Published by Asharq Al-Awsat, April 2nd, 2018
Barakat to Asharq Al-Awsat “I am comfortable with the frequency of my writing, and am not tempted by promotion”
In her latest novel, The Night Post, Hoda Barakat adopts a new “trick” to immerse the reader in a game of five letters, written by five different senders as confessions to people they will never see again.

On April 24th, the prestigious International Prize for Arabic Fiction was awarded to Ibrahim Nasrallah for his novel “The Second Dog War”, a satirical novel, partly dystopia, partly science fiction, that depicts a not-so-distant grim future.
The novel is entertaining and was for Ibrahim Nasrallah an opportunity to explore uncharted literary territory. While offering a skillful critique of extreme forms of our contemporary consumerism and corruption, Nasrallah also goes over the transformation of a man, the main character Rashed, who goes from an idealistic rebel, to a powerful businessman, ultimately transforming into a …

Published by World Literature Today, September 2017
Sinan Antoon’s novel, Baghdad Eucharist, translated by Maia Tabet, originally published in Arabic by Al-Kamel Publishers and shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013, is a visceral yet poetic novel about the Iraqi diaspora.

Published by Asian Review of Books, May 13, 2017
Baghdad is not a city readily associated with Christianity. Nevertheless, a small (and shrinking) community lives there. This brief but resonant novel describes the discrimination and abuse they suffer for their faith as well as offering an important insight into how intolerance (of any religion or lifestyle, not just Christianity) can escalate into violence and even war.