Place: Palestine

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

November 28, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Linnea Gradin, and Zohra Salih

The latest literary news from Palestine, India, and Sweden!

This week, our editors-at-large report on the rise of audiobooks, a festival spotlighting indigenous Indian literature, and an award-winning Palestinian memoir. From visions of Paris from a prison cell to a whistling naming tradition, read on to find out more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

Palestinian author Nasser Abu Srour, recently released from Israeli imprisonment, has won the prestigious 2025 Prix de la littérature arabe for his powerful prison memoir, Je suis ma liberté, translated into the French by Stéphanie Dujols. The award ceremony was held at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris on November 18, coinciding with PEN International’s Day of the Imprisoned Writer. His memoir, written over 33 years inside Israeli prisons and smuggled out piece by piece, chronicles his experiences behind bars and his resilience in the face of oppression. It originally appeared in Arabic in 2022 titled Hikaayet Jidaar (the story of a wall) and translated into the English as The Tale of a Wall by Luke Leafgren. READ MORE…

Poetry’s Combinations and Doublings of Reality: An Interview with Peter Cole

November 17, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Daniel Yadin

To translate is to listen past the statue and the slogans, until the poem’s raw anxiety and unexpected sympathy finally speak.

Peter Cole, a MacArthur Fellow and a Professor in the Practice at Yale, is a poet and a translator from Hebrew and Arabic. His past translation projects include the Hebrew poetry of Muslim and Christian Spain, the poetry of Kabbalah, and the works of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali. In October, New York Review Books brought out On the Slaughter, Cole’s translated selection of poems by Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), the Ukrainian-born Jew who became not only the pre-eminent Hebrew poet of his time, but also the major cultural figure of both the Jewish diaspora and the nascent Jewish community in Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine. Bialik is still regarded as something of the patron saint of modern Hebrew literature.

Recently, I paid Cole a visit in New Haven. Walking along the harbor, sitting over tea and dried apricots at his table, and, later, conversing over email, we discussed the mists surrounding the complex and contested figure of Bialik; October 7 and its genocidal aftermath in Gaza; how translation fits into the matrix of history, poetry, and ideology; and more.

Daniel Yadin (DY): I’d imagine that many of our readers are hearing about Bialik for the first time, though he’s an institution in the Jewish world. Bialik is the poet of modern Hebrew—at least, the granddad of the bunch. In your introduction to On the Slaughter, you talk about the ways in which you present a counter-reading of the poet. I agree you’re reading against the grain here. Would you say you’re also translating against the grain?

Peter Cole (PC): At the most basic level I’d say I was actually translating with the grain of the poetry—and certainly its granularity, since translation as I know and love it entails the slippery business of trying to give an honest, if fabricated, account of one’s readings and what Blake calls their minute particulars. That’s “fabricated” as in constructed or woven, a made thing.

DY: Almost tactile.

PC: Almost and then some. I’m trying to bring a compound of literary and historical alertness to my encounter with these poems. At the same time, I’m also translating against the grain of the received version of Bialik, who—as you note—was a titan of Hebrew poetry in a public way that may be hard for Americans to wrap their minds around. Some 100,000 people attended his 1934 funeral in Tel Aviv—which is to say, half of the Jewish population of British Mandatory Palestine.

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What’s New in Translation: November 2025

November 10, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Henry Gifford, Jason Gordy Walker, Liliana Torpey, and Nichole Gleisner

New work from India, Serbia, France, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Iran, Spain, Lithuania, Palestine, and the Vietnamese diaspora!

This month, we’re bringing reviews of eleven different titles from eleven different regions, from a trilingual text of experimental fiction that veers between Vietnamese and English, a visceral and psychically frenetic portrait of a marriage gone wrong, a rich collection from a master Iranian poet that gestures towards his remarkable life, and the latest metafiction from a Spanish literary giant. 

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Dog Star by Nabarun Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Subha Prasad Sanyal, Seagull Books, 2025

Review by Jason Gordy Walker

Something’s rotten in the city of Kolkata. A corrupt managerial class—within which mad scientists and war-mongers play a major role—has conspired with local authorities to capture, confine, and starve as many canines as possible. While the city’s “dead serf-servants and healthful, cellphone-carrying ever-connected mummies and balloons” stagger through their dystopia, the dogs have disappeared from the urban bustle, and no one cares. Animal rights groups have been eliminated, and in the way of Nazi death camps, the system targets even newborn pups. What’s a dog to do in these last dog days? “Bark! Bark!” replies the snappy refrain of Dog Star, the lyrical, subversive, and highly re-readable novella by Bengali writer and poet Nabarun Bhattacharya, delivered in a kinetic English by Subha Prasad Sanyal, who has doubtlessly advanced this innovative author’s reputation in world literature.

A self-proclaimed fable, Dog Star leads the reader through dark alleys where street dogs—“nerikuttas”—hide from “pincers,” form alliances, trade information about current dangers, and strategize escape plans, looking to the constellation “Lubdhok, aka Dogstar, aka Sirius aka Alpha Canis Majoris” for liberation. These survivors, along with their unlikely feline allies, are anthropomorphized in their emotions and dialogues, and their plight, although set in West Bengal, is familiar enough to seem representative of any place under political (dis)order. The Netanyahu regime’s genocide against Gaza comes to mind, for example, as do the active “detention centers” in the US: “They’ll yank and drag you by your neck with the pincers to the caged car. Then throw you in.” Bhattacharya does not avoid visceral descriptions of animal torture, but he balances its brutality with astute irony, giving the murderers absurd lines like: “We must pay heed that there aren’t ridiculous expenses.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 31, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Bethlehem Attfield, Carol Khoury, and Veronica Gisondi

The latest from Nigeria, Palestine, and Italy!

In this week’s round-up of global literary news, our editors cover a progressive writing workshop in Milan, an honouring of a major Palestinian poet, and a celebration of African writing in Lagos. Read on to find out more!

Veronica Gisondi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Italy

When engaging with texts and their authors’ experiences, distance often becomes the instrument through which meaning is managed and subjective responses modulated—whether in reading, writing, criticism, or translation. Through the conflation of the personal with the private (and the classification of the latter as a “non-political” domain), the innermost truths of human experience have largely been excluded from public discourse. Lea Melandri’s scrittura di esperienza (experiential writing) offers a radical alternative to this logic—which stems from the same matrix that historically split mind and body, reason and emotion—by reuniting personal life and social language.

In a one-day workshop hosted by Milan’s Collettivo ZAM (Zona Autonoma Milano), Melandri—a leading Italian feminist thinker, journalist, and writer—introduced a small group of participants to a method born out of her involvement with non-authoritarian pedagogy and feminist movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. In the wake of feminism’s autocoscienza, which first revealed the systemic origins of individual struggle, Melandri treats “the self” as an archive containing “millennia of history,” acknowledging that most of it lies beyond our awareness. “The self has been reduced to the particular experience of an individual,” noted Melandri as she briefed us on the day ahead. “Feminism has taught us that personal lives aren’t history’s waste, but constitute its core.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

October 24, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Andriana Hamas, and Charlie Ng

Literary updates from the Philippines, Bulgaria, and Hong Kong!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us around the world for the latest in literary news. From the efforts of Filipino literati for Palestine, to Bulgaria’s reckoning with the swiftly changing modern world and insightful essays and reviews on Hong Kong literature in translation, read on to learn more!

Alton Melvar M Dapanas, Editor-at-Large, Reporting from the Philippines

On 9 October, 2025, the feminist Filipino indie publisher Gantala Press debuted another monumental anthology at the Fine Arts Gallery of the University of the Philippines Diliman. The book, titled ‘Pagkat Tayo Man ay May Sampaga: New Philippine Writing and Translation for a Free Palestine, unites a vast range of voices in solidarity with Palestinian liberation.

The anthology was released by Gantala Press’s imprint, Publikasyong Iglap, which specialises in publishing timely literary works that address pressing ethnopolitical issues. It was co-edited by the press’ founder, Faye Cura, with Joi Barrios of the University of California Berkeley and UP Diliman professors, essayist Sarah Raymundo and fictionist-critic Rolando B. Tolentino.

‘Pagkat Tayo Man ay May Sampaga includes original writings from Filipino authors, including Luisa Igloria, the former Poet Laureate of Virginia, and Filipino-language translations of works by Palestinian writers such as the late Refaat Alareer and Fady Joudah. Alongside these new writings and translations, the anthology spans in-depth essays examining socially engaged writing, translation, and the anti-imperialist movement, supplemented by a practical teaching guide. READ MORE…

The Burden of History: A Review of Batool Abu Akleen’s 48kg

September 17, 2025  |  in Reviews  |  by Christina Chatzitheodorou

48kg . . . does not hide the Zionist intention behind abstractions, but rather confronts us with the stark realities of a genocidal war.

48kg by Batool Abu Akleen, translated from the Arabic by Batool Abu Akleen, Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti, and Yasmin Zaher, Palestine, Tenement Press, June 2025

Batool Abu Akleen’s bilingual collection of poems, 48kg, is not solely a powerful literary work; rather, it is a testimony of the genocide that has been wrought upon Gaza for the past two years, written in a poetic verse and style. Her writing is urgent, heart-breaking, honest, and brutal; every line lingers long after reading.

A blend between personal witness and poetic verse, the collection was translated from the Arabic by Akleen herself along with Graham Liddell, Wiam El-Tamami, Cristina Viti, and Yasmin Zaher. The close collaboration ensured that the urgency of her voice was not lost in translation. Indeed, her first-hand experience of the genocidal war on Gaza is not hidden in gentle language, and the bilingual nature of the text puts the original Arabic side-by-side with its English counterparts. In translation, Akleen endeavors to convey her experience of genocide to a broader, non-Arabic speaking audience.

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: September 2025

September 15, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Christopher Alexander, Liliana Torpey, Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Regan Mies, and Xiao Yue Shan

New publications from Palestine, Afghanistan, Italy, Senegal, France, Belgium, Serbia, Russia, Poland, and Kyrgyzstan!

Ten titles, ten countries! This month, we’re presenting reviews of a wide-ranging text of image philosophy in the age of virtual reality; a Russian master’s memoirs of his infamous literary friends; poetry anthologies featuring testimonies from the genocide in Gaza and the bold voices of Afghan women; a delicate and revelatory Serbian novel parsing lineage and dementia; and so much more. . .

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From Language to Language: The Hospitality of Translation by Souleymane Bachir Diagne, translated from the French by Dylan Temel, Other Press, 2025

Review by Xiao Yue Shan

Power is domination—at least, that’s how it’s been overarchingly conceived. Though the concept abstracts out to a vast array of actualities, from the centralized to the diffused, the individual to the plural, the Foucauldian and the Weberian, the most immediate and base display of human power is that of one subject being undermined by another. Translation, then, as an intersectional arena between two bodies that are as similar as they are different, is an optimal stage by which to study the varying dynamics of power; but especially within the postcolonial context, it has commonly begun with the premise that translation is a dominating act, with one more powerful language exercising its patterns, definitions, and cultural values over another. In From Language to Language, the Senegalese philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne wants to build his theories on a different foundation.

It may seem that the closer one looks at translation, the less feasible an equilibrium seems—at least, from the outside. For bilingual or multilingual persons, however, the idea of equal values for different languages is simply fact; the hosts of multiple languages are likely to regard them as equally essential components, regardless of any diglossic differences in fluency, utility, or geographical relevance. As a speaker of Wolof, French, and English, Diagne is in this camp, and opens this English edition of From Language to Language with a personal anecdote on his family’s migration, which ends with the determination that his children should “live out their different identities and the languages that expressed them with self-assurance as pride.” His own multilingualism therefore places him at a position more primed to think of translation less as a sequence of conquests, and more as a rendezvous of common goals, whether that be the making of a fully-fledged individual, or of a more varied and generous world. There is, he says, a “gratitude and equality within a shared humanity, which is at the very heart of translation.” READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

September 12, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Bethlehem Attfield and Carol Khoury

The latest in literary news from Nigeria and Palestine!

This week, our editors report on the literature that testifies to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, new initiatives to promote writing from the Global Majority, and exciting technological initiatives to preserve heritage and indigenous languages across Africa.

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

PEN’s spotlight on Palestinian literature is more vibrant than ever. In a recent dispatch, we featured Children of the Dew by Palestinian writer Mohammed Al-As‘ad, soon arriving in English thanks to translators maia tabet and Anaheed Al-Hardan, and the upcoming anthology Palestine – 1 (Comma Press, October 2025), which reimagines the 1948 Nakba through speculative fiction. Now, English PEN and the Booker Prize Foundation have announced the six winners of the brand-new “PEN Presents x International Booker Prize,” designed to support translators from the Global Majority. Among the winners are two Arabic-language books: the Sudanese title Ireme by Stella Gaitano, translated by Mayada Ibrahim and Najlaa Eltom, and the Palestinian title Playing with Soldiers by Tariq Asrawi, translated by Anam Zafar. As both Sudan and Palestine are sites of enduring crimes against humanity (to say the least), this announcement reminds us that literature is a profound test of our shared humanity. Both works have world English rights available, promising more stories—not only devastating news—for global audiences.

While Gaza City may be facing unimaginable challenges as we read and write these lines, the people of Gaza are definitely not off the map; they’re not “there,” they’re very much “here.” They’re making their voices heard loud and clear through literature that bursts with resilience and hope. Further evidence of this exists in We Are Still Here: An Anthology of Resilience, Grief, and Unshattered Hope from Gaza’s University Students, which gathers raw, courageous stories, poems, essays, and testimonies from students now living through unimaginable trauma. Edited by Jacob Norris and Zahid Pranjol, these pieces are like snapshots of real-time courage, proving that words can be a powerful act of survival and hope. READ MORE…

A Marred and Martyred Language: An Interview with Ahmad Almallah on Writing from the Borderlands

August 27, 2025  |  in Interviews  |  by Alton Melvar M Dapanas

For you to understand poetry, you must see the human action it reflects and the one that gave it form on the page.

Palestinian poet Ahmad Almallah’s second collection, Border Wisdom, is a searing love song of longing, memory, and language. It is a heart-wrenching evocation of the poet’s mother, Nawal, and of the poet’s own identity, familial lineage, and their occupied homeland. Woven with epigraphs from Ahmad Shawqi and Emily Dickinson, the collection propels itself smoothly between English and Arabic with erasure poetry, Arabic khatt, shape-poems, and English prose that chart the poet’s topographies of Philadelphia, Beirut, Vermont, and Bethlehem, along with the reimagined terrain of his mother’s Amman and al-Khalil. 

Border Wisdom pulsates with the poet’s estrangements: from his home, from his father, from the contours of his own memory. And echoing through as though an aftershock is a disclosure from the book’s last few pages: “Dear reader, I’ve been pretending all along to have a second language. Actually/in reality/basically/essentially/ I don’t know anything in Arabic.” 

In this conversation, I spoke with Dr. Almallah about Border Wisdom, mistranslations, and his labyrinthine poetics of negotiation between Arabic and English.

Alton Melvar M Dapanas (AMMD): Your second poetry collection, Border Wisdom, was published by Winter Editions in 2023. How did the poems in this collection come together over time? And what has the experience of sharing this work with the world been like for you?

Ahmad Almallah (AA): The poems began to come together before and after my mother’s disappearance from this world. The world of borders did not allow me to be by her side in her final hours. It was in 2021; I was trying to be there for her but the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) launched a large operation to quell protests over kicking people out of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, and Gaza ended up being hit the hardest as Israel was flexing its military power on innocent Palestinians as has been for seventy-seven years now.

At that point, I chose to leave the West Bank to be with my family in the US. A week after that I got news that my mother was no longer of the living. I was advised not to go back. I found myself flipping through the poems of Emily Dickinson and I happened on the line “there is a finished feeling at the grave.” It was then that I decided to go back to Palestine. The first thing that came to my mind when I walked into the room where my mother spent the final days of her life was that she was not dead. She had just disappeared. And the same thought stayed with me when I visited her grave. I wasn’t there to witness her body put in the ground. This is when I began to hold onto the idea of disappearance as an alternative to death. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: August 2025

August 11, 2025  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Eric Bies, Justin Goodman, Mathilde Hjertholm Nielsen, and Xiao Yue Shan

The latest from Palestine, France, Germany, Brazil, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan, Canada, Cuba, Argentina, Slovakia, and China!

This month’s round-up of newly released titles spans twelve titles across twelve countries. We’ve got a profound and lucid collection compiled of diaries from the genocide in Gaza; a readdressing of womanly sacrifice in the domestic realm; an Argentinian novel reinventing the history of Italy’s famed “Park of the Monsters”; the long-awaited esoteric and experimental tome from German writer Michael Lentz; essays and textual riches from the father of surrealism; and much, much more. . .

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Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide by Nahil Mohana, Sondos Sabra, Ala’a Obaid, and Batool Abu Akleen, translated from the Arabic by Basma Ghalayini and Ayah Najadat, Comma Press, 2025

Review by Justin Goodman

Similar to the intimate testimonies of Atef Abu Said’s Don’t Look Left and Plestia Alaqad’s The Eyes of Gaza, Voices of Resistance compiles the diaries of four Gazan women, tracing their thoughts as they mourn their martyred, fear their decimation, celebrate the Palestinian people, and sacrifice meals for the sake of birthday pastries. Together, Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala’a Obaid highlight what Gillian Slovo describes in her introduction as both a beauty “in [their] honesty and spirit” and a horror as they gain “a whole new vocabulary for describing the sounds of different bombs.” This latter is compiled by Mohana in a list running half a page long, as she distinguishes the subtleties between “Bouf” (aerial bombing) and “Dddof” (artillery shelling). Most importantly, however, she adds: “. . . we have begun to lose our hearing.”

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

August 8, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Christina Chatzitheodorou, and Sofija Popovska

The latest from Palestine, North Macedonia, and Greece!

This week, our editors bring news of new publications continuing long-running literary genealogies, notable awardees of the PEN Translates grants, and the process of turning a lauded Greek writer’s home into an exhibition space. 

Sofija Popovska, Editor-at-Large, reporting from North Macedonia

Going back to one’s roots can be an exercise of remembering what moves us. In her novel Tri Marii (The Three Marias), published recently by Ars Lamina Press, Macedonian author Olivera Kjorveziroska examines multiple iterations of the origin concept: as literary influence, as folk practice, and as the force from and towards which all human life is drawn—love.

Originally from Kumanovo, Kjorveziroska (b. 1965) now lives and works in Skopje. Her writing has been translated into many languages, including English, French, Hungarian, and Albanian, among others, and she also works as an editor and literary critic. Being someone who reads for a living is a crucial aspect of Kjorveziroska’s life; in her own words: “If . . . I had to choose between doing something else and writing a lot more, or working in publishing and not writing at all, I would probably choose the latter, because this is the only industry I feel at home in.” This love of and proficiency in reading finds its embodiment in her writing, including in Tri Marii, which is intertextual and allusive both literarily and culturally. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

June 20, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News  |  by Carol Khoury, MARGENTO, and Wambua Muindi

The latest literary news from Palestine, Kenya, and Romania!

This week, our editors-at-large take us from memorial ceremonies in Kenya to a colloquium in Brussels, exploring the life and legacy of celebrated literary figures, exciting prize nominations, and cross-cultural events. Read on to find out more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine

Palestinian writer and poet Ibrahim Nasrallah has been nominated to the longlist for the 2026 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, better known as the “American Nobel” for its global reputation and the extent of its sway in the world of literature. Nasrallah’s much-acclaimed novel, Time of White Horses, stands as the only Arabic-language novel among this year’s nine distinguished finalists, another significant achievement for Arabic literature in the international arena.

Presented biannially by the University of Oklahoma’s World Literature Today, the Neustadt Prize recognizes outstanding literary achievement in all genres and languages. The winner, who will receive a $50,000 award, will be announced at the Neustadt Lit Fest in October 2025.

Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses is a sweeping narrative charting the course of Palestine from the twilight of Ottoman rule to the earth-shattering convulsions of the 1948 Nakba, all refracted through the lens of an imaginary village. The book, celebrated for its blend of documentary realism and imaginative storytelling, has previously been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and is celebrated for its nuanced analysis of collective memory and identity. READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

May 23, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury and Wambua Muindi

The latest in literary news from Palestine and Kenya!

This week, our Editors-at-Large take us into the inner workings of the literary scenes in Palestine and Kenya. From the debut of Gaza Publications, a publication dedicated to the promotion and protection of Palestinian stories, to the rich and discursive literary salons of Nairobi, read on to learn more.

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

A new publishing house, Gaza Publications (manshurat gazza), has been launched by Palestinian writer and editor Husam Maarouf, aiming to safeguard Palestinian narratives threatened by erasure amid ongoing conflict. Maarouf, speaking from Gaza, emphasized that the project was born out of “the fear of obliteration and the erasures that threaten the Palestinian story,” particularly the untold testimonies of those who lived through the 1948 Nakba and subsequent wars.

The Gaza Publications team includes Maarouf as founder and director, visual artist Lamis Al Sharif as consultant and coordinator, and Yemeni designer Nina Amer. Despite severe challenges—including war, frequent internet outages, and communication barriers—the team remains committed to amplifying Palestinian voices, especially those shaped by the harsh realities of Gaza.

READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

April 18, 2025  |  in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup  |  by Carol Khoury, Kathryn Raver, and Miranda Mazariegos

The latest literary news from Palestine, France, and the United States!

This week, our editors take us behind-the-scenes at book festivals, from a festival spotlighting Latin American literature in Los Angeles to Paris’s Festival du Livre. From workshops on reimagining fairytales to a look at the only Palestinian-owned publishing house in America, read on to find out more!

Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France

Beneath the glittering glass ceiling of the Grand Palais, Paris welcomed over 114,000 attendees for its fourth annual Festival du Livre last weekend. The festival is a hub for publishing professionals and book lovers alike, promoting both Francophone and international literature to French-speaking readers and offering insights into the literary and cultural landscape of today.

Among an extraordinarily diverse selection of programming, a few of my personal favorites included a workshop on reimagining classic fairytales and a seminar on resisting the language of fascism—an examination of far-right language and how it is actively influencing popular discourses “blurring traditional political markers and weakening collective memory.”

Thousands of authors and publishers took part in the festival, as they do every year. Among them was Moroccan-French author Leila Slimani, whose previous works have been highly praised and have even been awarded prestigious prizes like the Prix Goncourt (Chanson douce, 2016). Slimani’s newest novel, J’emporterai le feu, was released in January of this year and concludes her Le Pays des autres trilogy.

In fact, Moroccan literature was the festival’s special cultural focus this year. Thirty-two publishers of Moroccan voices were present at the festival, most of them taking part in one of the many events offered at the Moroccan Pavilion—a dedicated space designed to highlight the country’s multilingual literary tradition and its “image as a cultural crossroads between tradition and modernity.” The events included a number of creative writing workshops, author talks, and even a seminar on translation and cultural reception of the Moroccan novel.

The Festival du Livre wasn’t the only event on which French readers could slake their thirst this month. Hors Limites, a festival hosted by the Association Bibliothèques en Seine Saint-Denis, seeks to highlight contemporary literature and address reading as a dialogue between creators and consumers. This festival, though smaller, still featured dozens of workshops and author meetings in Ile-de-France.

Among the authors present was Palestinian author Karim Kattan (whose 2021 interview with Asymptote can be found here). Kattan’s most recent novel, Eden à l’aube, was recently awarded the 2024 Prix de la Cagnotte. An English translation of his first novel, Le Palais des deux collines, was recently released by Foundry Editions. READ MORE…