R A Y A | agency for Arabic literature
Published by Livres Hebdo, June 30, 2018
“Syrian writer Samar Yazbek imagines a very metaphorical female protagonist who discovers war and the virtues of literature.”
The Blue Pen, in French “La marcheuse”, will be published end of August 2019.
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In a devastated future, Rached, a rebel turned loyal, starts running money schemes that benefit the Castle. Finally in a position of great power, Rached will indirectly cause the Second Dog War, which will lead him to his end.
An illegal emigrant writes a letter to his lover; a torturer on the run writes his mother… 5 letters accidentally linked to each other.
It is a fresh, funny and immensely clever take on what life is like for your average millennial in an unstable corrupt country – where anything is possible, and nothing can be relied upon.
The women of Syria have to fight not only the Regime, or the Islamist rebels; they have to fight the whole of a patriarchal society, including male revolutionaries. Yazbek collects their stories.
Novel excerpt published by Word Without Borders, special issue on Lebanon, July 2018
Translated by Robin Moger.
Translator’s Note: Hoda Barakat’s slim novel The Night Post is composed of the texts of six letters interrupted midway through by short, fragmentary pieces of narrative prose. The following excerpt is taken from the beginning of the third letter. A young man, apparently pursued by the authorities, is at the airport when he sees a woman rip up and throw away a sheaf of papers (the novel’s second letter). He reassembles the torn pages and, prompted by their content, …
Novel excerpt published by Word Without Borders, special issue on Lebanon, July 2018
Translated by Paula Haidar.
At an armed checkpoint, sectarian tensions come to bear on one man’s suspect identity in this excerpt from Jabbour Douaihy’s novel Chased Away.
Published by Philip Jenkins for The Christian Century, June 29, 2018
Sinan Antoon is a star of modern Arab fiction, a multiply honored novelist whose books address critical questions of identity, memory, and history. He has an Iraqi Christian background but teaches at New York University—a dislocation that resembles that of so many Middle Eastern Christians in recent years. Antoon’s most recently translated novel, The Baghdad Eucharist, offers Westerners an unparalleled opportunity to understand these events. The book traces the historic catastrophe that has overcome—and is now uprooting—one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
Published by Al Hayat, June 21st, 2018
Hoda Barakat’ Night Post speaks of the world’s dysfunction
She has her own style, in life as in writing. She rarely participates in cultural events because, in her own words, she doesn’t know the art of “marketing and shopping.” She won the Al Owais Award for all her work, which overflows with grief, loss and the search for meaning in the chaos around her. She writes eloquently about characters and dates, and she continued to do so in her latest novel The Night Post, her latest work, where she addresses …
