International Prize for Arabic fiction shortlist

This year, the shortlist for the IPAF (International Prize for Arabic fiction) includes "a Syrian novel about Islamic State’s occupation of Raqqa to an Egyptian dystopian thriller" among other novels that “address the tragedy of the present-day Middle East.” The Syrian novel is A Sky Close to Our House by Shahla Ujayli,  although since we …

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 …

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 …

The Native Informant Speaks

In the first sentence of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, Spivak writes that her “aim…was to track the figure of the Native Informant through various practices: philosophy, literature, history, culture.” Spivak’s re-examination of the native informant involves exposing the double structure of invocation and foreclosure as the native informant is both needed to provide information …