Museum of Lost Objects

BBC Radio 4 has a series called The Museum of Lost Objects presented by Kanishk Tharoor, and produced by Maryam Maruf which "traces the stories of 10 antiquities or ancient sites that have been destroyed or looted in Iraq and Syria." There are currently five episodes available to listen to or download, and you can subscribe …

Unerasable Memories

A video exhibition which opens on August 30th in São Paulo will feature work by three Lebanese artists, Akram Zaatari, Walid Raad, and Rabih Mroué, as well as Morocco’s Bouchra Khalili. The full title of the exhibition is “Unerasable Memories – A Historical Take on the Videobrasil Collection,” referring to the Videobrasil project, which claims …

Here and Elsewhere

The “Here and Elsewhere” exhibition at the New Museum begins on July 16 and runs until 28 September. This exhibition of contemporary art from and about the Arab world brings together forty-five artists.       The exhibition borrows its title from a 1976 film-essay by French directors Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, and Anne-Marie Miéville. Their …

The American Granddaughter

Iraqi writer and journalist Inaam Kachachi's novel Tashari was one of three novels by Iraqi writers which were included in the longlist for IPAF 2014, along with Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, and The Sad Night of Ali Baba by Abdel Khaliq al Rikabi. The shortlist will be announced tomorrow, 10th of February. I …

Their Archives, Our History

In Moroccan author Muhammad Barradah’s The Game of Forgetting (1998, Luʿbat al-Nisyān, 1987), there is a disagreement between a figure referred to as the author and another described as the narrator’s narrator, who objects to the author’s attempt to write history. As the narrator’s narrator points out: “You still live in a society that has …

Kingdom of Strangers

Elias Khoury’s The Kingdom of Strangers (1996, Mamlakah al-Ghuraba 1993) is a slim book which interweaves the reflections of the narrator (identified with Khoury himself), the folk legend of the Lebanese monk Jurji Khairy, and the story of the  "Circassian" Widad.  These stories are retold by a narrator to us, and to two interlocutors, with …

The Game of Forgetting

Mohammed Berrada’s The Game of Forgetting (L'ubat al-Nisyan 1987) tells the stories of various members of a Moroccan family during from the French Protectorate and since Independence, focusing on how the psychological games of memory and forgetting impact experience. Berrada has also written a novel with the title Woman of Forgetting (Imraʼat al-nisyān, 2001), and both novels published …