By Tarek Abi Samra, L’Orient Littéraire, September 2023
The romantic character is generally only one of many elements used by the novelist to create a story. Other elements include plot, descriptions, point of view, narrative techniques, etc. However, the reader is spontaneously inclined to ignore all this and to see in a novel only the story of this or that character. A certain effort is in fact necessary to free oneself from this spontaneous reading and realize that the fictional character – even if he is both the protagonist and the …

ArabLit, 9 September 2021

Organizers announced the eight novels chosen for the Prix de La Littérature Arabe, a French prize that celebrates literature by Arab authors written in French or literature translated from Arabic to French:
The prize, created in 2013 by the Jean-Luc Lagardère Foundation and the Arab World Institute, is now in its ninth year. This year’s prize features a wide range of books from Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Algeria, Mauritania, Oman, and Palestine. Three of the books are also available in English translation.
This year, the majority of the selected books are …

By M Lynx Qualey, for Middle East Eye, 15 April 2021
 
Much as Kafka’s young Gregor Samsa woke one morning to find he was an insect, Aziz Mohammed’s young narrator wakes to find his nose is bleeding, a first sign of his leukaemia. The Critical Case of a Man Called K, the Saudi author’s first novel, is in some ways a re-telling of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, through the lens of the changes happening to a critically ill body.

 
As I sat, to write this post, I started searching for the best photo of you. The one I thought represented you most. And I ended up choosing the only one I never used.
You emailed me a set of photographs to send out while promoting your work, back in 2014. “Which one do you prefer?” you asked. I liked the ones where we could get a glimpse of your smile. They were bright, and taken from an angle where you looked all mighty and confident. I felt these reflected your sarcasm well.

Interview By Annick Cojean, for Le Monde, October 2019
 
We must not let the memory of the events that have occurred since the first demonstrations in March 2011 dissolve, and demand more democracy (…) “So many things have happened,” she said, “magnificent and cruel, that you must tear yourself from oblivion. And there are so many other elements to show Syrians as this image of shattered victims, undermined by bitterness. They fought. They acted. They hoped. And the cause was noble. We must give them justice. Tell the truth ! Quick, …

Following the life story of two inseparable friends, Hannah and Zakaria, from the mid 19th to the mid 20th century in Aleppo, No one prayed over their graves, reveals a buzzing, multiconfessional, libertine, tolerant society, coming to grips with the various forms of death.