Search results for ""Banipal Books""

Main feature: London-based Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh. Poems by late Lebanese poet Bassam Hajjar now read widely as "inspirational" and poems by Iraqi exile Adnan Mohsen. Three writers from Syria, Morocco and Tunisia explore their respective countries' dilemmas: Khalil Sweileh, Nassima Raoui and Chafik Targui. Plus 2019 IPAF shortlist novels.

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Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iraqis have created a revolution in literature, writing nearly 600 novels. Banipal's first issue of 2018 focuses on this unexpected journey in Iraqi fiction with articles and chapters from selected novels. Plus two poets and the 6 Shortlisted novels of the 2018 IPAF.

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Banipal 52 – New Fiction presents new works by Habib Abdulrab Sarori, Soheir el-Masadfa, Waheed Taweela, Nadia Alkowkabani, Jokha Alharthi, Atef Abu Saif, Shukri al-Mabkhout, Jana Elhassan, Ahmed el-Madini, Hammour Ziada and Lina Hawyan Elhassan, all translated from Arabic. The authors hail from Egypt, Yemen, Oman, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Sudan and include excerpts from the 2015 shortlist of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The book reviews include novels that range from The Book of Khalid, by Ameen Rihani, first published in 1911, to Saud Alsanousi's The Bamboo Stalk and Youssef Rakha's The Crocodiles. The feature on "Prison Writing", started in Banipal 50, continues with two new and powerful testimonies, and will remain open indefinitely for more contributions.

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Mahmoud Shukair's first major publication in English translation enthralls, surprises and shocks as one of the world's most original of storytellers excels in exposing the surreal moments in the ordinary and the mundane, the limits of human frustration and patience, and the intricacies of tiny daily obsessive practices. Brimming with humour that ranges from the funny and the farcical, to satire and black comedy, with a painter's eye for colour and detail, Shukair's stories present a unique commentary on the power of the human spirit to see beyond the particular.The collection includes the author's two fascinating autobiographical commentaries "Hemingway in Jerusalem" and "My Journey in Writing".Here is the brilliantly observed clutter and comedy of everyday lives, the lives of ordinary people pushed up against an iron occupation and fighting for survival with all the comic and moving strategems of the human imagination. Shukair's gift for absurdist satire is never more telling than in the hilarious title story which turns and pulls the leg (or the moustache) of the occupation, in the classic tradition of Palestinian satire. — Judith KazantzisTranslated from the Arabic by Issa J. Boullata, Elizabeth Whitehouse, Liz Winslow and Mahmoud Shukair. Mahmoud Shukair was born in 1941 in Jerusalem, and grew up there. With a Masters degree in Philosophy and Sociology he worked for many years as a teacher, journalist and editor-in-chief of cultural magazines. He was jailed twice by the Israeli authorities, lasting nearly two years, and in 1975 was deported to Lebanon. He returned to Jerusalem in 1993 after living in Beirut, Amman and Prague. He is the author of 25 books, nine short story collections, 13 works for children, a biography and a travelogue. He has written six drama series for TV, three plays and countless newspaper and magazine articles.Some of his short stories have been published in French, Spanish, Korean and Chinese, as well as English.

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Taleb Alrefai turns a spotlight on Kuwait’s pearl-fishing history in this enthralling fictional re-telling of that fateful day, 19 February 1979, when the country’s famous dhow shipmaster Captain Al-Najdi is lost at sea in a treacherous storm. In between fishing for seabream with two friends, the retired mariner looks back on how the sea has been calling him since childhood, on the punishing work of pearl-divers, and how he became a captain at 14. As he recalls his voyages around the Arabian Peninsula, some with renowned Australian sailor Alan Villiers, he meditates on how the sea was abandoned when pearl-fishing ended with the discovery of synthetic pearls and oil. In a kind of revenge, howling winds and enormous black waves suddenly erupt and quickly engulf the small fishing boat.

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Knife Sharpener – Selected Poems is a posthumous commemoration and celebration of Sargon Boulus, in a collection of poems, written between 1991 and 2007 that he translated himself, together with an essay, "Poetry and Memory", written a few months before he died in October 2007. With a Foreword by Adonis and an Introduction by Dublin poet and publisher Pat Boran, the volume includes nine pages of photographs and tributes from fellow poets and writers Saadi Youssef, Ounsi El-Hage, Amjad Nasser, Abbas Beydhoun, Abdo Wazen, Fadhil al-Azzawi, Kadhim Jihad Hassan, Khalid al-Maaly, and Elias Khoury, assembled and translated by fellow Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon, who described his death as leaving "a gaping wound in the heart of modern Arabic poetry". "Sargon seemed to feel also the even greater, historical weight of conflicts, tensions, misunderstandings and oppressions of the spirit, as if his poems came through his own time and language but from somewhere else." – Pat BoranSargon Boulus was unusually influential among young Arab poets, who "found in him the father who refused to practise his patriarchy and a poet who always renewed himself in his rebellion against rhetoric . . ." Abdo WazenFor all Banipal Books titles available with Inpress, go to this link http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/product_listing2.aspx?productcategory=translated+poetry

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In this thriller-cum-jigsaw puzzle, two storylines play out across continents and true historical events as American novelist Christine McMillan and student Rachid Bennacer aim to solve The Secrets of Folder 42, while chess champion Zouhair Belkacem, shunted off to medical school in Moscow, returns to Morocco in time for a spectacular crunch day.

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This is the last issue of Banipal, the independent literary magazine, marking 25 years of translating and publishing contemporary literature by Arab authors. Arabic literature will always need a magazine like Banipal. In fact, more than one. We're closing at No 75, not because the magazine is no longer necessary but because we, as central producers, can no longer continue to operate. We no longer have the physical energy necessary and believe that for the magazine to continue, there must be new blood, a young staff, with the same enthusiasm and conviction that we have had all these years. We leave behind a massive archive of literature by umpteen different authors and in different genres, opening up an endlessly enthralling world of Arabic literary works.

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Banipal 73 - Fiction Past and Present is a delicious mix of pioneering, emerging and established authors from around the Arab world. With short stories by three pioneering writers - Emile Habiby, Fuad al-Takarli and Mohamed Choukri and works by established novelists Ezzat el-Kamhawi (The Travellers' Room) and Emna Rmili (Beach of Souls). Also the first time in English translation for fiction writers Reem Al-Kamali, Mohammed Alnaas, Dima al-Choukr, Khalid Al-Nassrallah and Bushra Khalfan in our feature on the six shortlisted novels of the 2022 IPAF.

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Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life a story that can never again be lost in time after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone fired his imagination. This inspiring epic poem awakens two extraordinary lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian’s Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their unique story. Barates’ elegy to his beloved wife, who died young at 30, is, however, not about mythologising history. With the poet himself an exile in Britain for 40 years from his birthplace of Damascus, the poem forges new connections with today, linking al-Jarrah’s personal journey with that of his ancient forebear Barates, who resisted slavery with love. Barates’ Eastern song also questions whether the young Celtic fighters, the Tattooed Ones, were really barbarians, as they emerged from forest mists to defend their hills and rivers and their way of life from the Romans, and died or lay wounded at the twisting stone serpent that was Hadrian’s Wall.

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Banipal 70 – Mahmoud Shukair, Writing Jerusalem is a rich issue of diverse authors and literary news to inspire and enthuse you in this continuing time of Covid-19.The main feature on Palestinian author Mahmoud Shukair is a gift to the great Jerusalemite on his 80th birthday – which took place in March this year – with articles, short stories, reviews of his two collections in English translation, and his trilogy of novels of Jerusalem family life.Two recent Arabic novels are reviewed and excerpted: At Rest in the Cherry Orchard by Iraqi author Azher Jirjees, and No One Prayed over Their Graves by Syrian author Khaled Khalifa. Also included, a memorable short story “A Bicycle Brings an Old Comrade” by Egyptian author Hassan Abdel Mawgoud.Lebanese author Alawiya Sobh talks to Katia al-Tawil about her latest novel To Love Life, with three chapters excerpted.Guest writer is Gibraltarian poet and translator Trino Cruz, working in both Spanish and English, with selected poems from The Fertile Shore.Plus an interview with the editors of the Maktoob project, which translates and publishes Arabic literature in Hebrew.

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In Goat Mountain, Habib Selmi’s first novel, published in Arabic in 1988, a young man’s journey begins in a dilapidated old bus that takes four hours to reach Al-‘Ala, from where he takes a long ride on mule back, accompanied by a mysterious older man who is to play an important part in the young man’s new life. They finally arrive at Goat Mountain, a forlorn, Tunisian desert village. The school is a single room. The youth passes the first night in the house of his uncommunicative guide, whose name is Ismail . . . He grows more uneasy and depressed as Ismail becomes ever more powerful until, with a new truck and his own private army, Ismail dominates village life and casts a menacing shadow over the young man.

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From the Introduction by Mohammed Sawaie:The Palestinian poets included in The Tent Generations, Palestinian Poems represent different age groups and backgrounds, yet they all express a strong sense of “Palestinian-ness”. They include Israeli citizens, the offspring of those who remained in Palestine after 1948. They also include poets who lived or continue to live in the West Bank and Gaza, areas that are still occupied, or controlled by Israelis as of this writing. Finally, they include poets born in Palestine, but whose families were expelled, or migrated to neighboring Arab countries as a result of the Arab-Israeli wars of the Nakba in 1948, and then of 1967 and 1973.The educational backgrounds of the poets represented here vary. Salem Jubran, Samih al-Qasim, Tawfiq Zayyad, and Marwan Makhoul, for example, were products of the Israeli educational system. Others attended institutions of learning in various Arab countries. Fadwa Tuqan received little formal education in her city of Nablus; she, however, acquired instruction in language, support in writing poetry, and encouragement to publish her poems from her brother, the well-known poet Ibrahim Tuqan, mentioned previously. All these poems are written in fusha Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, the codified literary, written language shared by educated speakers of Arabic in their various respective regions. Palestinian folkloric poetry, referred to as al-Shi’r al-Sha’bi or Shi’r al-‘Ammiyya, is not included in this work. Folk poetry, richly expressed orally in the Palestinian dialect, ‘Ammiyya, embraces a variety of themes (national pride, panegyric, love, generosity toward guests/strangers, and so on), including the political themes expressed in the poems in this work. There is a rising interest in collecting and preserving this folkloric poetry, and several anthologies of oral poetry as well as studies have recently appeared.The 1948 Nakba, the wars of 1967 and 1973, and their subsequent tragic impact find expression in the work of Palestinian poets. Some of the authors in this collection had firsthand experience of the loss of home, and the up-rootedness from and destruction of their villages and cities. Others acquired knowledge of such experiences, the tragedy that befell Palestinians, through stories told by grandparents or parents, stories of hardship and deprivation transmitted from one generation to another. Thus, poets express in vocabulary specific to the Palestinian experience of the dispossession of homeland, the forced expulsion, the pain of living in the miserable conditions of refugee camps in the diaspora.

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Impoverished Egyptian teacher Helmy is desperate to find a better life for himself, his wife and little boy, seeing no future at home in Cairo. He dreams of working in oil-rich Kuwait and its boom in construction being the answer, just like many thousands before him. He manages to borrow the huge cost of a visa and is at last on his way to Kuwait City. He has no idea of the hellish nightmare, instead of the dream, that awaits him – the relentless summer sun and temperature of 56ºC and more, the choking dust and sweat, having to do construction work instead of teaching. And always, no money, and no answers from the many officials that he comes up against. Instead of achieving his dream, he falls into trap after trap. The author is himself a character in the novel, an engineer with the construction company who is writing a novel about the humiliating and degrading experiences of the migrant foreign workers arriving in Kuwait to make their fortunes. In the Preface to the novel, author Taleb Alrefai writes: "The novel casts lights on the lives of thousands of workers who come to the Gulf states with dreams of money and wealth, but who are confronted with the harshness of a desolate reality. It exposes specifically the suffering of migrant workers in Kuwait, be they Arabs or foreigners, and how their every moment is shaped by need, injustice and cruelty. Some commit suicide, but that has no effect on the work on site under the blazing sun that’s like the lash of hell. "Almost a historical document on my life and the lives of the workers with whom I lived for fifteen years, Shadow of the Sun presents a human landscape set in and reflecting Kuwait."

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Banipal 69 opens by saluting in texts by two of its major authors, the city of Beirut that was devastated by the calamitous explosion at its port on 4 August: Beirutshima is a resounding and moving poem by the poet Abdo Wazen that describes vividly and painfully the sudden and awful moments of the destruction as “tongues of hellfire shot out” … “in a nightmare moment like eternity”, in a brilliant translation by Paul Starkey. Elias Khoury’s essay The City of Strangers begins by looking at the metaphor of Beirut as an apple, from Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “Beirut”, although it was “born a pine tree on the shores of the Mediterranean”, and how the explosion then sees “the monster bite through the metaphor’s back and tear the metaphor to pieces.”The main feature introduces nine new Arabic novels by authors from Tunisia, Oman, Bahrain, Algeria, Sudan, Qatar and Egypt. In a change from including a brief synopsis of a novel with the excerpts in translation, in this issue eight novels are fully reviewed alongside the translated excerpts while one includes an interview with the author.

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Banipal 65 celebrates Iraq novelist and poet Fadhil Al-Azzawi, renowned for his “conceptual leaps, rich references and linguistic surprises”. Ariel Dorfman described him as “an Iraqi master poet who opens up all the despair and tenderness of our times”. Plus fiction and poetry from Kuwait, Yemen, Morocco, Egypt and Palestine.

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A collaboration with London’s SAFAR film festival in September featuring book and film pairs, translations, presentations, interview with director Daoud Abdel Sayed of the famous Egyptian film Kit Kat. Plus authors Azouz Begag, Lutfiya al-Dulaimi, Ahmad Ali El-Zein, Abdelrashid Mahmoudi and Liana Badr, and Morocco’s 40th Assilah Festival.

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Generation '56 features nine influential Arab voices, all born in 1956, all of whom grew up to become major beacons of modernity, intellectual freedom and creativity in the Arab world and who established important cultural initiatives. Plus works by five more Sudanese authors, two poet film-makers and two fiction writers.

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For Summer reading Banipal 47 ­– Fiction from Kuwait Fiction from Kuwait presents a selection of contemporary literature from the novels and short stories of 17 Kuwaiti authors. It spans the generations of literary voices, from the 1960s and the writings of Sulaiman al-Shatti, Ismail Fahd Ismail and Suleiman al-Khalifi, to works by Fatima Yousif al-Ali, Laila al-Othman, Waleed al-Rajeeb, Taleb Alrefai, Thuraya al-Baqsami and Fawziya Shuwaish al-Salem, and then to those of young authors Bothayna al-Essa, Saud al-Sanousi, Yousef Khalifa, Basima al-Enezi, Ali Hussain al-Felkawi, Hameady Hamood and Mona al-Shammari.Almost the entire issue is devoted to the fiction literary scene in Kuwait today – with background articles on the development of both the short story and the novel. It is a vibrant scene, with many of the authors creating narratives of continuous and diverse dialogues on many levels – person to person, person to place, person to memory, memory to place. They discuss issues of expectation and surprise, loss and denial, love and marriage, humour, satire and melancholy, family traditions and relations, social mores and taboos, different cultures, environments, generations and geographies.Among the book reviews in Banipal 47 are reviews of works by two winners of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction: Saudi Arabian author Abdo Khal's winning novel Throwing Sparks, and The Mehlis Report by Lebanese novelist Rabee Jaber (his winning novel The Druze of Belgrade has yet to be translated). Photo-reports of literary achievements complete the issue – the Sheikh Zayed Book Awards, the Abu Dhabi and Casablanca International Book Fairs, the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction award ceremony, and the Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture in London.

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Shortlisted for the 2011 Popescu Prize for Poetry Translated from a European Language into English, run by the Poetry Society.Foreword by Ruth Padel and introduced by Victor Schiferli."With this collection Anglophone readers are introduced to a poet of global scope," writes renowned American poet Marilyn Hacker.Prize-winning poet, essayist, dramatist and actor Ramsey Nasr, born in 1974 in Rotterdam into a Palestinian-Dutch family, was voted Poet Laureate of the Netherlands in 2009. A man of many passions, including classical music, drama, poetry and travel, as city poet of Antwerp in 2005 his appearances were attended like pop concerts."There is an exuberance and energy about these poems – poems for the voice and for performance, which nonetheless sit beautifully on the page and move easily between playfulness and a great humanity. Ramsey Nasr in David Colmer's translation has a strong appeal to new generations of poetry readers."Poetry SocietyThe poems in Heavenly Life were selected by the poet from his collections and from works written as poet laureate. His translator is the award-winning David Colmer, joint-winner of the 2010 IMPAC prize for his translation of The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker, who has dynamically recreated in English the patterns and sounds of Ramsey's inventive, bold and thoughtful poems.The collection includes the poem which voted Nasr into his laureate post – in the Netherlands the laureate is chosen by popular vote. Another is a three-part poem inspired by the life of Dmitri Shostakovich and based on his Sonata for Viola and Piano. The title poem 'Heavenly Life', meanwhile, was written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Gustav Mahler's birth and is based on his Fourth Symphony, the four sections of the poem echoing the structure, tone and length of its movements. It is named after 'Das himmlische Leben', the song that forms the symphony's finale.Ramsey Nasr was in conversation with Ruth Padel and read from Heavenly Life at the LRB's World Literature Weekend on 18th June, and last November performed at 2 events of the 2010 Poetry International at London's Southbank Centre."David Colmer's translations follow Nasr's almost prosaic lines and shifts in register, rarely missing a beat and catching his humour with low-key contemporary phrasing. These are very readable versions of poems that provide a window on what is going on in Dutch society at the moment." Donald Gardner, reviewing Heavenly Life in Ambit 205"This is a poet who takes the pulse of his age, presses charges against injustice and oppression, without forgetting the heartbeat of his predecessors."Paul Demets in the Belgian daily newspaper De Morgen

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After a lifetime working as a professor of Arabic literature and a translator of contemporary Arab authors into English, the author now regales his readers with a rich medley of tales that will continue to resonate long after the book is put down. His characters are mainly migrants to Canada and the USA from Palestine Lebanon and Syria, starting their lives again, dealing with their memories, with pasts that cannot be recalled, with exile, with just being immigrants. The stories question how they have lived their lives. How did they settle into a new life? What happened to all the old relationships? How did they go about making new ones? Was it possible still to love? To fall in love again? Did they find happiness in their new country?Issa J. Boullata is a Palestinian author, literary critic and translator, born in Jerusalem. He is formerly Professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He has written numerous non-fiction literary works, including Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought (1990), A Window on Modernism: Studies in the Works of Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, and Rocks and a Wisp of Soil (2005) in Arabic.He has one novel in Arabic, A'id ila al-Quds (1998). His translations include Jabra Ibrahim Jabra's memoirs Princesses' Street (2005) and The First Well (1995), Mohamed Berrada's The Game of Forgetting (1986), Emily Nasrallah's Flight Against Time (1997), and Ghada Samman's The Square Moon (1998).

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Banipal 71 Salutes Ihsan Abdel Kouddous commemorates two great Arab authors and introduces new literature in translation, plus reviews and photo report. We say “Farewell” to the inimitable Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, “the last communist”, who passed away on 13 June. In a special feature we salute the prolific Egyptian writer Ihsan Abdel Kouddous (1919–1990), whose stories and novels were adapted into dozens of films, but hardly translated into English. With articles and translations from three of his works, Hassouna Mosbahi writes: “It would be no exaggeration to equate Abdel Kouddous’ daring and braveness with that of great writers from the West who challenged all forms of censorship imposed on subjects related to love and sexuality”. Translations and reviews of two new novels: Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Oman), and Things I left Behind by Shada Mustafa (Palestine) Poems from Gaza poet Mosab Abu Toha, founder of the Edward Said Public Library in Gaza A travelling tale, The Calligrapher of Kufa, from Mohammed al-Sharekh

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This is young Palestinian author Shada Mustafa’s debut novel – a free-flowing narrative that interrogates, in short, direct sentences, the memories of growing up, falling in love, that keep forcing themselves out to be reckoned with. Through ceaseless questioning, and the seemingly random revisiting of each of the four “things” she has left behind, the narrator redeems her life from the inexplicable pain and tragic anguish that was her childhood in an occupied and divided land and family. In so doing, Mustafa creates a unique writing style while at the same time allowing the narrative its original, cathartic function, liberating herself from her past, and finding her true self. Why was she always having to cross the Qalandia checkpoint to see her dad or her mom? Why did they divorce? Why was her mom angry? How could she make her happy? Why was her dad a different man when he came out of the occupier’s prison? What was more important, the cause or the people? The questions become more urgent when she becomes a student and falls in love. This short novel, original in its subject as much as its narrative technique, has been singled out from the start by being shortlisted for the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Young Authors.

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This open work was written in defiance of the “sanctity of genre” and to raise the question of freedom of expression in writing. First published in Arabic in 1969 to great acclaim, it has been variously called a novel or a prose poem, while the author calls it an epic in prose, divided as it is into cantos. In mid-1960s Iraq such an open-ended form, in which different genres could come together and blend into each other, was difficult to even imagine. For Fadhil al-Azzawi it was the core of a new vision of life after the country’s tough political experiences, especially the bloody coup of February 1963, and then abysmal defeat in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The preface to the original Arabic edition noted: “Everything in this open novel returns to itself and acquires its own particular innocence, even in language, so that the novel becomes a poem, a play, a film, a painting and a piece of music all at once without ever meaning to [. . .] It talks about itself in its own very particular way, where it says nothing specific so that it can say everything.”

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Sarajevo Firewood, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) award in 2020, explores the legacy of the recent histories of two countries — Algeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina — both of which experienced traumatic, and ultimately futile, civil wars in the 1990s. The novel narrates the lives of two main characters, with their friends and families: Salim, an Algerian journalist, and Ivana, a young Bosnian woman, both of whom have fled the destruction and hatred of their own countries to try to build a new life in Slovenia. As Ivana pursues her goal of writing her ‘dream play’, Khatibi’s novel brings to life in fictional form the memories and experiences of the countless ordinary people who survived the atrocities linking the two countries. As such, it represents both a lasting memorial to the thousands of dead and ‘disappeared’ of the two countries’ civil conflicts, but also a powerful and novel exploration of the experience of exile to which so many have been subjected over the last few decades.

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Ahmed Morsi is a renowned painter as well as a prolific art critic, journalist, translator, and, as this book reveals to a new audience, a consummate poet, with his debut collection published at the age of 19. Poems of Alexandria and New York, Ahmed Morsi’s first volume in English translation, captures the modernity and empathy at the heart of all his works, his surrealistic humour, and his visions of the dramas of ordinary life. It comprises two of his best known collections, Pictures from the New York Album and Elegies to the Mediterranean, both written when he resumed writing poetry following a break of nearly 30 years after the calamitous Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War. The former opens up the city of New York, his home since the mid-1970s and where he still lives and works, while the latter takes readers deep into abiding memories of the Mediterranean city of his birth, Alexandria, Egypt.

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The Madness of Despair tells the story of Maliha, who is living in London with her husband Nafie after an arranged marriage in their distant Arab homeland. The couple become good friends with Doctor Nadim, a fellow exile, but in the twists and turns of the friendship, the men’s nostalgia for their old lives – and old ways of living – come into conflict with Maliha’s ambition to live and love freely and make something of her new life now she’s settled in London. Though ready to throw off the constraints of her disastrous marriage at the slightest turn, Maliha is ill-prepared for the fire of emotions that overcomes her, leading to unforeseen consequences for all three. It is a powerful narrative that reveals just how much psychological suffering and cultural displacement can upset the most ordinary of aspirations for life and love.

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This open work was written in defiance of the “sanctity of genre” and to raise the question of freedom of expression in writing. First published in Arabic in 1969 to great acclaim, it has been variously called a novel or a prose poem, while the author calls it an epic in prose, divided as it is into cantos. In mid-1960s Iraq such an open-ended form, in which different genres could come together and blend into each other, was difficult to even imagine. For Fadhil al-Azzawi it was the core of a new vision of life after the country’s tough political experiences, especially the bloody coup of February 1963, and then abysmal defeat in the June 1967 Six-Day War. The preface to the original Arabic edition noted: “Everything in this open novel returns to itself and acquires its own particular innocence, even in language, so that the novel becomes a poem, a play, a film, a painting and a piece of music all at once without ever meaning to [. . .] It talks about itself in its own very particular way, where it says nothing specific so that it can say everything.”

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Banipal 67 – Elias Khoury, The Novelist presents a major feature on the celebrated Lebanese and international author, with excerpts from his latest novel Stella Maris, the second in the Children of the Ghetto trilogy, and a chapter from his first novel (until now not translated), plus in-depth articles on the corpus of novels including translations of his works into Hebrew, and reviews of his early novels. • We bid Adieu to poet Amjad Nasser in Fakhri Saleh’s essay on his poetry collections. • We introduce two winners of the Moroccan Argana International Poetry Prize – Wadih Saadeh and Hawad. • Also featured are the six shortlisted novels of the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. • Plus works by two well-known Iraqi writers: Muhammad Khudayyir and Muhsin al-Musawi – and poems by three young poets from Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia. MANY THANKS to all our contributors, authors, translators, and editors, who have been working from home under coronavirus restrictions.

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“Travels” features five Arab travel writers: Iraqi Farouk Yousif in New York; Tunisian Hassouna Mosbahi in Andalucia; Algerian Said Khatibi in Sarajevo; Moroccan-Dutch Abdelkader Benali in Tangiers and Syrian-Danish Monir Almajid in Japan. Plus profiles on Jordanian Kafa Al-Zou‘bi and British poet Linda France, and other fiction and poetry works.

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This issue presents a new list of Arabic novels, chosen by critics, authors, academics and translators, in response to the greatly increased popularity of novels in the Arab world. Plus features on Egyptian poet and artist Ahmed Morsi, Iraqi academic Hayat Sharara and three further Egyptian writers Mekkawi Said, Azza Rashad and Girgis Shukry

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In the midst of the raging, destructive war that is shattering Syria, Banipal 57 – Syria in the Heart presents powerful new poetry and fiction by twelve Syrian authors – works that reach out to all with contemplation and compassion in the need to tell the story and the search to understand.The authors are Nouri al-Jarrah, Rosa Yassin Hassan, Rasha Omran, Dima Wannous, Hala Mohammad, Maha Hassan and Khaled Khalifa, plus new in English translation Haitham Hussein, Monir Almajid, Fawaz Kaderi, Nada Menzalji and Mohamad Alaaedin Abdul Moula. Plus works by Liana Badr and Muhsin al-Ramli, and a 50-page guest feature on Literature from Flanders.

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Echoes presents texts where history, memory and real life reverberate against each other, by authors from Palestine, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya. Plus feature on Iraqi playwright and director Jawad al-Assadi and his play Baghdadi Bathhouse, and Guest Literature from Berlin International Festival on "The Future of Cities".

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Marrakech is a city of narration, and Banipal 48 presents enthralling voices from the "kingdom of the improbable, one where reality is creatively rewritten", as Juan Goytisolo describes the city in his introduction to Marrakech: Open Secrets, the first text of the feature. We invite readers to partake in many sublime moments of the real and seemingly unreal through the writings of poets and authors from Marrakech: Yassin Adnan and Saad Sarhan, whose recent book Marrakech, Open Secrets, has been translated especially for this issue; the painter novelist Mahi Binebine, who never fails to captivate, and his new novel The Lord will reward you; Abu Youssef Taha brings a couple of black tales with a twist; Rajae Benchemsi writes of Bahia, the henna painter, and describes Marrakech as "a cosmic uterus"; Mohamed Nedali's fascinating debut novel Prime Cuts: An Apprentice Butcher's Life & Loves will at last be published in English; Anis Arafai gives readers three alternative short stories while Taha Adnan presents three scenarios on the lure of the East and "the winds of Westernization".We invite you enjoy this singular literary celebration of Morocco's Red City lying at the foot of the Atlas mountains and join us at the launch on 12 November.Banipal 48 also includes works by two more Moroccan authors, poets making waves – the well-known Mubarak Wassat, and newcomer Karima Nadir, writing about the coastal city of Casablanca. The Literary Influences essay by Egyptian author Mansoura Ez-Eldin admirably complements Narrating Marrakech. She explains how she was lured by her grandmother's storytelling to train her imagination "to swim in the trackless spaces of fantasy" and that she searched hard to find books to read "that did not recognize boundaries between reality and the imagination". A second Egyptian author is Ezzat El-Kamhawi, with an excerpt from his award-winning novel The House of El-Deeb, to be published in translation by AUC Press in December. Also, two Iraqi novelists – Duna Ghali, settled in Denmark and writing in Arabic, in this excerpt, set in Baghdad 2006, of a family that becomes unhinged, disintegrating through being victims of war trauma, and Pius Alibek from Barcelona, writing in Catalan, this excerpt from his novel Nomad Roots recalling an Iraqi soldier's struggle to exist in the southern desert.We are proud to collaborate with the Berlin International Literature Festival, which for each of its 13 years to date has opened up more and more the essential world of reading for children and young people, and through literary translation, each year gives us more and more "Literature of the World". In Banipal 48 we run a special feature on this year's guests, who include J M Coetzee and Salman Rushdie, the latter wowing his audience by saluting literary translation as "a miracle", as "the most unsung art in literature", and Arab authors, whose participation is now a regular feature of the festival.

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Birds of Nabaa is a tale of physical and spiritual journeys, beginning in Nabaa, a remote Mauritanian village, whose herds lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where the narrator's work as an embassy accountant takes him, and to Mauritania's capital Nouakchott. Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, the narrator's constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness known only to desert dwellers leads him back always to the music, song and poetry so much a part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism. The mix of diverse characters joining him includes Teresa, his Brazilian neighbour in Madrid whom he taught to make tea the Mauritanian way; Rajab the inspiring teacher in a blue face veil; Hussein the poet; Mariam, a postman between the living and the dead via cowrie shell readings; the exiled judge of Chinguetti; as well as his close friend the voracious reader and rebel Abdurrahman who wants to change the world, Abdel Hadi, the holy-fool sheikh with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Arab history and poetry, and Ould al-Taher, the first climate-change refugee. The narrator's travels take him to the village of Kanz al-Asrar near a tributary of the Senegal River, an area so fertile it is like a lush paradise. However, two and more years without any rain create drought, wells dry out, livelihoods shatter, and dreams turn to disturbing nightmarish premonitions of disaster. The burning fire of the sun is winning its eternal struggle with the hidden water that the clouds plant in the depths of the sand. As desertification takes hold, that paradise of southern Mauritania and of Nabaa gradually declines and the waves of migration, always a feature of life in the Sahara, intensify.

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Iraqi Said Jensen, living in Norway, is forever haunted by the ghost of his father, killed by the Iraqi regime before he was born, and nightmarish visions. On being called to Baghdad where a mass grave, possibly holding his father's remains, will be opened, he thinks about the peaceful cherry orchard his neighbour Jakob was laid to rest in.

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This unique feature on Iraqi Jewish writers includes short stories, excerpts from novels, and poems – written by 17 authors – all of whom are of Iraqi descent. For several centuries, Iraqi Jews were key contributors to Iraq’s rich social and cultural tapestry – active in all areas of life as novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, musicians, composers, singers, and artists. Sadly, all this came to a tragic end with the massive transfer-emigration and forced displacement of Iraqi Jews in the 1950s to Israel. The feature also includes introductory essays about the authors and poets, who are of different generations, traversing a wide range of languages – from the poetry of the Mani brothers at the turn of the 20th century to the works of Almog Behar and Mati Shemoelof in the early noughties. The texts raise universal questions of belongingness, exile, diaspora, cross-national affinities, and cross-linguistic possibilities. All texts were either translated directly from Arabic (approximately two-thirds) or from Hebrew, with one written originally in English.

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Covid-19 is still with us, spreading its deathly virus, killing thousands, keeping us in our homes, making us keep our distance wherever we go, wearing masks whenever we might get within a metre or so of another person, and creating virtual, digital events. Over the months it has changed the world, and till now it’s hard to see an end to it. All our lives are being transformed by it.On 8 April, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award announced its 2020 winners – Banipal Magazine won the Publishing and Technology award. What a huge honour and accolade for this 23-year-old literary magazine. It is a tremendous boost to our very necessary translation project. We were pleased, also, to hear a mention of our new project of a second magazine – Revista Banipal for modern Arab literature in Spanish translation.Banipal 68 – Short Stories introduces 21 diverse, engaging and thoughtful stories, mostly for the first time in English. First, from the award ceremony of the Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story, there is winner Sheikha Helawy and finalists Sofiene Rajab, Sherif Saleh and Mahmoud Al-Rahbi, and then three further great short story writers, Muhammad Khudayyir , Mustafa Taj Aldeen Almosa and Mohammed Al-Sharekh. Plus chapters from two novels – Free Fall by Abeer Esber and A Small Death by Mohammed Hasan Alwan. Plus works by two major poets – Moncef Ouhaibi, winner of the 2020 Sheikh Zayed Award for Literature, and Abdo Wazen. Plus interview with Mohamed Berrada and essay by Bothayna al-Essa on her writings. And letters from Ghassan Kanafani to Denys Johnson-Davies. A HUGE THANKS to all our contributors who have continued working from home under coronavirus restrictions, and to our socially-distancing printer and distributor.

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Tayeb Salih is internationally known for his classic novel Season of Migration to the North. With humour, wit and erudite poetic insights, Salih shows another side in this affectionate memoir of his exuberant and irrepressible friend Mansi Yousif Bastawrous, sometimes known as Michael Joseph and sometimes as Ahmed Mansi Yousif. Playing Hardy to Salih’s Laurel Mansi takes centre stage among memorable 20th-century arts and political figures, including Samuel Beckett, Margot Fonteyn, Omar Sharif, Arnold Toynbee, Richard Crossman and even the Queen, but always with Salih’s poet “Master” al-Mutanabbi ready with an adroit comment.

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A Boat to Lesbos is a powerful and compelling epic poem, written while thousands of Syrian refugees were enduring frightening journeys across the Mediterranean before arriving on the small island. Set out like a Greek tragedy, it is passionate and dramatic witness to the horrors and ravages suffered by Syrian families forced to flee their destroyed country, seen through the eye of history, the poetry of Sappho and the travels of Odysseus. Plus poems written while the poetry visited Lesbos during the refugee crisis.

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Banipal magazine’s 60th issue presents a major feature on the influential Egyptian author Alaa al-Deeb, with translations from his pivotal works and articles by six fellow Egyptian writers. Other authors include Safi Said (Tunisia), Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah (Mauritania), Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin (Sudan) and two poets from Tunisia and Syria.

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Chapters from eight novels on IPAF longlists; Sudanese novelist Amir Tag Elsir writes Literary Influences; chapters from Goat Mountain, 30-year-old debut novel of Habib Selmi; “Arabic Literature in Russia” – essay by Russian Arabist Viktoria Zorytovskaya. Guest author is Spanish poet Angel Guinda. Plus a new Banipal Photo Album section.

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Sudanese Literature Today showcases the exciting new waves of Sudanese writers, including Hammour Ziada, Ahmad Al Malik, Hamed El-Nazir, Emad Blake, Najlaa Osman Eltom, Mansour El Souwaim, Stella Gaitano, Mohammad Jamil Ahmad and Rania Mamoun, Tarek Eltayeb, Abdel Ghani Karamallah, Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin, Amir Tag Elsir, and more.

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Young Adam Awad, his wife and daughter live in the remote village of his family, in the Lebanese countryside where his uncle maintains there are no "vendettas and bloody feuds like in the North, no history of arms and bloodshed".He wants to restore his father's olive press house and live an idyllic life farming in peace, but it is 1976 and the civil war is closing in. The village becomes divided, but still Adam is determined to find a way to stop the escalation… Jad El Hage comments: "The most recent of our wars began in the 1970s and ended by stages in the early 1990s, depending on how one defines 'beginning' and 'end'. This uncertainty characterised the entire conflict. The only certainty is that we killed each other for more than fifteen years."Jad El Hage was born and grew up in Beirut. He has worked as a journalist since he was sixteen – with the Arab press, the BBC World Service in London, Radio Monte Carlo (Paris) and Harlequin Arab World in Athens. In 1985 he emigrated to Australia with his family. He has one novel, The Last Migration, written in English like The Myrtle Tree, and in Arabic, a novel and collections of poetry and of short stories, as well as two plays staged, with selected works translated into French, German Spanish and Dutch. He divides his time between Melbourne and a small village in north Lebanon.Better than any political analysis, this remarkable novel, set in a Lebanese mountain village, conveys with razor-sharp accuracy the sights, sounds, tastes and tragic dilemmas of Lebanon's fratricidal civil war. A must read… — Patrick Seale

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Short stories from North Africa. This first volume of translated short stories from North Africa, is a timely publication for both the Africa 2005 cultural events and the Save Our Short Story campaign.Many of the 21 authors are major literary figures in their own countries and the Arab world, who have broken with taboos and censorship, and established standards of innovation that have encouraged younger generations of authors.The 21 authors are:Latifa Baqa, Ahmed Bouzfour, Rachida el-Charni, Mohamed Choukri, Mohammed Dib, Tarek Eltayeb, Mansoura Ezeldin, Gamal el-Ghitani, Said al-Kafrawi, Idriss el-Kouri, Ahmed el-Madini, Ali Mosbah, Hassouna Mosbahi, Muhammad Mustagab, Hassan Nasr, Rabia Raihane, Tayeb Salih, Habib Selmi, Izz al-Din Tazi and Mohammed Zefzaf.

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A fully revised third edition in translation of this best-selling 'gem of autobiographical writing' in the Arab world, by an author who has been called 'a relentless raconteur', 'a modern Odysseus', 'the Iraqi Don Quixote'. Providentially leaving Iraq just before Saddam Hussein installs himself as President, the Assyrian boy dreams of becoming a Hollywood film-maker after his hero John Ford, but after arrest and torture in Syria - accused of being a Jewish spy on account of his name, similar treatment in Jordan, and escaping execution in Lebanon by armed militia, he eventually lands up on the streets of Paris, where he meets up with Jean Valjean and tries to escape his fate as a homeless refugee with wit, humour and amorous adventures, all the while writing the story of his childhood, his deaf-mute father Kika, and film buff Kiryakos. After all his experiences, Samuel Shimon, 'the runaway from museums', writes an urgently needed and timely 'manifesto of tolerance'. Translated from the Arabic by Christina Phillips and Piers Amodia with the author

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