Diaa Jubaili

وجه فنسنت القبيح

لعنة ماركيز

تذكار الجنرال مود

الاسم على الأخمص

أسد البصرة

المشطور - ست طرائق غير شرعية لاجتياز الحدود نحو بغداد

لا طواحين هواء في البصرة

A bold, imaginative collection of short stories set in Southern Iraq from prolific, award-winning novelist Diaa Jubaili. Influenced in turn by the long tradition of Arabic folktales and the magical realism of Latin America, the stories in No Windmills in Basra reflect a reality tinged by the city's history with war. Yet the fantastic and playful peek through, offering an astounding breadth of images in only a few lines per story. In "Mubarak," a security guard for a chicken plant discovers his own wings after a bomb explosion. In "The Taste of Death," long-buried Iraqi and Iranian soldiers rise from their unmarked graves, dissatisfied with the landscape's returning verdancy. Set in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where the author still lives, these fleeting stories oscillate between whimsy and tragedy.

No Windmills in Basra

Eman Abdelrahim

Hisham Bustani

Bushra al-Fadil

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

A bold, imaginative collection of short stories set in Southern Iraq from prolific, award-winning novelist Diaa Jubaili. Influenced in turn by the long tradition of Arabic folktales and the magical realism of Latin America, the stories in No Windmills in Basra reflect a reality tinged by the city’s history with war. Yet the fantastic and playful peek through, offering an astounding breadth of images in only a few lines per story. In “Mubarak,” a security guard for a chicken plant discovers his own wings after a bomb explosion. In “The Taste of Death,” long-buried Iraqi and Iranian soldiers rise from their unmarked graves, dissatisfied with the landscape’s returning verdancy. Set in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, where the author still lives, these fleeting stories oscillate between whimsy and tragedy.

Diaa Jubaili

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