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Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the...
The Arab world is, demographically speaking, a very young region: close to two thirds of the population in the Arab countries is under the age of twenty-five (in the United States, the ratio is...
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10 Books By Arab Women Writers That Should Be Translated
On your local bookshop shelves, you’re not likely to find much literature translated from the original Arabic. You are likely to find what scholar Lila Abu-Lughod has called the “saving Muslim women”...
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Rabih Alameddine: “My Existence is Uncomfortable for People”
This interview was conducted at the Bookstan conference in Sarajevo and over email. John Freeman: Good evening. Rabih always promised to give me a lap dance, but I never thought it would be in...
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Excellent Daughters: The Secret Lives of Young Women Who Are Transforming the...
The Arab world is, demographically speaking, a very young region: close to two thirds of the population in the Arab countries is under the age of twenty-five (in the United States, the ratio is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Books By Arab Women Writers That Should Be Translated
On your local bookshop shelves, you’re not likely to find much literature translated from the original Arabic. You are likely to find what scholar Lila Abu-Lughod has called the “saving Muslim women”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rabih Alameddine: “My Existence is Uncomfortable for People”
This interview was conducted at the Bookstan conference in Sarajevo and over email. John Freeman: Good evening. Rabih always promised to give me a lap dance, but I never thought it would be in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Same As It Ever Was: Orientalism Forty Years Later
“Why do they have to show that? That—that—violence,” I said to my mom hours later, burying my face in my pillow, unable to sleep, my little body convulsing with this strange grief. In the packed dark...
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Imagining Iraq: On the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Iraq War
Three years after the Persian Gulf War, I met Shakir Mustafa in the graduate study lounge at Indiana University. He looked like an uncle of mine, so I asked where he was from. He was the first Iraqi...
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Identity, Desire, Sex: On Breaking Taboo, in Memoir and in Fiction
Kamin Mohammadi first met Hanan Al Shaykh at the Jaipur Literary Festival in 2012. “I think on the first morning,” Kamin says, “I remember I ran up to you and wanted to kneel at your feet, I was so...
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On the Third Most Popular Poet of All Time
The first thing that you learn about Khalil Gibran from an Arab, particularly a Lebanese immigrant in love with the Old Country, is that his name is not Khalil Gibran. Nor is it, as my edition of The...
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Beirut, Modernism’s Vanished Utopia
It is a scene out of Balzac: a young man from the provinces arrives in the city, hoping to make his fame as a writer. The Syrian poet Adonis arrived in Beirut in October 1956, at the age of 26. “At the...
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Balancing Power in the Lebanese Borderlands
In May 2017, I traveled with the artist Richard Mosse, who was taking thermographic photographs of the refugee camp of Arsal from the army outpost on a hill above the town. Because the region was so...
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On Becoming a Writer in the Middle of War
From an early age, Hanan al-Shaykh felt the urge to be different, to have her own opinion on and decisions in life. Both Hanan’s innate urge to be different and desire to challenge injustice and...
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On Knafeh and a Vision of the World Without Borders
All the knafeh I have eaten over the last two months has melted into one textural memory in my mind: crisp, butter-soaked strands of filo pastry or soft, golden-brown semolina draped over a slab of...
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Letter From Beirut: From Revolution to Pandemic
Beirut, April 3, 2020 Dearest M, I was so happy to receive your email, and so happy to know you are healthy and managing, despite everything. That most unimaginative of all email openers: “I hope this...
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Elias Khoury’s Unique Vision of Civil War Lebanon
The following is from issue 67 of Banipal, and is part of a larger feature on “Elias Khoury the Novelist,” the celebrated Lebanese and international author who published his first novel in 1975 and,...
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The Beggars of Beirut
scroll through dumpsters like daily digital feeds, translating trash to dinner. This auntie doles out packages of napkins, searching my face for a smudge of compassion. She adjusts her hijab, collapses...
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Losing Beirut: On Life in a Shattered City
It was my first. Leo wanted to finish building the haunted house he created out of materials he found around the house. It was a replica of the one he created with his buddy Olivier the day before....
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