Paradise, by 2021 Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah, is the coming-of-age story of Yusuf, a Tanzanian boy sent into debt servitude when his father can’t pay back an Arab merchant. Yusuf travels into the interior with “Uncle Aziz” and other vivid characters, to trade with the “savages” there. The story takes place on the cusp…

Another of our short book-quiz episodes. Here we give the answer to a question about an Arab poet who emigrated to the US and translated some of the Beat poets. And we ask a question about Oman, where Jokha Alharthi’s“Bitter Orange Tree,” discussed in our last episode, is set. Send your best guesses tobulaq@sowt.com. The…

Jokha Alharthi burst to sudden international literary stardom in 2019, when her second novel, Sayyidat al-Qamr (tr. Marilyn Booth as Celestial Bodies), won the International Booker. The novel, touted as the “first by an Omani woman to be translated to English,” has since appeared in languages around the world. More novels by Omani women, including…

All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question fromEpisode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features Bedouin migration from Egypt to Libya. In our last episode with guest Mona Kareem we talked about self-translation and“writing in Arabic…

Mona Kareem’s essay “Western Poets Kidnap Your Poems and Call Them Translations” lit up debates among translators and poets. In this episode Kareem talks about poetry, the power dynamics of translation, and the relationship of both to migration, exile, self-censorship, and publication. She also reads from her poetry, both in her own translation and in…

All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. We give the answer to the question from Episode 81, “Naguib Mahfouz’s Banned Book” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding one of the books we discussed in Episode 82: “The Men Who Swallowed the Sun,” which features…

Two very different Egyptian novels – Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s The Men Who Swallowed the Sun and Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping – both circle around issues of migration in different ways. Abu Golayyel’s Men (originally The Rise and Fall of the Saad Shin), translated by Humphrey Davies, is an anti-epic epic told in a rough, powerful storyteller’s…

All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 80, “Just Different: Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf” and a new challenge for listeners, regarding the subject of Episode 81, Nabuig Mahfouz. Send your best guesses…

What was so controversial aboutChildren of the Alley, leading to it beingbanned for years in Egypt and to an attempt on the author’s life? How and when was it published, criticized, understood? Mohamed Shoair delves into all of this in his literary investigationThe Story of the Banned Book:Naguib Mahfouz’s Children Of The Alley (trans.Humphrey Davies)….

All this season, we will be doing short book-quiz episodes with prizes donated by ten distinguished publishers. In this bonus episode, we give the answer to the question from Episode 79, “Not Yet Defeated,” and a new challenge for listeners around our Episode 80 focus, Moroccan writer Malika Moustadraf. After you’ve listened, send your best…