Posts by Omar El Adl

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

This week we report from Slovakia, Brazil, and Egypt.

Welcome back for a fresh batch of literary news, featuring the most exciting developments from Slovakia, Brazil, and Egypt. 

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Slovakia:

Hot on the heels of the prolonged Night of Literature, held from 16 to 18 May in sixteen towns and cities across Slovakia, the fifth annual independent book festival, BRaK, took place between 17 and 20 May in the capital, Bratislava. In keeping with the festival’s traditional focus on the visual side of books, the programme included bookbinding, typesetting and comic writing workshops, activities for children, and exhibitions of works by veteran Czech illustrator, poster and animation artist Jiří Šalamoun, as well as French illustrators Laurent Moreau and Anne-Margot Ramstein. The last two also held illustration masterclasses, while the German Reinhard Kleist launched the Slovak translation of his graphic novel Nick Cave: Mercy on Me, accompanied by a local band.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Our weekly roundup lands us in Romania, Moldova, India and Egypt.

Prizes, events, book publications, festivals—whatever you can think of, our Weekly Dispatches have you covered from one end of the world to the other. This week our editors are focusing on the most exciting news from India, Romania and Moldova, and Egypt. 

Janani Ganesan, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from India: 

When everything is sponsored by a multinational company, from football to governments, literature is no different. India’s richest literary award was announced this March by JCB group. An annual prize money of INR twenty-five lakhs (USD 38,400) for a fiction book could have only come from a company manufacturing construction equipment.

(The DSC Prize, which was the most generous literary award in the country till its prize money was reduced from USD 50,000 to USD 25,000 in 2017, is also funded by a company specializing in infrastructure.)

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

This week, our editors bring you the literary news from Egypt, Poland, and the UK.

Solidly into the hustle and bustle of December, we are back with more updates from around the world. Omar El Adl shares the latest in film and academia from Egypt. We learn about the happenings on the Polish literary scene from Julia Sherwood. Finally, Cassie Lawrence updates us on recent literary prizes and a new publisher in the UK.

Omar El Adl, Asymptote Editor-at-Large for Egypt:

The Townhouse Gallery is hosting an event titled Mise.en.scène on the representation of women and the main female characters in author Ehsan Abdel Qudoos’s work, through the screening of films based on his writings. The event took place over two days, December 5 and 6. The first day featured a screening of Henry Barakat’s Thin Thread, followed by a conversation with women’s rights advocate Doaa Abdelaal. On the second day, there was a screening of I Am Free by Salah Abu Seif, followed by a conversation with Arabic literature professor Samia Mehrez, moderated by Nour El Safoury.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Your weekly report on the latest in the world of literature.

We’re back for another exciting week of prizes, festivals and news about authors and events happening in the world of literature. Editors-at-Large on the ground in Nicaragua, Brazil and Egypt give us a run-down of the most important literary announcements from their regions. Watch this space for more news every Friday! 

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Nicaragua:

Nicaragua hasn’t stopped celebrating its writers this week.

In perhaps the most important literary news from around the world, Nicaraguan writer, journalist, and politician Sergio Ramirez was announced as the latest recipient of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize, awarded annually to honor the lifetime achievement of a writer in the Spanish language. Awarded since 1976, previous recipients include Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, María Zambrano, Adolfo Bioy Casares, and Elena Poniatowska. Sergio became the first Central American writer to receive this distinction.

While the Cervantes Prize was still yet to be announced, the Nicaraguan poet Claribel Alegría got the prestigious Reina Sofía Prize for Iberoamerican Poetry. During the ceremony, Claribel received $49,000 and the publication of an anthology of her life’s work entitled Aunque dure un instante. 93-year old Claribel follows Sophia de Mello Breyner, Nicanor Parra, Antonio Gamoneda, and Ernesto Cardenal.

In Guatemala, F&G Editores just reissued and presented one of the most important poetry books in Guatemalan history, Vamos patria a caminar by the revolutionary poet Otto René Castillo. The book was originally published in 1965. One year later, in the early years of the Guatemalan armed conflict, Otto René returned to Guatemala after years of exile to join the guerrilla forces. In 1967 Otto René was captured, interrogated, tortured, and burned alive. To this day, Otto René Castillo remains one of the most important poets of Guatemala. His work has been praised by Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Roque Dalton, up to the newest generations of Central American poets. You can read some of his poems here.

On a final note, the Guatemalan children’s book publishing house Amanuense has released its new website after completing their move to South America. Amanuense is also finalizing the details of their participation in this year’s FIL (the Guadalajara International Book Fair), and they are days away from releasing Balam, Lluvia y la casa, the latest book of one of their champion writers, Julio Serrano Echeverría.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The international literary news you won't find anywhere else.

It’s Friday and we’re back with the latest news from our Editors-at-Large, providing us with their personal roundups of the most exciting literary developments in their region. We kick off with Jessie Stoolman in Morocco, where there’s never a shortage of intriguing events and publications; Julia Sherwood in Slovakia takes us on a tour of the various cross-cultural literary encounters that have been occurring recently in the Czech Republic; and finally, Omar El Adl gives us some insight into the latest talks, discussions and publications that are taking place right now in Egypt. 

Jessie Stoolman, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco: 

July was filled with literary events throughout Morocco, starting with a conversation between two Moroccan Prix Concourt winners, Leila Slimani and Tahar Ben Jelloun, at the Minzah Hotel, where they discussed “Comment écrire et publier un livre?” (“How to write and publish a book”) Another star Moroccan author (and painter), Mahi Benibine, whose novel Horses of God, inspired by the 2003 suicide attacks in Casablanca, was made into a critically-acclaimed film, presented his newest novel Le fou du roi at Librairie les insolites in Tangier.

Speaking of new publications from major Moroccan authors, Dar Toubkal’s newly released publication of the poet Mohammed Bennis’ الأعمال النثرية (Works of Prose) was just reviewed in Al-Hayat.

Still staying within the Tangier region, the Galerie Delacoix hosted artists, academics, and students for the الجسد الإجتماعي والمحيط الحضري (Espace urbain & corps social) program and internal working week. Among the participants was Moroccan-French artist and co-founder of the Cinémathèque du Tanger, Yto Berrada. Given continued action from the Al-Hoceima-based protest movement (حراك الريف), the geographer William Kurtz’s talk on “La Globalisation de la Région Tangier Al-Hoceima et son impact sur les inégalites sociales et spatiales” (“Globalization of the Tangier Al-Hoceima Region and its impact on social and spatial inequalities”) was particularly timely.

If that was not enough activity in Tangier, Librairie des Colonnes hosted Zahra Al-Khamleshi, who presented her most recent work, الحدود في شمال المغرب: آمال وآلام النساء الحمالات (Borders in Northern Morocco: Hope and Suffering of Women Porters) on the women who carry products between Ceuta (a Spanish enclave/colony in northern Morocco) and Morocco.

Moving further south, in Casablanca, Kabareh Cheikhats was back again. Their travelling show aims to shed light on the history of Cheikhats, who are often mischaracterized as exotic dancers. Historically, Cheikhats throughout the Maghreb were skilled poets, improvising verses on such controversial topics as resistance to colonization, which they sang and set to music at community gatherings.

Lastly, check out the “Lilipad” project, started by young Moroccan activist Sara Arsalane, which aims to collect books and distribute them to underserved schools throughout Morocco.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, with all the latest news from the Czech Republic: 

On August 4, as we go to press, Czech poet and literary historian Petr Hruška and Georgian poet and musician Erekle Deisadze are reading from their works in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Their performance brings to a close a 31-day long marathon tour of five cities, comprising Authors’ Reading Month (Měsíc autorského čtení or MAČ 2017), Central Europe’s largest literary festival. The readings, by two or more authors each day, are broadcast live and the recordings are available online. The festival’s founder Petr Minařík, whose publishing house Větrné mlýny is based in the Czech Republic’s second largest city Brno, has given a wide berth to capital cities, instead locating the festival in four other cities of similar size: Ostrava near the Polish border, Wrocław on the other side of the border in Poland, Košice in eastern Slovakia and, more recently, Lviv in Ukraine.

The guest country of this year’s festival, which kicked off in Brno on 1st July, is Georgia. This country in the Caucasus is fast becoming a trendy tourist destination, yet its literary riches are not all that well known in Central Europe. Thirty-one Georgian writers joined the tour, accompanied by acclaimed Czech authors, among them Ivan Klíma, Arnošt Goldflam, Ivan Binar, Marek Šindelka, Martin Reiner, Michal Viewegh and Jáchym Topol (whose 1995 novel Angel Station, just out from Dalkey Archive Press in Alex Zucker’s English translation, was reviewed by James Hopkin in last week’s Times Literary Supplement). A traditionally strong Slovak contingent was represented by poets Peter Repka and Ivan Štrpka, and fiction writers Balla, Monika Kompaníková, Ondrej Štefánik, Michal Havran, and Silvester Lavrík. Several Ukrainian and Polish writers and poets also took part in some of the readings.

One of the Polish festival participants, Zośka Papużanka, arrived in Brno fresh from another appearance, in Prague, with Czech writer Ivana Myšková. The two women read from their works at the (A)VOID Floating Gallery, a boat moored on the Vltava Riverbank, which serves as an art gallery and a venue for music, theatre and literary readings. Other writers reading there this summer include Ben Aaronovitch and Czech horror story writer Miloš Urban. The gallery provided a more than fitting venue for the launch of a bilingual Czech and English anthology, A Giant Barrel of Rotgut, that “celebrates the Vltava as a river of slain crocodiles, viziers and rotgut.” If that sounds intriguing, you can find out more in this interview with poet Sylva Fischerová on Radio Prague.

And, finally, emerging translators from the Czech (and Slovak) will be interested to hear that Underpass.co, an online journal for modern literature in translation, is seeking submissions specifically from these two languages. The journal aims to offer English-speaking readers a window into new countries, neighbourhoods, cultures, perspectives, and they are especially interested in stories with a strong sense of place.

Omar El Adl, Editor-at-Large, giving us the latest scoop from Egypt: 

Alia Mossallam presented a talk on August 3 in the Townhouse gallery in Downtown Cairo. The talk featured her text RAWI which deals with motherhood, writing, and revolutionary politics, according to Mada Masr. Mossallam has collected oral history testimonies in Nubia, Alexandria and Port Said, has been involved in alternative pedagogical structures in Cairo, and her dissertation focused on a popular history of Nasserist Egypt through stories and songs by people behind the 1952 revolution. The text was created as part of a long form essay workshop held in Cairo by 60pages, which describes itself as an international network of writers, artists, thinkers and scientists, based in Berlin. Other texts produced for 60pages include Arab Porn by Youssef Rakha (which will be published as a book featuring Rakha’s photography by Matthes and Seitz Berlin), Migrating the Feminine by Nora Amin and a forthcoming text by Amr Ezzat. The talk was held in Arabic, with a reading of the text in English.

Youssef Rakha is also to write a column as the central character from his Book of the Sultan’s Seal, Mustafa Çorbacı, according to his bimonthly newsletter. Rakha describes this development on his newsletter as follows:

“First, that mad newspaperman Mustafa Çorbacı has resolved to write a column. You may be familiar with Çorbacı from a certain, overrated Book of the Sultan’s Seal. In hopeless pursuit of the same meme, he has named his ephemeral effusions, “Postmuslim.” Raising vaguely relevant questions only to leave them grossly un-dealt with would not be untypical. But if mildly psychotic speculation on being in Cairo today holds some promise of amusement, do humour the unfortunate lunatic by reading and sharing his 400 words.”

According to Rakha, the column will appear printed in Al-Ahram Weekly as well as on this site every Friday starting from July 7.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

Presenting literary news from Egypt, USA, Morocco, and Qatar!

We are back with your weekly dose of literary news from around the world. Our very own Jessie Stoolman takes you on a journey through the cultural landscape of Morocco and Qatar. Following, our editor-at-large on the ground Omar El Adl writes about the latest goings-on in Egypt, and last but not least, Reverie Powell brings you the latest from the buzzing literary scene in Texas.

Jessie Stoolman, Editor-at-Large from Morocco, reports from Morocco and Qatar:

The 21st Annual Salon International de Tanger des Livres et des Arts just wrapped up on May 7 after four days of roundtables, workshops, concerts (including the iconic Moroccan rock band, Hoba Hoba Spirit), and appearances from world-renowned authors like Mohamed Kacimi (featured in our latest issue), Sapho, and Tahar Ben Jelloun (Prix Goncourt winner).  In conjunction with the book fair, Darna Theater’s Dakirat al Mostakbal – Memoires d’Avenir presented “Nous Sommes”, a piece outlining the lives of two young Moroccans that asks “[s]ommes-nous condamnés à n’être que ce que l’on nous sommes d’être?” Darna Theater is a local non-profit situated outside Tangier’s old city that provides community members opportunities in drama education. “Nous Sommes” was presented in both French and Darija (Moroccan Arabic.)

Don’t fret if you weren’t able to attend the book fair because there is still a chance to see Abdellah Taïa at the Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier on May 9, where he will present a brand-new translation of his novel, Un pays pour mourir, into Arabic (بلد للموت).  At the book fair, Taïa gave a conference about his writing and the difficulties facing society today which was structured as a conversation between him and young Tangerines. Taïa’s letter “Homosexuality Explained to My Mother” and an interview with the author appeared in Asymptote’s July 2012 issue.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The international literary news you won't find anywhere else.

It’s Friday and we’re back with the latest news from our Editors-at-Large, providing us with their personal roundups of the most exciting literary developments in their region. We kick off with Jessie Stoolman in Morocco, where there’s never a shortage of intriguing events and publications; Julia Sherwood in Slovakia takes us on a tour of the various cross-cultural literary encounters that have been occurring recently in the Czech Republic; and finally, Omar El Adl gives us some insight into the latest talks, discussions and publications that are taking place right now in Egypt. 

Jessie Stoolman, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Morocco: 

July was filled with literary events throughout Morocco, starting with a conversation between two Moroccan Prix Concourt winners, Leila Slimani and Tahar Ben Jelloun, at the Minzah Hotel, where they discussed “Comment écrire et publier un livre?” (“How to write and publish a book”) Another star Moroccan author (and painter), Mahi Benibine, whose novel Horses of God, inspired by the 2003 suicide attacks in Casablanca, was made into a critically-acclaimed film, presented his newest novel Le fou du roi at Librairie les insolites in Tangier.

Speaking of new publications from major Moroccan authors, Dar Toubkal’s newly released publication of the poet Mohammed Bennis’ الأعمال النثرية (Works of Prose) was just reviewed in Al-Hayat.

Still staying within the Tangier region, the Galerie Delacoix hosted artists, academics, and students for the الجسد الإجتماعي والمحيط الحضري (Espace urbain & corps social) program and internal working week. Among the participants was Moroccan-French artist and co-founder of the Cinémathèque du Tanger, Yto Berrada. Given continued action from the Al-Hoceima-based protest movement (حراك الريف), the geographer William Kurtz’s talk on “La Globalisation de la Région Tangier Al-Hoceima et son impact sur les inégalites sociales et spatiales” (“Globalization of the Tangier Al-Hoceima Region and its impact on social and spatial inequalities”) was particularly timely.

If that was not enough activity in Tangier, Librairie des Colonnes hosted Zahra Al-Khamleshi, who presented her most recent work, الحدود في شمال المغرب: آمال وآلام النساء الحمالات (Borders in Northern Morocco: Hope and Suffering of Women Porters) on the women who carry products between Ceuta (a Spanish enclave/colony in northern Morocco) and Morocco.

Moving further south, in Casablanca, Kabareh Cheikhats was back again. Their travelling show aims to shed light on the history of Cheikhats, who are often mischaracterized as exotic dancers. Historically, Cheikhats throughout the Maghreb were skilled poets, improvising verses on such controversial topics as resistance to colonization, which they sang and set to music at community gatherings.

Lastly, check out the “Lilipad” project, started by young Moroccan activist Sara Arsalane, which aims to collect books and distribute them to underserved schools throughout Morocco.

Julia Sherwood, Editor-at-Large, with all the latest news from the Czech Republic: 

On August 4, as we go to press, Czech poet and literary historian Petr Hruška and Georgian poet and musician Erekle Deisadze are reading from their works in the Ukrainian city of Lviv. Their performance brings to a close a 31-day long marathon tour of five cities, comprising Authors’ Reading Month (Měsíc autorského čtení or MAČ 2017), Central Europe’s largest literary festival. The readings, by two or more authors each day, are broadcast live and the recordings are available online. The festival’s founder Petr Minařík, whose publishing house Větrné mlýny is based in the Czech Republic’s second largest city Brno, has given a wide berth to capital cities, instead locating the festival in four other cities of similar size: Ostrava near the Polish border, Wrocław on the other side of the border in Poland, Košice in eastern Slovakia and, more recently, Lviv in Ukraine.

The guest country of this year’s festival, which kicked off in Brno on 1st July, is Georgia. This country in the Caucasus is fast becoming a trendy tourist destination, yet its literary riches are not all that well known in Central Europe. Thirty-one Georgian writers joined the tour, accompanied by acclaimed Czech authors, among them Ivan Klíma, Arnošt Goldflam, Ivan Binar, Marek Šindelka, Martin Reiner, Michal Viewegh and Jáchym Topol (whose 1995 novel Angel Station, just out from Dalkey Archive Press in Alex Zucker’s English translation, was reviewed by James Hopkin in last week’s Times Literary Supplement). A traditionally strong Slovak contingent was represented by poets Peter Repka and Ivan Štrpka, and fiction writers Balla, Monika Kompaníková, Ondrej Štefánik, Michal Havran, and Silvester Lavrík. Several Ukrainian and Polish writers and poets also took part in some of the readings.

One of the Polish festival participants, Zośka Papużanka, arrived in Brno fresh from another appearance, in Prague, with Czech writer Ivana Myšková. The two women read from their works at the (A)VOID Floating Gallery, a boat moored on the Vltava Riverbank, which serves as an art gallery and a venue for music, theatre and literary readings. Other writers reading there this summer include Ben Aaronovitch and Czech horror story writer Miloš Urban. The gallery provided a more than fitting venue for the launch of a bilingual Czech and English anthology, A Giant Barrel of Rotgut, that “celebrates the Vltava as a river of slain crocodiles, viziers and rotgut.” If that sounds intriguing, you can find out more in this interview with poet Sylva Fischerová on Radio Prague.

And, finally, emerging translators from the Czech (and Slovak) will be interested to hear that Underpass.co, an online journal for modern literature in translation, is seeking submissions specifically from these two languages. The journal aims to offer English-speaking readers a window into new countries, neighbourhoods, cultures, perspectives, and they are especially interested in stories with a strong sense of place.

Omar El Adl, Editor-at-Large, giving us the latest scoop from Egypt: 

Alia Mossallam presented a talk on August 3 in the Townhouse gallery in Downtown Cairo. The talk featured her text RAWI which deals with motherhood, writing, and revolutionary politics, according to Mada Masr. Mossallam has collected oral history testimonies in Nubia, Alexandria and Port Said, has been involved in alternative pedagogical structures in Cairo, and her dissertation focused on a popular history of Nasserist Egypt through stories and songs by people behind the 1952 revolution. The text was created as part of a long form essay workshop held in Cairo by 60pages, which describes itself as an international network of writers, artists, thinkers and scientists, based in Berlin. Other texts produced for 60pages include Arab Porn by Youssef Rakha (which will be published as a book featuring Rakha’s photography by Matthes and Seitz Berlin), Migrating the Feminine by Nora Amin and a forthcoming text by Amr Ezzat. The talk was held in Arabic, with a reading of the text in English.

Youssef Rakha is also to write a column as the central character from his Book of the Sultan’s Seal, Mustafa Çorbacı, according to his bimonthly newsletter. Rakha describes this development on his newsletter as follows:

“First, that mad newspaperman Mustafa Çorbacı has resolved to write a column. You may be familiar with Çorbacı from a certain, overrated Book of the Sultan’s Seal. In hopeless pursuit of the same meme, he has named his ephemeral effusions, “Postmuslim.” Raising vaguely relevant questions only to leave them grossly un-dealt with would not be untypical. But if mildly psychotic speculation on being in Cairo today holds some promise of amusement, do humour the unfortunate lunatic by reading and sharing his 400 words.”

According to Rakha, the column will appear printed in Al-Ahram Weekly as well as on this site every Friday starting from July 7.

****

Read More News:

Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest news from Brazil, Egypt, and Spain!

This week, we take off on tour just south of the equator, where Editor-at-Large for Brazil, Maíra Mendes Galvão, gives us the scoop on Indie Book Day and some big-time literary awards. Then it’s east to Egypt, where we’ll catch up with Editor-at-Large Omar El-Adl about some exciting recent and upcoming events. Finally in Spain, Editor-at-Large Carmen Morawski highlights new releases and a chance to win poetry collections!

Maíra Mendes Galvão, Editor-at-Large for Brazil, has the latest from the lit scene:

The National Library Foundation of Brazil has issued an open call for publishers from all over the world interested in translating and publishing works by Brazilian authors to send in their proposals. Selected works will be eligible for a grant. Publishers have until May 2 to apply.

Raduan Nassar, veteran Brazilian writer with a short but acclaimed bibliography, has made headlines after giving a politically-charged speech on February 17 when he accepted the Camões Prize, issued by the Ministry of Culture of Brazil in partnership with Portugal. Mr. Nassar has called out the present government’s controversial claim to power, calling it anti-democratic and pointing out specific instances of misconduct by the administration, the president’s cabinet, and the Supreme Court nominees.

The popular Plana Fair, catalyst of a movement to popularize self-publishing and small publishing houses in Brazil, is holding its fifth edition under the name Plana – Art Book Fair at the São Paulo Biennial building, taking over the ground floor and the mezzanine of the iconic Pavilion Ciccillo Matarazzo from March 17 to 19. Plana will feature around 150 national and international exhibitors and a parallel program of talks, screenings, performances, and workshops.

Brazil is taking part on this year’s Indie Book Day on March 18, an initiative to promote and popularize independent publishing. It is a concerted action with a simple proposition: to go to a bookstore, any bookstore, on this particular day, buy an independently published book and post a picture of it on social networks with the hashtag #indiebookday.

Casa Guilherme de Almeida, the São Paulo State museum dedicated to Modernist journalist, poet, and translator Guilherme de Almeida, is holding a two-day conference dedicated to the translation of classics—the 3rd Translation of Classics in Brazil Conference—with the theme Re-translations in Conversation. Speakers will focus on comparative efforts of the differences between the premises, procedures, and results of translations of the same classical works.

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Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

This week's literary news from Egypt, Bangladesh, the ALTA conference and on the recent Nobel Prize list.

Welcome to this edition of Asymptote’s weekly update, a hop, step, and jump tour de force bringing you the latest from three continents of literature in translation. To kick off, our Egyptian Editor-at-Large Omar El Adi sends us his bulletin, including news on literary prizes and an upcoming event in London. We then zoom in on Bangladesh, where Editor-at-Large for India Naheed Patel reports on recent festivals and the passing of Bangla authors. Also, US-based Assistant Editor Julia Leverone visited the ALTA conference so you didn’t have to. And finally Assistant Managing Editor Janani Ganesan gives us the round-up from the literary world on the Nobel Prize in Literature being awarded to Bob Dylan. 

Editor-at Large Omar El Adi has the latest literary news from Egypt:

The inaugural annual lecture of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation will be given by Palestinian author Anton Shammas at the British Library in London on 14 October. The jury for this year’s prize includes last year’s winning translator Paul Starkey, professor of Arabic Zahia Smail Salhi, writer and journalist Lucy Popescu, and literary consultant and publisher Bill Swainson. Paul Starkey’s 2015 win came for his translation of Youssef Rakha’s The Book of the Sultan’s Seal: Strange Incidents from History in the City of Mars (2014). An excerpt of Rakha’s third book Paulo (forthcoming in English) was featured in the Spring 2016 issue of Asymptote. The winner of the prize will be announced this December.

In Alexandria, Tara Al-Bahr, an interactive online platform, is launching its second print edition with original essays as well as translations into Arabic on the topics of cultural and artistic practices and urban change in contemporary Alexandria. Tara Al-Bahr launched in May this year, and its second printed edition came out on Thursday, 6 October.

The Facebook group Alexandria Scholars is commencing a series of talks, titled “The City Dialogue Series”, with the support of the Swedish Institute in Alexandria, and curated by the sociologist Amro Ali. The first lecture, “Alexandria and the search for meaning”, was on 10 October and explored solutions to the city’s problems “through the terrain of historical, urban, and philosophical analysis”. Future events involving writers, academics, political figures, and researchers have already been planned for November and December.

In publishing news, Mohamed Rabie’s Otared (2016) was released in English translation in September by AUC Press. The novel was shortlisted for the International Prize in Arabic Fiction in 2016 and is set in a dystopian post-revolutionary Egypt. An excerpt is available here.

Halal If You Hear Me, a forthcoming anthology of writings by Muslims who are queer, women, gender nonconforming or transgender, is calling for submissions. Editors Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo are looking for submissions of up to five poems or two essays, including a cover letter with contact info and a short bio. Those interested should email halalifyouhearme@gmail.com before 1 December, 2016.

Editor-at-Large for India Naheed Patel shares some stories from the neighbouring Bangladesh:

Next month sees Bangladesh’s capital revving up for the annual Dhaka Literary Festival, which runs from November 17-19.  The festival has been held at the historic Bangla Academy since 2012, and is directed and produced by Sadaf Saaz, Ahsan Akbar, and K. Anis Ahmed. In the face of numerous recent Freedom of Expression violations in Bangladesh, the festival marks a resurgence of Bangladeshi literary culture, reaching across a number of different disciplines and genres: from fiction and literary non-fiction to history, politics and society; from poetry and translations to science, mathematics, philosophy and religion. The festival has more than 20,000 attendees and past contributors include Vikram Seth, Tariq Ali, Rosie Boycott, William Dalrymple, Ahdaf Soueif, Shashi Tharoor, Jung Chang, and Pankaj Mishra as well famous writers of Bangla literature like Hasan Azizul Huq, Selina Hossain, Debesh Roy, and Nirmalendu Goon.

In August and September Bangladesh mourned the passing of two prominent Bangla poets. Author, poet, and playwright Syed Shamsul Haq died at the age of 81 in Dhaka on September 27, 2016, and renowned Bangladeshi poet Shaheed Quaderi passed away in New York at the age of 74 on August 28, 2016. Haq was given the Bangla Academy Award in 1966 and the Ekushey Padak, the highest national award of Bangladesh, in 1984. He was also honored with a Swadhinata Padak in 2000 for his contribution to Bangla Literature. Payer Awaj Paoa Jay’ [We Hear the Footsteps] and Nuruldiner Sara Jibon [The Entire Life of Nuruldin], his most popular plays, are considered to be cornerstones of Bangladeshi theatre. Shaheed Quaderi received the Ekushey Padak in the category of Language and Literature in 2011 and was previously awarded the Bangla Academy Award in 1973. Prominent Bengali scholars such as Kabir Chowdhury, Kaiser Haq, and Farida Majid have translated his poems into English.

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An Interview with Translator/Novelist Nael ElToukhy

"In a sense I am trying to secularize Arabic—a holy language for Muslims—through another holy language, Hebrew."

A novelist and translator of Hebrew literature into Arabic, Nael ElToukhy’s passion for Hebrew literature is “rare,” by his own admission, among students of the language in Arab universities. He moves with dexterity between different registers of colloquial and standard Arabic and his speech is often loaded with profanities, at other times with creative coinages. Venturing beyond from the Statist logic that led to the creation of Hebrew departments, ElToukhy interrogates the semitic roots of Arabic and Hebrew, presenting his thoughts on the two languages as a novelist and translator; the challenges that two semitic languages present, the similarities in trilateral roots and the prejudices facing their readers on either side. He has published a collection of stories and 4 novels, the latest of which, The Women of Karantina (2014), is available in translation.

OA: In a series of articles you wrote, you say you first studied Hebrew in university because your marks weren’t good enough to study English. What dictated your direction when you first became a translator?

NT: At first you are in line with what they [the publishers] want, more than what you want. Because you need to justify your existence, to justify the language you use, and in addition to this, being a young man, you don’t usually know what you want, but this comes with time and you become interested in some things more than others.

OA: How did your interests develop?

NT: There are many stages in this; first I was interested in the Israeli left, the radical left who’s against the occupation and is anti-Zionist, and now there has emerged a more interesting topic for me which is Arab Jews or Jews who came from Arab countries, I work on both but now my passion has shifted to the second topic and to themes such as how Arab Jews learned Hebrew and how Hebrew mixes with the Arabic of their grandparents, and then comparing their dialects and accents to Ashkenazi Jews who came from Europe. This gradually became more interesting than the radical Israeli left.

OA: How does this affect your translation process and your choice of texts?

NT: I was translating a chapter from a book which references a poem by an author called Hayim Nahman Bialik, titled “a poem to a bird,” and the text was written by a Moroccan Jew. He recounts that in school they had learned that there is a certain verse which contain the letters ح and ع, two very central letters. This is because Arab Jews, at least the first generations, used to pronounce the ح and ع, whereas the Ashkenazi pronounce the ح as a خ (kh) and the ع they almost don’t pronounce.

This became very important in Israeli society because if one pronounces the ع they are immediately recognizable as a Jew who came from an Arab country. Now these nuances have become blurred. In the text by this Moroccan Jew, he references a word which means ‘small chick’ and which contains both letters. The author says because the teacher was Ashkenazi, they did not learn the other pronunciation and learnt to say both letters the Ashkenazi way. When translating into Arabic, the obvious translation does not contain either letter so I had to be creative to find an equivalent which did. Eventually I was able to get both letters. So sometimes in translation you play around with language to be able to bring out this difference in translation.

As far as my choice of text, right now I am working on a novel by Almog Behar, a Jewish author of Iraqi origin. The protagonists are also of Iraqi or Moroccan origin. The author and the characters are both devout and there is a chapter which concerns Jewish temples, and specifically Eastern Jewish temples (meaning those which came from Arab countries). In these temples, they emphasize pronunciation, meaning what is the correct pronunciation and what is not, similar to pronunciation with regards to Quranic recitation.

So it is very important because, as opposed to Christianity, Judaism and Islam still speak their liturgical languages. In one chapter, the rabbi explains what letters today in Israel are mispronounced and which are not. This applies to many letters in modern Hebrew today which are pronounced differently because the Ashkenazi accent changes the Hebrew equivalents of a hard ط to a ’t’ and the ص becomes as a German Z. So this chapter brings up examples of words which if mispronounced become confused with other words. This is hell for a translator because you are trying to find Arabic equivalents which have the same letters the Rabbi mentions and there is a possibility that they will be confused with other Arabic terms which contain the same letters. It takes a lot of effort but what helps is the similarity between Arabic and Hebrew. The word “rabbi” also presented a challenge: the rabbi is a central figure in the novel. The word for that in Arabic حاخام (hakham) does not sound pleasant and when you make it plural it becomes حاخامات (hakhamat) and that doesn’t sound good either, not to mention the word has a certain political association. The Israeli equivalent to Al-Azhar, I made into حاخامية (hakhameya) and it still didn’t sound good, so I brought it back to its origin which is “hakeem” meaning wise man, from the word حكمة (hekma) or wisdom, as a Hakham is a wise man, and phonetically it makes sense, so Hakhameya became Beit El Hekma (house of wisdom), and Hakham became Hakeem.

I explained this in the introduction but with repeated use, the reader should understand that ‘wise man’, in a completely Jewish religious context, is a rabbi. I also kept using the word معبد (ma’bad) for temple and then decided on the word كنيس (Kanees), which shares the same root with the knesset. This word was used in the early 20th century by Arab intellectuals. The other one معبد (Ma’bad) might mean a Buddhist temple or anything else but كنيس (Kanees) is specific. Finally the word Jerusalem is Yerushalayim, at first I put it as اورشليم (Orshaleem), as it is a word which exists in Arabic as well.

The writer when he saw the draft said, why not القدس (Al-Quds)? But I wanted to get rid of these associations in the Arab reader’s mind and portray a Jewish, not Arab, Jerusalem. So the compromise was that in religious contexts, when it is mentioned it is now Yerushalayim, whereas in secular or everyday usage it became al-Quds.

There is a section where the protagonist goes to East Jerusalem and takes a stroll; over there it is all Quds, but when it’s a prayer, it’s Yerushalayim. Yahweh was a problem at first because in the middle centuries Jews used to translate Yahweh into “Allah” and it was no issue. But I chose to make it Yahweh. I wanted to remind the reader of the Jewish context, even though the author at one point translated the word into Allah, which was the one instance where I kept it. 

OA: You assume a particularly active reader?

NT: Yes. I am interested in a pre-Quranic Arabic particularly. The simplistic Arab imagination says that pre-Quranic history of Arabic is the Mu’allaqat, but I go further and interrogate the memory of the root language that gave rise to Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, etc. So when I say I want to remember Arabic in this state, I am also secularizing it by separating its history from the Quran. And in a sense I am trying to secularize Arabic—a holy language for Muslims—through another holy language, Hebrew. So this is the reader’s role for me; I am not trying to point them necessarily in a particular direction, but I use common trilateral roots and make it smooth enough that the reader will read it and not notice but if the same reader pays attention they will catch it.

OA: What does a secularization of Arabic hold for the attentive reader?

NT: At the very least, Arabic becomes an ordinary language and it will evolve. Whether it’s the classical of Quraysh or spoken dialects. I am in love with the Arabic language, and I see it as a very rich language, even in the context of Semitic languages, not as a bias but simply because it has been used as the lingua franca of a very large region, meaning it has been enriched and gave way to many variants. This linguistic variation is important, because as opposed to a standard Quranic language, it was an ordinary language where creativity is possible. For the same reason, I have an interest in Arabic colloquials.

There is a common idea that Arabic cannot express certain things, which I find absurd. The association with the Quran discourages people from being creative with language but if one has enough creativity, the language has the capacity. I would like the reader to remember this creativity and think of the Arabic language with regards to its respective historical development and not as a language which has been given to us divinely.

OA: In your own writing and in translation, how do you navigate the problematics of using the standard versus the colloquial?

NT: I use it whenever appropriate, for example there is a chapter set in red light district chapter in a Hebrew text, I used colloquial for this throughout. In Almog Behar’s book, almost all of it is in Modern Standard Arabic. For this text I felt that using dialect would’ve taken away from its language and given attention to my writing more than the talmudic, sacred atmosphere in the original. In my own writing, I use classical for narration and colloquial for dialect.

OA: In your novel The Women of Karantina, recreating Alexandria hinged almost entirely on language. The fictional Karantina and other aspects of the novel present a very different view of the city. Why did you strive to present this remapping of Alexandria?

NT: I wanted to set it in Alexandria and counter the image of the cosmopolitan city that most people have. Most of us were born after the Europeans left, so we never saw this cosmopolitan Alexandria. I wanted to present a different city: the dirty Alexandria with its prostitution, drugs and crime. In fact, I barely really talk about Alexandria: there is no space. The protagonists go and start the fictional Karantina as a separate neighbourhood and so it ends up not being the real Alexandria, rather an imagined one. The only place that has the most ties to Alexandria is the dialect. It was the most entertaining aspect of writing as my ear is very sensitive to dialects and changes in language. It takes place in the western part of Alexandria, off the coast and away from the sea, so the strongest connection is the language. I would even say the novel could have taken place in Cairo had it not been for the dialect.

OA: Articulating identity through language informs your translation and writing in a profound manner. How do you expect others to surmount translation challenges with regards to your own writing?

NT: Yes, I think of language as the cornerstone of identity. I am more interested in language more than identity; there is a huge debate in Israel when it comes to eastern Jews for example when it comes to language and so hebrew has also influenced and come into this. There is also huge variation in Alexandrian dialect that I sought to present.

Keeping this in mind, there are some compromises that a translator- and more importantly an author- must keep in mind. You write and then you see how it is rendered in translation, not the other way around. I would not keep the untranslatability of any phrase or word in mind as I write. You must have enough wisdom to know what cannot be translated. There is an unspoken agreement between yourself and your native reader that you are presenting her with riddles, and hidden information that is inaccessible to a foreign reader. I did not even think that my novel would be translated, but despite this, I think it is a successful translation and what is important is that the ‘soul’ of the text is transmitted, which I believe to be between tragedy and comedy, between reality and cartoonish absurdism. It moves between parodical academic rhetoric and completely absurdist passages. What is important is that this is transmitted to a foreign reader: that they are able to make this distinction between these two registers in writing. But whether a foreign reader can understand that this is in Alexandrian or Cairene- you give up this idea and make peace with it.

 

OA: Are there any complications to translating Israeli writing and publishing given the discourse around normalization in Egypt and the Arab world?

NT: It is easy to publish the translated book but difficult to pay royalties to an Israeli institution, as this is seen as a form of normalization. Fortunately, younger writers give it up to circumvent the politics. There was an anthology of anti-war poetry, dealing with Gaza and all the authors were receptive. Almog Behar as well, had the royalties to the book in Arabic, so these issues were avoided. It is usually better for me to talk to an individual (an author) rather than an institution. This does not always circumvent politics; the first book I translated from Hebrew was Idith Zertal’s Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood.

A book about death in Israel, inspired by Benedict Anderson’s ‘Imagined Communities’. Anderson says death is used to create identity, and the author explores this idea from the 1920s until Yitzhak Rabin’s death, as well as issues relating to the holocaust, such as how the survivors were portrayed and collective memory. I worked on it independently without solicitation and I spent 8 years translating it. At the time I did not know anyone in Israel. When I did meet someone in Israel, I asked for the author’s email and I emailed her and told her that I really liked her book and was almost finished translating it but that there would be an issue with paying royalties. She refused to waive them and said she was also concerned the book might be ‘read wrongly in Egypt’, fearing it would be read in a propagandistic way. I published it anyway, as uncomfortable as I was with it, because I did not like that I did it without her involvement but I had worked on it for 8 years. Although it received little recognition in Egypt, perhaps as divine punishment.

OA: How would you describe an emerging translator’s access- especially in the context of Hebrew- to publishing in Egypt?

For Hebrew, there is a gap between students studying Hebrew and cultural production. For a middle-class student in an Egyptian university, there is a separation of studying the language and literary or cultural circles. My exposure to this came from my interest in writing. The professors, for instance, have no interest in literary translation. There are some who are excellent at what they do, specifically in the field of linguistics, but they have no connection to culture, and they would never publish in a cultural journal, only an academic one. In some way, I feel a certain pressure- not as a novelist who also translates from Hebrew- but because I am truly passionate about the language, and that is a rare thing to find.

*****

What’s New in Translation? January 2016

So many new translations this month!—Here's what you've got to know, from Asymptote's own.

Carlos Velázquez, The Cowboy Bible (Restless Books, January 2016). Translated by Achy Obejas—review by Selina Aragón, Spanish Social Media Manager

The Cowboy Bible (La Biblia Vaquera) is Carlos Velazquez’ second book, which contains two fictional and three nonfictional stories, plus two neither-fiction-nor-nonfiction texts and two epilogues. They are all set in the land of PopSTock!, for which there is a map at the beginning of the book.

The Cowboy Bible is also a character that metamorphoses into other characters (The Western Bible, The Cowgirl Bible, etc.) who live and act in different times and spaces but share the same talent for entering the dark alleyways of life. Despite their morally questionable actions, wrestlers, drunkards, DJs, street-food sellers, whose “legendary” deeds go from writing songs about drug dealers to crowning a Queen of Piracy in reality shows, become underground heroes equivalent to Mexican popular culture icons:

“I went dressed as a Cartesian seminarist. As soon as the guy in charge of composing the soundtrack to reflect the wrestling audience’s passions saw me take a step forward the ring, he put on a song by the great Sonora Dinamita.”

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