Book

Kuwait author wins Arabic book prize for tale of foreign workers

The jury members, Economist Galal Amin, Lebanese critic Sobhi al-Boustani, acclaimed cartoonist Ali Ferzat, Polish professor Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, and Manchester University Professor Zahia Smail Salhi, announced the shortlist of the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction in Tunis on 9 January. Image courtesy of Kamel Riahi
23 Apr 2013
  LONDON — Kuwaiti author Saud Alsanousi has won the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his portrayal of the lives of foreign workers in Gulf countries in "The Bamboo Stalk." The 31-year-old Alsanousi...
Yes

‘Dogs Don’t Eat Chocolate’ offers little beyond catchy name

22 Apr 2013
Only a few months after the launch of “The Time of Beautiful Melancholy,” author Omar Taher graced his avid readers with another collection of his articles from 2012. The satirical writer and journalist celebrated the...
Yes

Putting together pieces of Egypt’s militarized past

31 Mar 2013
One might not agree with Hazem Kandil’s “Soldiers, Spies and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt” that the competing roles of the military and security apparatus have been some of the main agents and causes for change...
Yes

Iraqi writer Hassan Blasim has too many stories to tell

24 Mar 2013
In Hassan Blasim’s “The Song of the Goats,” hundreds of Iraqis “were waiting in queues to tell their stories. The police intervened to marshal the crowd, and the main street opposite the radio station was closed to...
Yes

Chinua Achebe, grandfather of African literature, dies at 82

Chinua Achebe
22 Mar 2013
Nigerian novelist and poet Chinua Achebe, widely seen as a grandfather of modern African literature, has died at the age of 82, publisher Penguin said on Friday. Achebe made his name more than 50 years ago with his novel "Things Fall...
Yes

Artists and writers search for a common street in Iraq

19 Mar 2013
Baghdad’s Al-Mutanabbi Street is perhaps the longest-lived book-selling neighborhood in the world. According to scholar Muhsin al-Musawi, the current bookshops on Al-Mutanabbi Street exist where, hundreds of years before, there was...
Yes

'Arabian Nights' has a smaller sibling

  Claudia Ott found the "101 Nights" manuscript exhibited in a vitrine with other objects from Andalusia in “Treasures of the Agha Khan Museum: Masterpieces of Islamic Art” exhibit in Berlin.     Image courtesy of Caludia Ott
28 Feb 2013
Almost every reader on the planet is familiar in some way with the epic “1,001 Nights.” We know of Sultan Shahryar, who, heartbroken by his wife’s infidelity, remarries every night only to kill his new bride at the first...
Yes

The pick: ‘The Devil Rules’ urges readers to think critically

25 Feb 2013
Mostafa Mahmoud’s 2004 “The Devil Rules” is a book about hippies, rising drug abuse and Western supremacy over the Arab world. It is a book about the past and present, touching upon social, economic and political issues...
Yes

Prominent fiction writer Mahmoud Salem dies at 84

Bookstores continue to open across Cairo post 25 January
24 Feb 2013
Prominent mystery fiction writer Mahmoud Salem died Sunday at the age of 84, after a life full of adventure, both in his real life and in his best-selling stories. Salem was born in 1929 and spent his childhood moving between different...
Yes

Navigating the space between American readers and Iraqi writers

  Hassan Blasim’s “Madman of Freedom Square” was longlisted for the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
24 Feb 2013
The book about Iraq most well-known to English readers is perhaps Chris Kyle’s best-selling “American Sniper,” a memoir told from behind the barrel of a gun. Other popular English books set in Iraq have been written...
Yes

Our Recommendations