ArabLit & Komet Kashakeel Open Submissions for 2024 Arabic Flash Fiction Prize
Forthcoming June 2024: Classic Fiction, Poetry of Trauma, Short Fiction, & More
New Short Fiction: Suheir Daoud’s ‘The Miracle’
Fiction
New Short Fiction: Suheir Daoud’s ‘The Miracle’
From Reem al-Kamali’s ‘Rose’s Diaries’
From Osama al-Eissa’s ‘The Madmen of Bethlehem’
Poetry
‘Every Time I Leave the House’: New Poetry by Haidar al-Ghazali
‘Houses That Cling to the Tongue’: New Poetry by Mahmoud Kiralla
‘They Prepare for their Weddings’: New Poetry by Atef Alshaer
Interviews
On Translating a Novel of Might-have-beens in ’60s Dubai
Shakir Mustafa on the Obstacles to Translating Iraqi Literature into English
Recommendations: On the New Wave of Memoirs from Iraq
Country Focus
From the archives
Jonathan Smolin on the Relationship Between Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s Politics and His Novels
“My book really is an examination of how he participated in the coup ,and how he believed fundamentally that the Free Officers were going to install democracy, and—once he realized that they were actually installing military dictatorship—the way he dissented, in the editorials and in person, the way that he was jailed, and the way he turned to fiction to express his dissent directly to Nasser.”
‘When Darkness Falls’: On the Shortened, Brilliant Life of Iraqi Author Hayat Sharara
“The word eib rings in my head, it is eib to love, to sing, to get sick, to divorce, to show your emotions…and.…and. I felt these social chains were burdening me with fear, despair, and confusion, and I almost abandoned work on the book, but when I looked at the materials that I had collected, I knew that if I didn’t publish it now, it would never be published.”
For Valentine’s Day: The Many Loves of Nizar Qabbani
Your love has taught me… how to be sad.
And I have needed, for ages
A woman to make me sad
A woman in whose arms I could weep
Like a sparrow,