/Fractured Time by Monther Jawabreh/ Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems is Ghassan Zaqtan’s tenth poetry collection, published in 2012. The poems were translated by Fady Joudah, bringing some of Zaqtan’s best poetry to English-language readers. Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan is one of the most famous and original poets writing in Arabic […]
/photo © Khaled Jarrar/ Victims of a Map is a beautiful bilingual anthology of Arabic poetry, including works of Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al Qasim and Adonis. The three of them are absolute stars in the world of (Arabic) poetry. Alongside the original Arabic, this book includes thirteen poems by Darwish and a long work by Adonis […]
/Dunya Mikhail, photo via Vimeo/ Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail continues to amaze me. I recently read The War Works Hard, Mikhail’s first poetry collection translated to English (beautifully translated by Elizabeth Winslow). The War Works Hard was also the first translation of poems by a female Iraqi poet published in the United States (it was published […]
/Cairo by Nour El Demerdash/ Desert Songs of the Night: 1500 Years of Arabic Literature is a new anthology of Arabic poetry and prose, published last year by Saqi Books. It reminded me of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (2010, W.W. Norton & Company), which I really liked, so I decided […]
/Textiles of a city by Najla Shawket Fitouri, image © Noon Arts/ Libya, where art thou? That is a question I already asked – a lot of times. There are no certain answers, but I still manage to find Libya and its people, to catch a small glimpse of their lives. It doesn’t happen through media and […]
/Bethany village in 1942, photo via 14WeeksWorthOfSocks/ After Zionism: One State For Israel and Palestine is a collection of essays by some of the world’s leading thinkers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Diana Buttu, Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe, Philip Weiss, Saree Makdisi, Jeremiah Haber, Jonathan Cook, Joseph dana, Jeff Halper, Sara Roy […]
/Danger Effondrement (Danger Collapse) in Aulnay-sous-Bois (North-Eastern Paris banlieue), photo © Léopold Lambert, 2005/ I was really looking forward to reading Andrew Hussey’s new book The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and its Arabs, and it didn’t dissapoint me, on the contrary – it held up to my expectations. To fully understand both the social and political […]
/image © The Librarian of Basra/ Here is a real-life hero story. Alia Muhammad Baqer was the chief librarian in the Al Basrah Central Library in Basra (Iraq). Baqer saved around thirty thousand books from destruction during the Iraq War, including a biography of Muhammad from around 1300. Her story inspired two children’s books, one of them being The Librarian […]
/Rafik Schami, photo by Andreas Pohlmann/ First of all, I have to say that I am so happy I discovered Rafik Schami and Syria through his eyes. A Hand Full of Stars (published in 1987) is a book about a teenage boy who wants to be a journalist. The book is actually his diary, in […]
/Wadi Rum, photo © Ivana Perić, MER/ “Take a walk” is pretty much my answer to everything life throws in front of me. Walking can heal you, change your perspective, give space to new ideas, put your mind to rest, it can connect you with nature, landscapes, buildings, other people, yourself. It is no wonder I really […]
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