BULAQ: Recent Episodes
LiveWriters
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 hosted by Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey and co-produced by Sowt.
We recorded this interview with Deen in January 2022, just as her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”) was coming out in English. This original and beautifully illustrated story imagines that wishes of varying quality can be bought and sold in contemporary Cairo, with unpredictable and poignant results. It has been...
Art critic and journalist Kaelen Wilson-Goldie joins us for a sweeping look at the life, writing, and art of singular Lebanese author-artist Etel Adnan (1925-2021). Kaelin Wilson-Goldie’s Etel Adnan is available from Lund Humphries. Adnan’s Time, translated by Sarah Riggs, is available from Nightboat Books. The Beauty of Light, a collection of interviews with Laure...
Majalla 28 is a literary magazine out of Gaza co-producing an issue with ArabLit. We talk about the work by co-editors Mahmoud al-Shaer and Mohamed al-Zaqzouq and read excerpts from that issue. After that, we talk about a particular kind of Palestinian literature – by writers serving life sentences. Find out more about the Gaza...
Ghassan Kanafani is best known for his famous novellas, but he was many things besides a talented writer: a prolific journalist, an insightful critic and editor, a heterodox Marxist, a spokesman for the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He wrote and lived like he had no time to waste (which turned out...
This episode features writing from and about Gaza, and explores the imperative to write, between hope and hopelessness, at a time when words both seem to count enormously and to not be enough. Show Notes This episode’s cover art is by Chema Peral @chema_peral Letter from Gaza by Ghassan Kanafani was written in 1956. Mahmoud...
We talk to Robin Moger about how he became a translator from Arabic and about what has changed in recent years in the field of Arabic literature and translation and what has stayed the same. Moger’s first book-length literary translation was Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s 2008 novel الفاعل, which became A Dog with No Tail. His...
Said Khatibi’s detective novel نهاية الصحراء (End of the Sahara) is set in a remote desert city in Algeria in the Fall of 1988, when the country’s October Riots are about to break out place. The book is one of the winners of this year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Khatibi explained how his writing is...
Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel died last month at the age of 56. In this episode, we remember Hamdi and his one-of-a-kind literary career, telling the story of Egypt’s laborers, Bedouin, and migrants.
Show Notes:
Egyptian Novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel Dies at 56: ‘There Was No One Like Him’
A Special Section at ArabLit on Abu Golayyel, Bedouin Poetry, and ‘The Men Who Swallowed the Sun’
Mohamed Kheir remembers Hamdy
Books available in translation are: Thieves in Retirement (translated by Marilyn Booth), A Dog with No Tail (translated by Robin Moger), and The Men Who Swallowed the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies.
Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Comics artist Rawand Issa joins us to talk about her book Inside the Giant Fish (trans. Amy Chiniara, Maamoul Press); her path from journalism to graphic art; artist groups and collectives across the region; the “new school of Arab comics,” and the challenges of making a living as a comics artist. We also talk about a few other Lebanese graphic novels, particularly Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan,and Lena Merhej’s I Think We’ll Be Calmer in the Next War.
Show Notes:
You can find several of Rawand’s books available from Maamoul Press: http://maamoulpress.com.
Also read Rawand’s “Being Illegal is Unbearable at The Nib, her ماذا نفعل في مواجهة استمرار العنف ضد النساء؟ at Jeem and her untitled work in Chime.
And if you missed it, there’s a discussion with Rawand and translator Amy Chiniara about Inside the Giant Fish at ArabLit.
Samandal magazine is on Instagram (@samandalcomics), and you can find them at samandal-comics.org.
You can buy copies of the magazine Corniche at the Sharjah Art Foundation website.
Lab619 (@lab619), Skefkef (@skefkefmag/), and Fanzeen Comics (@fanzeencomics/) are on Instagram, while TokTok has a website, toktokmag.com.
Rawand Issa (@rawand.issa_) and Amy Chiniara (@amychiniara) are both on Instagram, too.
Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, from Pluto Press
Lena Merhej’s We Will Be Calmer in the Next War is available online.
Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Translator Sawad Hussain joins us to talk about the challenges of making a living as a translator, the art of co-translation, her focus on Arabic literature from Africa and the Gulf, and the advice she gives to her translation mentees. We also highlight three of Sawad’s recent and forthcoming translations: Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind, and Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Souls.
Show Notes:
Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, co-translated by Sawad Hussain and M Lynx Qualey, came out in February from AmazonCrossing. You can read reflections on the novel at Hadara magazine and listen to a sample at Amazon.
Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behindwas published, in Sawad’s translation, by Fitzcarraldo. As Sawad mentions, there is an audio long read at The Guardian.
Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Soulsis forthcoming from Dedalus Press in August in Sawad’s translation. You can read an excerpt and a review at ArabLit, as well as other work by Gaitano.
You can find our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Twenty years after the disastrous and mendacious US invasion of Iraq, we take a look at writing from Iraq: memoirs, poems and blog posts. Shalash the Iraqi is a collection of such posts – a satirical, surreal, and affecting panorama in life in a Shia suburb of Baghdad in the early years of the occupation.
Show Notes:
An excerpt from Gaith Abdul-ahad’s memoir A Stranger In Your Own City ran recently in the Guardian
Shalash The Iraqi, trans. Luke Leafgren, is a collection of blog posts written in 2005-2006
An excerpt from Faleeha Hassan’s memoir War and Me, tans. William Hutchins ran on Arablit.org.
The Book of Trivialities, by Majed Mujid, trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid
The only English-language collection of Sargon Boulous’ self-translated poetry is Knife Sharpener from Banipal Books. You can find a list of his poems available online here.
We wandered through Arabic poetry and prose to talk about many different forms of literary love: regretful love, unreciprocated love, bad love, vengeful love, liberating love, married love.
We read this poem by Núra al-Hawshán: “O eyes, pour me the clearest, freshest tearsAnd when the fresh part’s over, pour me the dregs.O eyes, gaze at his harvest and guard it.Keep watch upon his water-camels, look at his well.If he passes me on the roadI can’t speak to him.O God, such afflictionAnd utter calamity!Whoever desires usWe scorn to desire,And whom we desireFeeble fate does not deliver.”
The Núra al-Hawshán poem, translated by Moneera al-Ghadeer, has a modern musical adaptation on YouTube produced by Majed Al Esa.
Yasmine Seale’s translation of Ulayya Bint El Mahdi. This poem and others were set to music on the album “Medieval Femme.”
Do’a al-Karawan (“The Nightingale’s Prayer”) by Taha Hussein
I Do Not Sleep, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, trans. Jonathan Smolin
The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz (1956-57)
Al-Bab al-Maftouh (The Open Door) Latifa al-Zayyat, trans. Marilyn Booth (1960)
All That I Want to Forget, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Michele Henjum.
Rita and the Rifle, Mahmoud Darwish, made into a song by Marcel Khalife.
Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck
It’s literary prize season! When the Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at the start of 2023, novelist Shady Lewis Botros turned his novel award down, launching a storm of criticism, defense, and discussion. Is it bad manners or good politics to turn down a prize? How do different prizes affect the literary landscape? How is the 2023 prize season shaping up?
Show Notes:
Mada Masr published “A conversation with Shady Lewis Botros on the genealogy of literary refusal”
The International Prize for Arabic Fiction recently announced their 2023 longlist, with a historically high number of women writers (half).
Also in Jan 2023, Banipal Prize judges announced that two novels had won their 2022 prize. By coincidence, we did a joint episode on those two novels.
PEN America recently announced their lit-prize longlists. Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, translated by Robyn Creswell, made the poetry-in-translation longlist.
In December 2022, Fatima Qandil’s Empty Cages won the Naguib Mahfouz medal, and she said it was the first time she’d won a prize.
Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed talks about her debut urban-fantasy trilogy Shubeik Lubeik (“Your Wish is My Command”). A product of playful self-translation, it’s coming to English as a single volume. It will be unbottled by Pantheon (US) and Granta (UK) on January 10, 2023.
Show Notes:
While the US edition keeps the title “Shubeik Lubeik,” the UK edition will use a literal translation: “Your Wish Is My Command.”
Find more of Deena’s work at http://deenadraws.art and on Twitter and Instagram as @itsdeenasaur.
The Arabic originals were published by Dar Mahrousa and are available in the US through Maamoul Press.
El-Rifae’s book Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution tells the story of a movement that mobilized in Egypt to protect female protesters from mob sexual attacks in 2012 and 2013. Based on interviews with friends and comrades, the book explores memory, truth, gender, violence, political organizing, trauma, and possible futures.
Show Notes
You can order the book directly from @VersoBooks.
Read an excerpt at Granta.
The book launches October 24 in New York City; there will also be events in Philadelphia and D.C.
Follow Yasmin for updates about more events at @yasminelrifae.
More writing by Yasmin El-Rifae is available on Mada Masr.
In this sponsored episode, we talk to Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner Dr. Muhsin Al-Musawi about his life-long scholarship on the 1001 Nights.
Show Notes:
This podcast is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe.
Today’s guest, Professor Muhsin Al-Musawi, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of “Arab Culture in Other Languages,” for his book “The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures.” Al-Musawi is a professor of classical and modern Arabic literature, comparative and cultural studies at Columbia University. He is the author of 39 books and the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children’s Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae
Professor Al-Musawi’s biography and a description of his book can be found on the SZBA website.
We’re back to talk about books we read over the summer and books we’re looking forward to this fall. Including poetry from Iman Mersal, Hadiya Hussein’s novel about looking for a lover disappeared in Saddam’s Iraq, and Mohamed Alnaas’ novel about the pressure to be a certain type of Libyan man.
Show Notes: Iman Mersal’s The Threshold, trans. Robyn Creswell, is a selection from four of her poetry collections, forthcoming from McMillan. Hadiya Hussein’s Waiting For The Past, trans. Barbara Romaine, is forthcoming from Syracuse Press. Bread on Uncle Milad’s Table, by Mohamed Alnaas, won the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
An Interview with Maria Dadouch, who won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Children’s Literature this year. Dadouch’s book The Mystery of the Glass ball features two children becoming friends, fighting villains and protecting nature on a train ride in the near future. We talked about the need for more Arabic YA books; contemporary sci-fi; literary prizes; digital publishing and why writing for teenagers is the hardest thing to do.
This episode is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe.
Today’s guest, Maria Dadouch, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2022 in the category of Children’s Literature, for her novel لغز الكورة الزجاجية or "The Mystery of the Glass Ball." Dadouche is a screenwriter and children’s author from Syria who has published over 50 books.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award in the Children’s Literature and Literature categories. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae
You can find some of Dadouch’s many childrens’ books in Arabic here.
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!
Guest hosts Rafael (age 11) and Milo (almost 10) take over this episode of Bulaq to talk about the evil aunts, time-traveling djinn, and scary checkpoints in the first book of Palestinian novelist Sonia Nimr’s fast-paced fantasy trilogy: Thunderbird.
Show Notes
The first Thunderbird novel is available from University of Texas Press. The second is forthcoming this fall.
Educators interested in joining a launch event on Zoom with author and translator can sign up at the University of Texas website. Participants will get a free copy of the book!
Red Stars, by Davide Morosinottto, is available in Denise Muir’s translation. You can find more about literature for young readers in translation at worldkidlit.wordpress.com.
Rafael’s next editing project is Sawad Hussain’s translation of Djamila Morani’s The Djinn’s Apple, forthcoming from Neem Tree.
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. One of our astute listeners has given the answer to last week’s question: What Koranic and Biblical story is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Paradise”? The answer to this week’s question is within the Moroccan novel “Hot Maroc” — and our last episode about it. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!
Translator Alexander E. Elinson joins us to discuss Yassin Adnan’s Hot Maroc, a sprawling satire of contemporary Morocco. The novel, set in Marrakesh and online, follows the story of Rahhal Laouina, aka “The Squirrel,” who finds his voice as an anonymous internet troll – and then has it co-opted by the country’s security apparatus. While it paints a bleak picture of the possibilities of political dialogue, journalism, and self-expression, the novel itself is testament to literature’s ability to chart new imaginative territory.
Show Notes
Hot Maroc is available from Syracuse University Press in Alex Elinson’s translation
You can read an excerpt of the novel at Asymptote.
Aida Alami contextualizes the novel at Middle East Eye.
Adnan talks about the inspiration for the novel in an interview with the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an island that was part of a Sultanate spanning Oman and East Africa, and that features in our last two episodes. And we ask about a Koranic and Biblical story that is a reference for Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise. Send your best guesses to bulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!
Paradise, by 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, is the coming-of-age story of Yusuf, a Tanzanian boy sent into debt servitude when his father can’t pay back an Arab merchant. Yusuf travels into the interior with “Uncle Aziz” and other vivid characters, to trade with the “savages” there. The story takes place on the cusp of World War I, set in the wake of mass enslavement and the advent of European colonialism and interwoven with Yusuf’s story from the Quran. Gurnah himself belonged to the Arab elite of Zanzibar, and fled to the UK after a revolution there in the 1960s.
Show Notes
In Episode 84, we discussed the colonial relationship between Oman and East Africa in Jokha Alharthi’s The Bitter Orange Tree.
Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel lecture
Excerpt on Kilwa from Ibn Battuta’s RihlatTanzania-Oman Historic Ties: The Past and Present, by Oswald Masebo
Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an Arab poet who emigrated to the US and translated some of the Beat poets. And we ask a question about Oman, where Jokha Alharthi’s“Bitter Orange Tree,” discussed in our last episode, is set. Send your best guesses tobulaq@sowt.com. The first listener to respond with the right answer will get a book in the mail!
Jokha Alharthi burst to sudden international literary stardom in 2019, when her second novel, Sayyidat al-Qamr (tr. Marilyn Booth as Celestial Bodies), won the International Booker. The novel, touted as the “first by an Omani woman to be translated to English,” has since appeared in languages around the world. More novels by Omani women, including Bushra Khalfan’s The Garden, are forthcoming in English translation, and Alharthi’s Narinja (also tr. Booth, as Bitter Orange Tree) will appear in May 2022. In this episode, we talk Omani literature, history, translation, and the extraordinary Bitter Orange Tree.
Show Notes
Six Languages, Six Covers: Celestial Bodies Around the World
On Turning ‘Sayyidat al-Qamr’ into ‘Celestial Bodies’ and the Tyranny of the New
New Yorker review: An Omani Novel Exposes Marriage and Its Miseries
Excerpt of Celestial Bodies on WWB: London
Excerpt of Bitter Orange Tree on Carnegie Foundation website: Al-Rahma
Interview with Jokha Alharthi
More at Alharthi’s website, jokha.com
Our episode on Sonallah Ibrahim’s novel Warda, also set in Oman.