Shukri Mabkhout’s The Italian, an epic tale of romance and revolution in the tumult of 1980s and 1990s Tunisia, won the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2015, making it the first Tunisian novel to achieve this accolade. As our Book Club selection for the month of October, Mabkhout’s wide-ranging novel gives an intricate look into the inner workings of young idealism under dictatorship, with all the brilliance and hardship that comes with hope. In the following interview, Rachel Stanyon spoke live to the translators of The Italian, Karen McNeil and Miled Faiza, on their working process, the representation of women in a literary scene dominated by men, and working towards a greater representation of Tunisian literature in the Arab world.
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Rachel Stanyon (RS): I’ve read in an interview on Arablit.org that your translation strategy involves Miled first doing a quite literal pass, and Karen then revising the draft for idioms, flow, etc. Did your translation of The Italian also involve a dialogue with the author, Shukri Mabkhout?
Karen McNeil (KM): Yes, it did, and that was really Miled’s role throughout the project. During both the translation and revision, we contacted Shukri a lot. There were sometimes words that we had no idea about! Miled was killing himself looking for this one word in every dictionary imaginable, and it turned out it was just this particular word that Shukri’s family uses, and probably no one else in Tunisia does. There are always these little idiosyncrasies. All the translations I’ve done have been in circumstances where we could work with the author—I almost can’t imagine it otherwise; there are just so many difficulties that require follow-up questions.
Miled Faiza (MF): Shukri was very supportive, which was really nice. I don’t think there are many passages that are difficult in the novel; we just wanted to be as accurate as possible—even with small things, such as recipes. I am from the central east of the country, and he’s from the north, the capital. Tunisia is a very small and culturally homogenous country, but there are a few small things that Shukri probably grew up with: what they cooked at home, or the clothes they wore, or things that are very specific to Tunis, the capital. He was very helpful with my queries about those specific questions.
I was able to find the word Karen mentioned in an Arabic dictionary; Lisan al-Arab, one of the oldest and largest dictionaries in the world, has an entire passage on it. But the meaning didn’t work in the context, so it was driving me crazy. I sent him a message, and he told me: “Oh, I’m sorry, that is a French word that my father used to say.” So it was a word very specific to his family, and he just threw it in there.
RS: The language of The Italian tends to be quite descriptive, and involves a lot of very detailed information on things like philosophy, Tunisian cuisine, or the process of publishing a newspaper. Miled, I’m particularly interested in how you, as a poet, found translating what I found sometimes to be quite dry, academic passages. Did these aspects of the translation pose any problems for either of you, and, in general, what were the biggest challenges for you in translating this novel?
MF: Our great friend, Addie Leak, edited this book and worked with us very closely—it’s really important to always mention her because she is amazing. I asked her: “How did you find the novel? What do you feel about the section on the political history of Tunisia?” She told me she loved it, which was a little surprising. Certain sections, especially those with a lot of details about the union and the different branches of Tunisian student activists, I found dry—and maybe it would have been possible to just summarise and get rid of a lot of it. But that’s my point of view as a Tunisian. I was more interested in the story of Abdel Nasser and Zeina, with the background of everything going on in Tunisia. I thought the very small details—of every congress and every meeting, important dates from Tunisian history—were not that interesting; they were a little bit dry for me.
KM: I think the parts when Abdel Nasser is at university, and especially the philosophical points, are actually even drier in Arabic. It was very challenging to make that flow in English, because it’s very much like a lecture or a philosophy textbook. It was difficult to render that in English without doing harm to the integrity of the original. Even though it was painful while I was doing it, though, with a little perspective I think I can appreciate why it goes on for so long. In the structure of the novel, that activism was Abdel Nasser’s whole life, but once he graduates from university, one realises that all the things the university students are doing, thinking that they’re changing the country—none of it really matters. I think it captures Abdel Nasser’s viewpoint of it being very important.
MF: It is probably also worth mentioning that Shukri Mabkhout is a university professor, and he was also teaching at the University of Manouba, so he is really familiar with this history; I believe that he was a student himself during that period. Political activism was also very important at Tunisian universities then, under Bourguiba and Ben Ali, so it is important and realistic to include it—it’s exactly what was going on in Tunisian universities at the time. But on the other hand, from an aesthetic point of view, it was probably a little bit dry.
KM: Even though I speak Arabic and Tunisian Arabic, and I’ve been to Tunisia many times, a lot of it was completely new for me. I mean, I knew about Bourguiba and the bloodless coup when Ben Ali took power, but as far as the student movements and the tension between the leftists and the Islamist movements in the university? I had no idea.
MF: As to other sections that were difficult to translate—there was the love scene, in which Shukri used some metaphors from classical Arabic poetry. I found these parts challenging, and I also wasn’t crazy about that approach. I translated it into English and I knew Karen was going to do a better job, so I just threw it to her and let her do whatever she wanted. I wondered whether modern readers would be interested in the small details of those metaphors.
RS: Was the trouble in getting the style and the language across, or was it more your concerns about the reading experience—the actual content rather than the act of translating it?
KM: It was about getting the message across, because in Arabic, he references a poem by Al-Mutanabbi that all Arab readers would recognise. For non-Tunisian Arabs, a lot of the things in the novel—like the Tunisian history—would be new, but this image of the rider is a familiar reference. He doesn’t say that it’s from a poem or reference the poet, but still, anyone would know it. It was somewhat of a challenge to figure out how to add in a little bit of information for the reader—maybe even enough that, if they wanted to, they could find what it was referring to. The scene itself also goes on for a long time. Of course, we’re translating it, so we’re going through it very slowly; maybe for the reader it doesn’t go on for as long as it seemed when we were translating it.
MF: We had no reservations with the content at all—just the idea or the image itself and how to present it. The idea is beautiful, showing the harmony between two lovers, but the language and the word choices were very challenging.
KM: I don’t know if harmony is the word I would use; I’d say dominance is what comes to mind. There were some places in the novel where Shukri is talking about a female character—either through Abdel Nasser’s eyes or through seemingly omniscient third-person narrative—in a way that sometimes felt very false to me. Just some of it. The one I complained endlessly about is right before the love scene, when they’re having dinner and she comes out wearing a white negligee. The description of it kind of bothered me, but more than that, they’re about to eat dinner—shakshuka, which is really messy—and I thought: “Who would wear a white negligee before eating something messy with your hands?” It just struck me as sort of ridiculous. No woman would do that.
I find this a lot in the Arabic literature written by men that we read and translate: there’s just so much description and focus on the physical appearance of women, rendered in a really false way. Female characters just tend to be objectified. Shukri has a good level of consciousness regarding the status of women in Tunisia, and overtly shows that he recognises certain issues, but I think how women are described and perceived overall is just not quite how I would want it to be. As I was translating that, it was really hard for me to avoid softening it—to tweak it a little so that it’s less jarring to me personally; I had to remind myself that if someone wanted to write a paper about how women are described or treated in Arab novels, I would want this to be an honest source.
RS: In The Italian, you chose to leave some words in Arabic, and to include a glossary. To what extent did your work in linguistics inform this, and did you at any point talk about having footnotes?
KM: Many years ago, when I was young, I was reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, and it wasn’t until the third novel that I realised they weren’t actually written in English. I found out through a footnote, and if that hadn’t been included, I would never have known. My goal when I translate is to avoid reminding the reader that it’s a translation, so that’s why I say I’m categorically against footnotes.
I’ve also read a fair amount of fantasy, and in Tolkien or Robert Jordan, there are all these words that are completely made up—they only exist in the world of the novel. By using italics and a glossary, readers can keep up with it. Readers are very smart, and I imagine that, for a lot of the words, one probably wouldn’t even need to go to the glossary; it’s usually obvious that it’s some kind of clothing, for example. But if you want to know exactly what it is, the glossary is there and you can look it up. My idea was to not interrupt the flow of the narrative with footnotes, but to massage things when needed with a little bit of extra description, and to keep Arabic words in transliteration to maintain the flavour of the text.
RS: What were some of your favourite passages or things about working on this text?
MF: The most beautiful things I have read about the novels I have translated have come from their readers. Once I am done with the translation and the book is out, I don’t want to read it, because my relationship with the text becomes so focused on details that probably neither the writer nor the reader would ask or think about; it seems that I end up not enjoying the novels that I’m translating as much as readers do. And when I read reviews about the novel, whether in Arabic or in English, like yours, I’m surprised. One review made parallels between Salah Eddine and Abdel Nasser—how the novel is tracing the two lives of two brothers, and each represents one aspect of Tunisia. I thought that was beautiful. I think reading novels and translating them are totally different experiences.
When I read the novel by itself, though, I loved many things about it. The story is beautiful; it’s the story of my generation, that I myself witnessed when I was a student. I am very familiar with the way Tunisians were living under the dictator Ben Ali, and Bourguiba before that, so it was nice to see that in one novel, and also to see the fate of Abel Nasser and Zeina after they left university.
What I loved most about the novel—and I told Shukri this—is Zeina. I hoped to see more of her in the novel, and I asked Shukri whether it would be possible to write another book, this time about Zeina. He laughed and told me that he doesn’t think he can write it; probably someone else will do so.
KM: It was interesting; all my complaints about how women were portrayed—none of them applied to Zeina. She just felt one hundred per cent true from beginning to end. Actually, I think one of my favourite scenes in the novel in terms of how it’s written—even though it’s a horrible scene—is the one where Zeina is raped by either her brother or her father. I thought that scene was so powerful, and really gut-wrenching, but really, really good.
I’d say that my favourite thing going through the translation was doing the cultural touches. I expect that most people who read this novel will know nothing about Tunisia, especially in the US; maybe in the UK people are more familiar with Tunisia as a tourist destination, but a lot of Americans have just never heard of it. When I tell them Miled is from Tunisia, they’re like: “What, Indonesia?” They’re likely going into the novel with no image—not even a stereotype—of what Tunisia is. So I had this goal that someone would read this novel and think, “Oh, I would really love to go and visit Tunisia.” I wanted to give a sense of the culture through the clothing, the food, the music—everything.
RS: The Italian often speaks about three layers of identity or consideration: Tunisia, the Arab world, and then the wider world. What do you think is the importance of The Italian at these three levels?
KM: I think the novel itself is definitely positioned at the Arab level; it’s written more for an Arab, elite audience than it is for a Tunisian audience, and I think we can see that in the fact that it won the IPAF. If it were more geared towards a specifically Tunisian audience and were more distinctively Tunisian in its language, I don’t think it would have won. It seems that The Italian is very much what the intelligentsia and the tastemakers of the Arab world want in a novel. But then on the other hand, it is educating the Arab intelligentsia about a lot of things regarding Tunisia that they probably didn’t know. Since the revolution, I think Tunisia has had a more important place in the Arab world, and people in other Arab countries are more interested in it than they probably ever were.
MF: I agree with you. It’s the first Tunisian novel ever to win this prize, or a prize of this stature and calibre.
Unfortunately, Tunisia has always been looked at as a smaller country. We have amazing poets and scholars and writers like any other Arab country, but there’s not much focus on Tunisia because of its politics and geography—it is very small, and usually very peaceful, without the same history of wars and oil of other countries like Egypt or Iraq. I think this novel gives Tunisia the opportunity to be equal with some other countries, and gives an idea of Tunisian literature to other Arab readers and the Arab world. Unfortunately—in a very old phenomenon which goes back to the time of Andalucía—the eastern part of the Arab world usually ignores whatever is happening in the Maghreb (the western part of the Arab world). They’re not really interested in consuming their literature, music, films or other culture, and they also have the idea that Tunisians and other North Africans—such as in Algeria and Morocco—don’t speak Arabic, or that their Arabic is not pure enough—it’s mixed with French and Spanish and Italian—and they almost don’t want to understand you. This is quite different compared with Tunisians and North Africans, who are exposed to film and music from Egypt, as well as from Iraq, Syria, and the rest of the Arab world.
KM: I think that the revolution has a lot to do with why that’s changing. Recently, there was this really beautiful, catchy Tunisian song. In the past, Tunisian songs were not played in the Arab world at all, but this one has about 700 million views on YouTube now, and it was this huge phenomenon throughout the Arab world. It’s about political oppression, and I think that’s what’s really making this connection. The Italian is about life, especially the life of the intelligentsia, under dictatorship, and that’s no longer the situation in Tunisia, but it is the situation in the rest of the Arab world. So I think the Tunisian revolution is really opening the Arab world to Tunisia in a new way.
RS: My interpretation is that the novel is quite ambivalent about Abdel Nasser’s future, and Tunisia’s as well. None of the central characters ends up in a very happy place, but there’s so much vigour in the novel, so many ideas, and there seems to be so much potential in the individuals and the culture. Especially having originally been published just after the Arab Spring, it feels like it might suggest some hope. How do you interpret the ending of the novel, and what do you see in the future for Tunisia?
MF: It’s a very difficult question to answer. I think what the novel does, or at least what I think it’s very important to show, is the extent of corruption in Tunisian society under Ben Ali—to the point that probably a revolution had to happen. We always try to be hopeful, but, at least when I think of Tunisia right now, unfortunately it is difficult, especially because of COVID and high unemployment. I am sure Tunisians are still fighting for a better Tunisia, and one day they will make it, but I think it’s going to take a few generations.
I think the problem in Tunisia is that the culture of oppression, especially among the people in charge of the country, has not gone away. A revolution doesn’t change that. A culture might take decades to change, because as soon as the system adjusts, the police are back to oppressing people and shooting people and beating people, and doing everything they used to do under Ben Ali. But the difference is that at least people are no longer afraid to express their views, to go to the streets and protest, and try to change the system.
KM: Thinking about this now, if there’s any message, it’s probably to be wary of revolutions, because Ben Ali’s revolution, his coup, is such a central event in the novel. There was supposed to be a new day, and a new beginning, but it’s like with Abdel Nasser’s job at the newspaper; the phone to the censor doesn’t go away, the person at the other end just changes. If Shukri has any message, I would think it’s that: a wariness of the ability for change to occur at the top level, and what must really happen to change these ingrained problems of corruption.
Karen McNeil translated Shukri Mabkhout’s The Italian (with Miled Faiza), as well as poems and short stories for Banipal and World Literature Today. She was a revising editor of the Oxford Arabic Dictionary (2014) and is currently completing a Ph.D. in Arabic linguistics at Georgetown University, with a focus on the sociolinguistics of Tunisia.
Miled Faiza is a Tunisian-American poet and translator. He is the author of Baqāya l-bayt allaḏī daḵalnāhu marratan wāḥida (2004) and Asabaʕ an-naḥḥāt (2019), and translator of the Booker Prize–shortlisted novel Autumn (al-Kharif, 2017) and Winter (al-Shitā’, 2019), both by Ali Smith. He also translated Shukri Mabkhout’s The Italian (with Karen McNeil, 2021). He teaches Arabic at Brown University.
Rachel Stanyon is a translator from German into English. She has worked as a teacher and researcher in Germany and the UK, and is currently based in Australia, where, alongside her translation work, she volunteers as a copyeditor for Asymptote. She holds a Master’s in translation, and in 2016, won a place in the New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme.
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