BULAQ | بولا‪ق‬ Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey

Said Khatibi’s detective novel نهاية الصحراء (End of the Sahara) is set in a remote desert city in Algeria in the Fall of 1988, when the country’s October Riots are about to break out place. The book is one of the winners of this year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Khatibi explained how his writing is also a way of exploring larger historical crimes. 
Show Notes:
This episode is produced in collaboration with the Sheikh Zayed Book Award.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is one of the Arab world’s most prestigious literary prizes, showcasing the stimulating and ambitious work of writers, translators, researchers, academics and publishers advancing Arab literature and culture around the globe.
Today’s guest, Said Khatibi, was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2023 in the category of Young Author, for his novel نهاية الصحراء, or “The End of the Sahara.” Khatibi is a writer and journalist who is based in Ljublana, Slovenia.
Khatibi’s 2018 novel Sarajevo Firewood was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2020, and he won the Katara Prize for his 2016 novel Forty Years Waiting for Isabel. His Sarajevo Firewood was translated by Paul Starkey and is available from Banipal Books. 
Edith Maud Hull's 1919 novel The Sheik was adapted into a 1921 film of the same name starring Rudoph Valentino.
The Sheikh Zayed Book Award Translation Grant is open all year round, with funding available for fiction titles that have won or been shortlisted for an award. Publishers outside the Arab world are eligible to apply - find out more on the Sheikh Zayed Book Award website at: zayedaward.ae

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Egyptian novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel died last month at the age of 56. In this episode, we remember Hamdi and his one-of-a-kind literary career, telling the story of Egypt’s laborers, Bedouin, and migrants. 
Show Notes:
Egyptian Novelist Hamdi Abu Golayyel Dies at 56: ‘There Was No One Like Him’
A Special Section at ArabLit on Abu Golayyel, Bedouin Poetry, and ‘The Men Who Swallowed the Sun’
Mohamed Kheir remembers Hamdy
Books available in translation are: Thieves in Retirement (translated by Marilyn Booth), A Dog with No Tail (translated by Robin Moger), and The Men Who Swallowed the Sun (translated by Humphrey Davies.
Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.


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Comics artist Rawand Issa joins us to talk about her book Inside the Giant Fish (trans. Amy Chiniara, Maamoul Press); her path from journalism to graphic art; artist groups and collectives across the region; the “new school of Arab comics,” and the challenges of making a living as a comics artist. We also talk about a few other Lebanese graphic novels, particularly Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, and Lena Merhej’s I Think We’ll Be Calmer in the Next War.
Show Notes:
You can find several of Rawand’s books available from Maamoul Press: http://maamoulpress.com. 
Also read Rawand’s “Being Illegal is Unbearable at The Nib, her  ماذا نفعل في مواجهة استمرار العنف ضد النساء؟ at Jeem and her untitled work in Chime.
And if you missed it, there’s a discussion with Rawand and translator Amy Chiniara about Inside the Giant Fish at ArabLit.
Samandal magazine is on Instagram (@samandalcomics), and you can find them at samandal-comics.org.
You can buy copies of the magazine Corniche at the Sharjah Art Foundation website.
Lab619 (@lab619), Skefkef (@skefkefmag/), and Fanzeen Comics (@fanzeencomics/) are on Instagram, while TokTok has a website, toktokmag.com.
Rawand Issa (@rawand.issa_) and Amy Chiniara (@amychiniara) are both on Instagram, too.
Lamia Ziadé’s My Port of Beirut, translated to English by Emma Ramadan, from Pluto Press
Lena Merhej’s We Will Be Calmer in the Next War is available online.
Please support BULAQ! You can donate to our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.


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Translator Sawad Hussain joins us to talk about the challenges of making a living as a translator, the art of co-translation, her focus on Arabic literature from Africa and the Gulf, and the advice she gives to her translation mentees. We also highlight three of Sawad’s recent and forthcoming translations: Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind, and Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Souls.
Show Notes:
Haji Jaber’s Black Foam, co-translated by Sawad Hussain and M Lynx Qualey, came out in February from AmazonCrossing. You can read reflections on the novel at Hadara magazine and listen to a sample at Amazon.
Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind was published, in Sawad’s translation, by Fitzcarraldo. As Sawad mentions, there is an audio long read at The Guardian.
Stella Gaitano’s Edo’s Souls is forthcoming from Dedalus Press in August in Sawad’s translation. You can read an excerpt and a review at ArabLit, as well as other work by Gaitano.
You can find our fundraiser for the 2023 season at donorbox.org/support-bulaq.


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Twenty years after the disastrous and mendacious US invasion of Iraq, we take a look at writing from Iraq: memoirs, poems and blog posts. Shalash the Iraqi is a collection of such posts – a satirical, surreal, and affecting panorama in life in a Shia suburb of Baghdad in the early years of the occupation. 
Show Notes:
An excerpt from Gaith Abdul-ahad’s memoir A Stranger In Your Own City ran recently in the Guardian
Shalash The Iraqi, trans. Luke Leafgren, is a collection of blog posts written in 2005-2006 
An excerpt from Faleeha Hassan’s memoir War and Me, tans. William Hutchins ran on Arablit.org.
The Book of Trivialities, by Majed Mujid, trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid
The only English-language collection of Sargon Boulous’ self-translated poetry is Knife Sharpener from Banipal Books. You can find a list of his poems available online here. 
You can make a donation to support BULAQ's 2023 season here: https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq

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We wandered through Arabic poetry and prose to talk about many different forms of literary love: regretful love, unreciprocated love, bad love, vengeful love, liberating love, married love. 
We read this poem by Núra al-Hawshán: “O eyes, pour me the clearest, freshest tearsAnd when the fresh part’s over, pour me the dregs.O eyes, gaze at his harvest and guard it.Keep watch upon his water-camels, look at his well.If he passes me on the roadI can’t speak to him.O God, such afflictionAnd utter calamity!Whoever desires usWe scorn to desire,And whom we desireFeeble fate does not deliver.”
The Núra al-Hawshán poem, translated by Moneera al-Ghadeer, has a modern musical adaptation on YouTube produced by Majed Al Esa.
Yasmine Seale’s translation of Ulayya Bint El Mahdi. This poem and others were set to music on the album “Medieval Femme.”
Do’a al-Karawan (“The Nightingale’s Prayer”) by Taha Hussein
I Do Not Sleep, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous, trans. Jonathan Smolin
The Cairo Trilogy, Naguib Mahfouz (1956-57)
Al-Bab al-Maftouh (The Open Door) Latifa al-Zayyat, trans. Marilyn Booth (1960) 
All That I Want to Forget, by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated by Michele Henjum.
Rita and the Rifle, Mahmoud Darwish, made into a song by Marcel Khalife. 
Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck

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