The Symbolism of Arabs in Space

A. Naji Bakhti's Between Beirut and the Moon (2020) is an episodic, wryly comic novel about growing up in Beirut in the aftermath of the civil war, with tensions still simmering. The protagonist, Adam, has ambitions of being an astronaut as a child, and when his friends and his parents mock this ambition it becomes …

The Other Americans

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 …

Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies

Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies, her fifth novel, explores the complexities of loyalty, religion and  nationalism, and the human yearning for belonging. The story is structured as two parallel narratives, a third person historical narrative set during the 19th century Caucasian war, and a contemporary narrative narrated in first person by Natasha Wilson, a …

On the rise of Arabic Literature in the West

In The Anglo Arab Encounter, Geoffrey Nash comments that "to the extent that Arab and Islamic oriented events in recent history have impacted on the West...the level of interest they have raised feeds into a dissemination and consumption of texts that might be deemed to interface with (and even partially "explain") those events". These dynamics can be …

Gibran’s The Prophet Adapted

Gibran The Play, based on the life of Gibran Khalil Gibran and written by Nabil Sawalha, is coming to London on November 17. Details here or here. The play - "a mix of drama, comedy and profound self-discovery" - is apparently inspired by Gibran’s most famous book, The Prophet, a book of prose poetry essays …

Global English

  Here is Global English, by James Clar, where the words global English are spelt out phonetically in the letters of various languages. Here's what he says about the Arabic block, according to this post: This piece is a reaction to countries such as the UAE where younger generations are exposed more to English language …

Arab America: A Bibliography

A working bibliography on being Arab and American, Arab American culture, performance, writing, and negotiating stereotypes in the post 9/11 world, as well as some books on the early history and the immigration narrative of Arabs in America. Who knew that there were three books with the title The Arab Americans? Abdelrazek, Amal Talaat. Contemporary …

Hunters in a Narrow Street

Hunters in a Narrow Street by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was originally written in English, published in 1960. Unlike The Ship which has two narrators, and The Search for Walid Masoud, which has about a dozen, this novel is narrated by one person, Jameel, a Christian Palestinian who flees Jerusalem in 1948, following the death of …