Our guest this week was once told there were no Algerian crime novels. She begs to differ. We discuss the many examples of the genre and its evolution in...

In this episode we explore the relationship between cooking and writing. With special guest Anny Gaul, we talk about the origins of national dishes such as couscous and koshary;...

Poet, artist and translator Yasmine Seale is at work on a fresh translation of the Thousand and One Nights. Show Notes: An abbreviated version of The Nights will be...

The adaptation of the Egyptian writer Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s hugely popular horror/fantasy series into the Netflix show Paranormal has excited and in some cases disappointed the writer’s avid fan...

By listener demand, we re-read Season of Migration to the North, the 1966 classic by the Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih. Its unnamed narrator returns to his village “on a...

We’re re-running one of our favorite episodes. In 1993, the Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal picked up an unknown novel by a forgotten writer from the 60s. And...

We discuss the classic 1953 novel by the Jewish Tunisian Francophone writer Albert Memmi, who died this year. This sharp and beautiful book is many things: a coming of...

Nazik al-Mala’ika was an Iraqi woman poet of great influence and renown through the 1940s, 50s and 60s. She pioneered new poetic forms and re-invented a heritage of feminine,...

Ursula Lindsey and Marcia Lynx Qualey discuss books from across the Arab region and new translations from Arabic.