning of awards season; a book that is a fragmented portrait of Jerusalem; and our fellow podcasters in the region.
This was our back to school episode, informed by the scholarship of Erin Twohig and Ursula’s “Hard Lessons: North African Writers on Education” at al-Fanar. We particularly talked about Mohamed Nedali’s Grâce à Jean de la Fontaine, a satiric and scathing account of the life of a schoolteacher in Morocco, and also Radwa Ashour’s writing on education, in her The Journey (translated by Michelle Hartman) and her later Spectres (translated by Barbara Romaine).
The discussion also veered slightly to the interview and mixtape with Ma3azef magazine co-founder Ma’an Abu Taleb on Bidoun.
Ursula’s summer reading included Mustafa Khalifa’s devastating novel The Shell, based on his experiences in Syria’s Tadmor prison, in which he reclaims and re-inscribes humanity. It has been translated to English by Paul Starkey.
The death of V.S. Naipaul led to several interesting conversations about his work and legacy. Here is one, between Nikil Saval and Pankaj Mishra in n+1.
And here is a piece by Teju Cole from a few years back about meeting the writer.
Finally, Kuwaiti readers are pushing back against censorship -- you can follow the online part of the campaign at #ممنوع_في_الكويتand #صور_كتاب_ممنوع_في_مكتبتك. MA student Abrar Alshammari is writing up a longer essay on the current situation for Arablit, but for background, 'It's like they were selling heroin to schoolkids': censorship hits booksellers at Kuwait book fair at The Guardian and Leading Kuwaiti Writers Saud Alsanousi and Bothayna al-Essa on Pushing Back Against a Season of Censorship at ArabLit.
In our last episode before a summer hiatus, we discuss a graphic novel about the life and art of the stars of Arab music and cinema; Egyptian writer Radwa Ashour’s memoir of studying at university in the United States in the 1970s; and the Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani’s novel The Hospital, out in English (alongside a new poetry collection, The Shutters) after nearly falling into oblivion.
Karl Sharro spoke about Karl ReMarks’ new book, And then God Created the Middle East and Said ‘Let There Be Breaking News’ (and Analysis). The book is forthcoming July 9.
Boyd Tonkin’s The 100 Best Novels in Translation was released June 21. The two Arabic novels that made the list were Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, and Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, translated by William Maynard Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan. The translation was overseen by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, along with Martha Levin, and their notes on the manuscript can be found at the Lilly Library Manuscript Collections.
You can read the Amazon press release online about how the mega-corporation has (finally) launched some 12,000 Arabic ebooks into the Kindle system. You can find and purchase them on Amazon.com.
In which Ursula and Marcia discuss how much innocence American can claim when abroad, and the urge to write expatriate diaries in one’s twenties; they also talk about the new collection Marrakech Noir; and about the never-ending debate over Classical versus Colloquial Arabic.
Inspired by a fiery essay by an Egyptian professor, Ursula and MLQ discuss cosmopolitanism, nostalgia, and literary representations of the city of Alexandria. Marcia also talks about three new books – from Iraq, Southern Sudan and Lebanon/London. She loved two of them.
We discuss Marcia’s recent interviews with professors teaching Arabic literature in translation; an essay by Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine’s in which he picks apart “world literature” and foreign writers – such as himself – who act as “tour guides”; and a book that is an ambitious overview of modern art in the Arab world.
Ursula and Marcia talk about the novel Tales of Yusuf Tadros – about a Coptic Christian and aspiring artist living in the provinces -- and the playful, genre-bending Kayfa Ta (“How To”) series. They also discuss sexism in literature and whether we can do without the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In this episode, we talk about debates surrounding Western military intervention in Syria; about Arab American writer Randa Jarrar and her Twitter rant against the late Barbara Bush; and about whether there is any alternative to the term “Arab world.” Also Ursula has a squeaky chair.
We spend most of this episode talking about two books: the late Arwa Salih’s Stillborn, a memoir of and reckoning with her time as a Leftist student militant in Egypt in the 1970s; and Rabai al-Madhoun’s novel Fractured Destinies -- about lives constrained, conflicted and divided in Palestine.
In which Marcia talks about her difficulties being interviewed; we discuss genre (sci-fi, fantasy, and especially noir) writing in Arabic; and we question whether translation into English “empowers” women writers from the Arab region.
In which we discuss the validity and necessity of the negative review (or what we like to simply call critical engagement); how rare it is to find negative reviews these days; and the shift that has seen Western reviewers of Arabic literature move from one extreme to another. But is it more condescending to dismiss outright or to offer all-around encouragement?
Ursula and MLQ discuss a moving new book documenting the suffering and the resourcefulness of Yazidi women taken captive by Daesh, and the efforts to help them escape; and the perversely dull newspaper columns of the great Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz.
We discussed our recent readings. This includes some early foreign reporting on Morocco, which is both vivid and prejudiced; a moving account of the way Moroccan political prisoners clung to their memories and their words and refused to be fully "disappeared" during the country's decades of repression; and a collection of beautifully translate and unusual folktales, shared by Lebanese women with each other. We also discussed the Cairo Book Fair, whose official theme this year is "Soft Power…How?"
In this episode we discuss Moroccan literature about the country’s “years of lead” and its formidable and ruthless former king Hassan II; and about the relationship between humour, fear and power. We look at literary awards and what they are good for, and why Arablit has decided to create a new award. And we ask: how much contemporary Arabic literature is “dystopian”?
In this episode of BULAQ we highlight several new and forthcoming translations from Arabic to English. We also discuss the newly translated Concerto Al Quds by the renowned Syrian poet Adonis, as well as Adonis’ own status as an artist and public intellectual, and his stance on religion and revolution.
In this episode, we look back at 2017 about talk books published in the past year: notable books, favorite books, books we felt were overlooked, books we don't quite agree on, and books we can't wait to read. We also discuss how not to write about "discovering" Arabic and the Arab world.
President Trump just recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – a move that acknowledges only a single Israeli narrative. We discuss Palestinian writers and how they write about their relationships with Israelis; about living with trauma and danger; about coming of age under occupation. We also look at the emerging field of children’s and young adult literature in Arabic.
In which we discuss the fictional underworlds of Rabee Jabr and other Lebanese novelists; and explore Saudi poetry, from a new translation of a famous pre-Islamic collection to the satirical poems of “a grumpy old man” in the Najd in the 18th century. At this time when women are denouncing male abuses of power the world over, we look at two Moroccan female writers who are critical of their societies and who face the question of how their work is received and represented at home and abroad. Asma Lamrabet proposes a progressive feminist re-reading of the Koran; Leila Slimani is an award-winning novelist who has written a book on “sexual misery” in Morocco.
In the midst of crackdown on gay men in Egypt, we discuss Mohammed Abdel Nabi’s novel about being gay in Cairo, In The Spider’s Room. Also: a portrait of a love-hate relationship with a Cairo neighborhood, an award for Arabic Young Adult and children’s literature, a Saudi novelist under attack online, and a Palestinian poet whose trial hinges on translation.