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New Fiction by Ameer Hamad: ‘All That’s Left to Him’

By Ameer Hamad Translated by Osama Hammad His father told him that the building committee had held a meeting, and that they’d decided to forbid the children from playing in front of the building. The boy was afraid of his father. If his mother had given him the news, he would have screamed until morning. But now, he acted as if the matter didn’t concern him. –I’m all grown up now, he said. I…

Ahlam Mosteghanemi: A Writer’s Journey of Love for and Devotion to Arabic Literature

Bestselling Algerian novelist and poet Ahlam Mosteghanemi began publishing in the 1970s and remains one of the most popular and beloved authors writing in Arabic. She is also winner of the 1998 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her Memory in the Flesh, also translated as The Bridges of Constantine by Raphael Cohen. Her Chaos of the Senses (tr. Nancy Roberts) and The Art of Forgetting (tr.…

New Short Fiction: Salwa Al Neimi’s ‘Angels’

By Salwa Al Neimi Translated by Hiba Moustafa Translator’s note: What I like most about the story is its unapologetic voice. It’s one of a woman whose marital life, and bed, has grown cold with the passage of time. She is having an affair with a man who rekindles her life and body with the fire of desire, and she has no qualms about it. She is neither feeling guilty nor thinking of putting an…

Fiction from the Magazine: Raghad Qasim’s ‘Hair or No Hair’

This short story originally appeared in our CRIME issue, and we re-run it this August as part of Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth): Hair or no Hair By Raghad Qasim Translated by Zeena Faulk I witnessed the birth of their first, or at least we think it was their first. At the time, I was still a student in the Department of Obstetrics at the Higher Institute of Medicine in Baghdad. I was…

Haifa Zangana on Translation as Revisiting the Past

Iraqi Kurdish novelist, artist, and essayist Haifa Zangana talks, this Women in Translation Month, about how translation connects the past and present, her relationship to London, and which books by women writers she recommends for translation: By Tugrul Mende   Last month, Wen-Chin Ouyang talked with ArabLit about her relationship to Haifa Zangana’s Packaged Lives, which she translated to…

30 Reads: A Month of Algerian Literature by Women

On why Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth) is a time of joy and sorrow: By Nadia Ghanem Women in Translation Month is always a time of great excitement for me, but as a reader addicted to Algerian fiction it is also a time for sorrow. Few novels written by Algerian women have been translated (to English or to any other languages), and if I stuck to the list of works that have appeared in…

Rawan Maki’s ‘Waves of the Future’ / ‘أمواج المستقبل’

Rawan Maki’s “Waves of the Future” originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of ArabLit Quarterly — THE SEA — and we share it free online in celebration of Women in Translation Month: Waves of the Future By Rawan Maki, with Nidal Khalaf Translated by Rawan Maki We “reclaim” land from water, taking back what was never given We worship our own footsteps, replacing the water’s sheen Perhaps…

Hilal Chouman’s ‘World of Dogs’

The short story ‘World of Dogs’ was originally written in Arabic, by celebrated Lebanese author Hilal Chouman (Limbo Beirut), and adapted into English by the author, with editorial support. It first appeared in English translation on ArabLit in July 2019: By Hilal Chouman Ousama Baalbaki / Fire, Works (2018) He couldn’t believe his dream was happening right before his eyes. In the dream,…