Hammour Ziada

Rania Mamoun

Ali al-Makk

Ahmed al-Malik

Isa al-Hilu

Arthur Gabriel Yak

Bawadir Bashir

Bushra al-Fadil

Mamoun Eltlib

Abdel Aziz Baraka Sakin

Khartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning meeting place . Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan s long, troubled history of forced migration. In the pages of this book the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into English the city also stands as a meeting place for ideas: where the promise and glamour of the big city meets its tough social realities; where traces of a colonial past are still visible in day-to-day life; where the dreams of a young boy, playing in his fathers shop, act out a future that may one day be his. Diverse literary styles also come together here: the political satire of Ahmed al-Malik; the surrealist poetics of Bushra al-Fadil; the social realism of the first postcolonial authors; and the lyrical abstraction of the new Iksir generation. As with any great city, it is from these complex tensions that the best stories begin. "An exciting, long-awaited collection showcasing some of Sudan's finest writers. There is urgency behind the deceptively languorous voices and a piercing vitality to the shorter forms. These writers lay claim over the contradictions and fusions of the capital city - Nile and drought, urbanization and village ties, what is African and what is Arab." - Leila Aboulela

A City in Short Fiction

The Book of Khartoum

Eman Abdelrahim

Hisham Bustani

Diaa Jubaili

Salim Barakat

Abdallah Zrika

Amgad ElSabban

M. Qualey

The second edition of ArabLit Quarterly will unsettle and awe you with an appreciation of "the Strange" in Arabic literature translated into English. Rachel Schine splices the personal demons of rapper Kendrick Lamar with the ghouls that afflicted fifth-century poet Ta'abbata Sharran. Fadwa Suleiman of Syria talks to her suitcase in a poem translated by Marilyn Hacker. Trays "loaded with skulls and spiced with hearts" pass by in works of the late Syrian Abd al-Latif Khattab translated by Daniel Behar. Astonishing worlds in the poetry of Morocco's Abdallah Zrika are explored in an interview by Ali Abdeddine and Shireen Hamza and translation by Hamza and Tim DeMay. Nada Menzalji of Syria finds herself in a "Land of Strangers" in her poem translated by Valentina Viene, while Salim Barakat beseeches Syria to return "to what astonishes and dumbfounds" in a poem translated by Huda Fakhreddine and Jayson Iwen. Hoda Marmar tells the late Emily Nasrallah how she was dumbfounded by the Lebanese novelist in this installment of "Open Letter to a Late Author," and in the ltest "Translate This," Susan Slyomovics makes the case for why English readers deserve Algerian Amina Mekahli's novel Nomad Burning. The strange covers on the books of Palestinian author and poet Mazen Maarouf are examined by M Lynx Qualey. The food scholar Nawal Nasrallah finds poetry in a recipe for sweet chicken from medieval Egypt. The physician-poets Fouad M. Fouad and Norbert Hirschhorn discuss their translation exchange. Or sip a selection of stories as short of a cup of tea or as quick as a mocha by Tareq Imam of Egypt translated by Riham Adly, Diaa Jubaili of Iraq translated by Yasmeen Hanoosh, Eman Abdelrahim of Egypt translated by Nashwa Gowanlock, Bushra Al-Fadil of Sudan translated by Lemya Shammat, Hisham Bustani of Jordan translated by maia tabet, Amgad ElSabban of Egypt translated by Mona Khedr.

The Strange

ArabLit Quarterly Winter/Spring 2019

Bushra al-Fadil

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