I Must Ask Permission of the Homeland

This is a picture of Nizar Qabbani. The title of this post is the title of one of his poems which deals with putting the homeland first. Because this is about literature in crisis, writing in extremis, and putting the immediate needs of the country before fiction and imagination. And in many ways, in his …

Comedy of Sorrows

"Written in direct response to the ongoing revolution in Egypt, Ibrahim El-Husseini's Commedia Al-Ahzaan (Comedy of Sorrows) follows a young university-educated Egyptian woman through a series of encounters with different members of society. Through these encounters, she comes to realize how little she understands her own country." So Ibrahim El-Husseini's post-revolution play has been translated …

Elias Khoury on Childhood and the Arab Revolutions

On September 17, acclaimed Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury spoke at the American University in Cairo as part of a series of lectures on "Aesthetics and Politics: Counter-Narratives, New Publics, and the Role of Dissent in the Arab World," which took place at AUC from Sep. 16-27.  Elias Khour gave his talk in Arabic under the …