Amir Tag Elsir’s The Grub Hunter

January 15, 2020 by Tasnim

Amir Tag Elsir’s The Grub Hunter is a novel about who gets to write novels, and the impact of surveillance on literature. In its opening lines, the protagonist tells us “I’ll write a novel. Yes, I will. This is a really strange idea for a retired police agent like me” (1). This is the story of a former secret service agent, Abdallah Harfash, also known as Farfash, who, has retired after an accident in which his leg is amputated.  He […]

Categories: Literature, Notes • Tags: Amir Tag Elsir, Sudan

Sarha Collective’s Adaptation of Land Without Jasmine

April 6, 2019 by Tasnim

Land Without Jasmine is an adaptation of Wajdi al Ahdal‘s novel, which tells the story of a young woman who disappears from her university in Sana’a, Yemen. The play was put on by the new collective Sarha and billed as “the first ever Yemeni theatre production to be staged in the UK.”  Sarha describe their adaptation as “a dark fairytale which transports audiences to a murky underworld of lust, obsession and violence where nothing and no one are what they […]

Categories: Theatre • Tags: Sarha, Yemen

The Other Americans

March 24, 2019 by Tasnim

Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans, out next week, begins as a murder mystery and grows into a larger story about fear, anger and resentment, about the meaning of love and the finding of home, exploring the grey zones of human behaviour and the schisms in society that allow us to mark people as other. The narrative opens with music composer Nora Guerraoui learning of her father Driss’s death and returning to her Moroccan immigrant family in California. The sudden death […]

Categories: Literature • Tags: Anglophone-Arab, Arab-American, Laila Lalami, migration, Morocco

Capernaum

February 26, 2019 by Tasnim

  I recently went to see Capernaum at Picturehouse Central. When we left, my friend commented, “that was heavy.” And it was, heavy in a way that felt difficult to process immediately, beyond that familiar discomfort of watching a film like this as entertainment, as people around us ate popcorn and checked their phones. During the opening scenes we see children running through narrow alleyways playing with pretend guns, an echo of many other similar opening scenes, including Nabil Ayouch’s Horses of […]

Categories: Art, Film

Words, Words, Words

February 19, 2019 by Tasnim

  Words Words Words a MARSM organised event featuring Palestinian artists billed as a celebration of “the power of words and meaning,” took place this Friday at Richmix. The performers were two spoken word artists, Farah Chamma and Dana Dajani, and musician Jowan Safadi, making his UK debut. Rafeef Ziadah, herself a spoken-word artist, was going to host but unfortunately could not make it. Farah Chamma, accompanied by Maruan Betawi on the oud and Phelan Burgoyne on drums, took us through poems on […]

Categories: Art, Music, Performance Art, Poetry • Tags: Dana Dajani, Farrah Chamma, Jowan Safadi, Spoken Word

On Memory: An Evening with Palestinian Writers at the Arab British Centre

October 30, 2018 by Tasnim

On October 29th, the Arab British Centre hosted Selma Dabbagh, Jehan Bseiso, Farah Chamma and Ahmed Masoud, who came together to talk about what memory means to them as Palestinian writers. Behind the headlines and milestones and tweets, there are people and stories and morning rituals. There are memories and details so resilient they pass from one generation to another, they cross borders and traverse checkpoints to be captured in poems and plays, novels, art pieces and a whole tableau of […]

Categories: Art, Literature, Poetry • Tags: Ahmed Masoud, Farah Chamma, Jehan Bseiso, Palestine, Selma Dabbagh

Ruqaya Izzidien’s The Watermelon Boys

September 24, 2018 by Tasnim

The Watermelon Boys is the debut novel of Iraqi-Welsh journalist Ruqaya Izzidien. Set between 1915 and 1920, the novel tells a first world war story with a difference: in this novel, the main protagonists, Ahmad and Carwyn, are Iraqi and Welsh. The novel focuses most on the story of Ahmad and his family, though it spirals out to include a large cast of characters including a number of Ahmad’s friends and colleagues as well as his Jewish neighbour Dawood and […]

Categories: Literature • Tags: Review, Ruqaya Izzedin, The Watermelon Boys

SAFAR Film Festival

September 15, 2018 by Tasnim

The fourth edition of SAFAR is taking place at the ICA and the Institut Francais, running from 13-18 September. The festival, curated by Joseph Fahim, included films from Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Palestine, the genres ranging from adaptations, “creative documentaries,” shorts and features. The full program can be found here.  I attended the second day of the festival at the ICA, where the films featured were Stories of Passers Through by Koutaiba Al Janabi, and Poisonous Roses by Ahmed Fawzi […]

Categories: Film • Tags: Ahmed Fawzi Saleh, Egypt, Iraq, Koutaiba Al Janabi

Arab Science Fiction at Worldcon 76

August 19, 2018 by Tasnim

Worldcon 76 (the World Science Fiction Convention), is running from 15-20 August, and includes several panels on world SF, including one specifically on Arab literature with the somewhat wince-worthy title “1001 Years Later – What Happened to Arabian Fiction.” The youtube channel of Yatakhaylon (They Are Imagining), a group which seeks to promote Arab fantasy and sf, has recently posted some live-streamed events from the conference, including the Arab fiction panel. As advertised, the panel had three speakers: Novelist Shayma Alshareef, […]

Categories: Events • Tags: Arab science fiction, Science fiction, Shayma Alshareef, world literature, Yasser Bahjatt, Yatakhaylon