Eman Abdelrahim

Hisham Bustani

Bushra al-Fadil

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

The stories within Hisham Bustani's The Monotonous Chaos of Existence explore the turbulent transformation in contemporary Arab societies. With a deft and poetic touch, Bustani examines the interpersonal with a global lens, connects the seemingly contradictory, and delves into the ways that international conflict can tear open the individuals that populate his world-all while pushing the narrative form into new and unexpected terrain.

The Monotonous Chaos of Existence

This award winning collection of seventy-eight pieces of flash fiction presents an intense and powerful vision of today's world seen through the eyes of an alienated and sardonic author. The Perception of Meaning reads like an alternative history to our world—a collage of small nightmares brought to life by a canon of unlikely historical figures, including Mark Zuckerberg, the lead singer of Megadeth, Stanley Kubrick, the Korean activist Lee Kyoung Hae, and the Mayan poet Humberto Akabal, among others. A dazzling exemplar of contemporary experimental Arabic literature, The Perception of Meaning deftly captures a historical moment in which Arab societies are increasingly questioning the status quo and rebelling against it. Bustani’s stories speak powerfully to the present, and look to the future with a wary eye.

The Perception of Meaning

Hisham Bustani

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