Olivia Snaije writes a portrait of Dujols, for Publishing Perspectives, January 2016
Arabic literature is notoriously difficult to translate — not only for the complexity of the language but also for the variety of dialects and the challenge of making the prose accessible to Western readers. Arabic literary translators are few and far between, and the Arabic-to-English translators have become, in their world, akin to rock stars, thanks to the establishment in 2005 of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic literary translation. In France, although translators are given more recognition …

By Jabbour Douaihy, for Le Monde des Livres, November 19th, 2015
Photo credit: La Croix
 
We who, in the late 1970s, retreated, fleeing to Paris, during a first war, civil war among other things, which devastated Beirut and Lebanon as a whole, with its share of violence, where mere membership to a given community transformed men into targets. We who, today watch today in shock the tearful faces, sadly familiar to us, of the victims’ parents who have fallen simply they were there, a mother or a friend who seeks to understand, who cannot admit, and who, with the …

This article was commissioned to the author by Handelsblatt, September 25, 2015
Things must seem a little familiar for the Europeans, at least for the older generations. The images are the same, even if this time they are in color and are shown in their living rooms, instead of being black-and-white pictures viewed at the local movie theater. They are the images from the years after both World Wars, images of flight and displacement. Horrible images.

This collection of texts was commissioned and published by The Guardian, on September 12th 2015. Photo credit: Ed Alcock, MYOP Diffusion, The Guardian,
The refugee crisis, though long in the news, has suddenly captured the world’s attention. But what are the underlying causes, and what should individuals and governments do to help? Samar Yazbek responded (below) – along with Orhan Pamuk, Arundhati Roy, Elif Shafak, Ahdaf Soueif, Pankaj Mishra,

Watch on youtube!
Yazbek: “Isis kills 10 people, and the world is outraged. Asad kills thousands, and the world watches in silence”.

Below is an excerpt, read the whole interview here.
(…)
Youssefl Rakha: I go on about this so as to put you in the picture: the nineties, when I started showing my writing to people—that’s when the clash between younger prose poets and older guardians of the poetic ancien régime took place. This is partly of course what The Crocodiles is about. So, when I started writing, I found myself writing prose poems though I thought I wanted to write short stories.