"The very fact that there are expectations for a poem of mine disturbs me, but I don’t surrender to it. They say that every love poem of mine is about the land. That 'Rita' in Eleven Planets is Palestine. 'Rita' is an erotic poem, but no one believes me." -#MahmoudDarwish

#ArabicLiterature #Poetry #Poets #literature #reception #nationalpoets

RT @afikra
Taha Hussein (1889 – 1973), a.k.a the "Dean of Arabic Literature", is best known for both his writings and his efforts to modernize education in Egypt. As minister of education, he advocated for free public education across all of Egypt.
#ArabicLiterature #Egyptian #History

RT @Arabic_Fiction
Set to close after 25 years of translating contemporary Arabic literature into English, Banipal Magazine’s incredible legacy was celebrated at an event in London this week: https://publishingperspectives.com/2023/01/a-london-celebration-of-banipal-magazine/ #BanipalMagazine #ArabicLiterature

What I am is a freelancer in language publishing, with a substantial focus on #ArabicLiterature. I live in the Netherlands, because I ran from Brexit to do a PhD here. PhD has died, but I’m happy enough staying for now. Missing people back in the UK, though.

I’m a bookish nerd: I read a lot (history, philosophy, religion, science, and very occasionally fiction) and just love me an argument. Language learning is fun, as is piano, origami, the gym, and the indiscriminate slaughter of rottfiends.

What I am is a freelancer in language publishing, with a substantial focus on #ArabicLiterature. I live in the Netherlands, because I ran from Brexit to do a PhD here. PhD has died, but I’m happy enough staying for now. Missing people back in the UK, though.

I’m a bookish nerd: I read a lot (history, philosophy, religion, science, and very occasionally fiction) and just love me an argument. Language learning is fun, as is piano, origami, the gym, and the indiscriminate slaughter of rottfiends.

Last week I heard the sad news that, with issue 75 – now out – Banipal #magazine would be folding for good. Today I got issue 74 in the mail, which has the names of both Etel Adnan and my personal god Sargon Boulus on the cover. And I'm overwhelmed with emotion. Banipal may not have had a very high profile in Anglo-American letters, and I may not have always liked its attitudes or choices. But in 25 years it's done more than any other publication for #ArabicLiterature in English.

Novelist Saad Mekkawi (1916-1985)
wrote, among others, "The Sleepwakers" (1963). It reimagines the last 30 years of Mameluk rule before the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The liveliness & verisimilitude of his characters, sensuality & humour of his imagination, the way the Egyptian dialect underneath his classical Arabic reanimates it, his emotional range & moral consistency, & the breadth of his vision make him – for me – far better than Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

#ArabicLiterature

I had a cock that made the sirens swoon
Which rising like a lion rampant struck.

I meant to fuck time’s waxing, waning moon;
It fucked me – and fate has a bigger cock.

— Two verses by Abdul Hamid al Deeb (1898-1943), which I translated in the course of writing this article (less my style than the publication's but maybe still worth a read): https://cutt.ly/yMPFSxt

#ArabicLiterature

Some #ArabicLiterature in English #translation for you to savour when you need it: https://sultansseal.com/category/translation/

All myth is an enriched pattern,
a two-faced proposition,
allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.
Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars.
And from the true lies of poetry
trickled out a question.

What really connects words and things?

— Anne Carson, "The Beauty of the Husband"

In #ArabicLiterature it is traditionally said, "The sweetest verses are the ones that lie the most."

@smoke #ArabicLiterature

Novelist Saad Mekkawi (1916-1985)
wrote, among others, "The Sleepwakers" (1963). It reimagines the last 30 years of Mameluk rule before the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The liveliness & verisimilitude of his characters, sensuality & humour of his imagination, the way the Egyptian dialect underneath his classical Arabic reanimates it, his emotional range & moral consistency, & the breadth of his vision make him – for me – far better than Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

#ArabicLiterature

If you *like* #ArabicLiterature (or indeed any other toots), please *boost* them!

Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003) was the street character who guided Paul Bowles, Jean Genet and Tennessee Williams around Tangiers.

He was 20 when he learned to read and write. Written (Standard) Arabic was in a sense his third language after Moroccan darija and the Riffian (Tmazghit) into which he was born, destitute and abused.

That's why, reading his epoch-making autobiographical first novel "For Bread Alone", you feel you're witnessing the (re) genesis of Arabic.

#ArabicLiterature

A new #introduction (with school library card from 1990/91) for my esteemed compeers:

I am a novelist, poet and essayist/journalist working in both Arabic and English. I live in Cairo, where I was born and grew up and where all my writing is set. I went to Hull University, UK. I just sold my first, big English novel to Graywolf Press.

I'm interested in what it means to be #Arab, #Muslim and male. I know modern Egyptian history. And I want to bring you as much #ArabicLiterature as I can.

“We chant beautiful words in vain; words of freedom and liberty. If you, men of the East, keep the core of slavery in your homes, represented by your wives and daughters, will the children of slaves be free?”

May Ziadeh (1886-1941), Palestinian-Lebanese pioneer of modern #ArabicLiterature, literary salon holder and Arab alpha male intellectual heartbreaker.

#ArabicLiterature

The Sydney-based Lebanese Wadih Saadeh (b. 1948, Sydney-based since 1988) is one of the world's greatest 20th-century poets. And this is one of the world's greatest 20th-century texts (in Robin Moger's translation): https://sultansseal.com/2017/06/06/seat-of-a-passenger-who-left-the-bus. And I have no idea why people like him aren't half as visible as Tomas Tranströmer or Seamus Heaney. #ArabicLiterature