Yesterday, we talked with Chip Rossetti about his translation of Reem Al Kamali's International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Rose's Diaries. Today, we have an excerpt from the middle of the novel, where the narrator recalls her lost nuclear family. 58. I sighed internally for your sake, Father. All my memories of you were of you putting to sea with sails white like a dove’s wing, but no sooner did the dāʿī winds spring up, each one ...
New publishing house ELF Publishing has brought out Emirati author Reem Al Kamali's International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Rose's Diaries in Chip Rossetti's English translation. The novel, set in 1960s Dubai, is told through the eyes of a young woman named Ruza who wants a much larger life for herself -- of travel, scholarship, and adventure -- but is hemmed by family after the deaths of her parents. In this conversation, we talk about why ...
Osama al-Eissa was shortlisted for this year's International Prize for Arabic Fiction, for his The Seventh Heaven of Jerusalem, awarded to fellow Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji for his fourth novel, A Mask, the Color of the Sky. Al-Eissa's Madmen of Bethlehem was shortlisted for the 2015 Sheikh Zayed Book Award and has not yet appeared in English translation. This translation was first published on the SZBA website and appears here with permission. From 'The Madmen ...
Yesterday, we talked with Chip Rossetti about his translation of Reem Al Kamali’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Rose’s Diaries. Today, we have an excerpt from the middle of the novel, where the narrator recalls her lost nuclear family. 58. I ...
Osama al-Eissa was shortlisted for this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction, for his The Seventh Heaven of Jerusalem, awarded to fellow Palestinian writer Basim Khandaqji for his fourth novel, A Mask, the Color of the Sky. Al-Eissa’s Madmen of ...
In a recent interview, we asked Iraqi writer Duna Ghali which Iraqi writers she recommends; she pointed us to Falah Raheem, whose Hedgehogs on a Hot Day was published to great acclaim in Arabic in 2012. The novel is available now in ...
New publishing house ELF Publishing has brought out Emirati author Reem Al Kamali’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Rose’s Diaries ...
“The word eib rings in my head, it is eib to love, to sing, to get sick, to divorce, to show your emotions…and.…and. I felt these social chains were burdening me with fear, despair, and confusion, and I almost abandoned work on the book, but when I looked at the materials that I had collected, I knew that if I didn’t publish it now, it would never be published.”
“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.”