BULAQ: The Arab world in books

The latest episodes of BULAQ are available on the Sowt website. You can subscribe to the podcast using this RSS feed or on iTunes.

BULAQ is a podcast about contemporary writing from and about the Middle East and North Africa. It looks at the Arab region through the lens of literature and at literature through the lens of current events.

BULAQ is co-hosted by Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey. Its first season was produced by Issandr El Amrani. It is now co-produced with the Sowt network in Amman.

BULAQ is named after a neighborhood of Cairo that hosted the first active printing press in the region. Established in 1820, the Bulaq Press put out its first publication, an Italian-Arabic dictionary, in 1822.

MLQ is a book critic, editor, ghostwriter, and literary consultant with a focus on Arab and Arabic literatures, particularly as they intersect with translation. She runs the blog ArabLit.

Ursula is a journalist and book critic who writes about education, literature, and politics in the Arab world. She contributes to The New York Review of Books, The Nation, the New York Times, The Point and The Arabist blog.

Both Ursula and MLQ spent many years living in Cairo and in Rabat, Morocco. Today Ursula lives in Amman and the podcast is a long-distance conversation.

10: Noir Is The New Black

In which Marcia talks about her difficulties being interviewed; we discuss genre (sci-fi, fantasy, and especially noir) writing in Arabic; and we question whether translation into English “empowers” women writers from the Arab region.

Show notes

The Asymptote interview with MLQ, conducted by Claire Jacobson.
On voices at various margins: Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz (recently re-translated by Humphrey Davies); Kamal Ruhayyim’s Muslim Jew trilogy (tr. Sarah Enany); the film Marock; The Others by Seba al-Herz.
There is a video of Adam Talib's talk "Translating for Bigots" on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aANKpO4zmGA
Baghdad Noir, ed. Samuel Shimon, is forthcoming from Akashic Books later this year. You can already get Tehran Noir, ed. Salar Abdoh, who has a story called “Baghdad on Borrowed Time” in Baghdad Noir.
More on noir: The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz, tr. M.M. Badawi and Trevor Le Gassick, revised by John Rodenbeck; Vertigo by Ahmed Mourad, tr. Robin Moger; Metro, by Magdy Shafie, tr. Chip Rossetti; the noir of Algerian-French author Jérémie Guez; Apartment at Bab el-Louk, by Donia Maher, ill. Ganzeer and Ahmed Nady, tr. Elisabeth Jaquette; the films The Nile Hilton Incident and Casanegra; Abdelilah Hamdouchi’s detective series, published by Hoopoe.
You can also listen to Jonathan Guyer’s The Strange Case of the Arabic Whodunnit on BBC4.
Iraq + 100, ed. Hassan Blasim, is available from Comma Press in the UK and Tor in the US.
“Saudi discovers science fiction” or “L'Arabie saoudite découvre la science-fiction” appears on Orient XXI.
See more about Osama Al Muslim’s Basateen Arabistan at GoodReads.
The novel HWJN, by Yasser Bahjat and Ibrahim Abbas, is available in English and Arabic.
You can read Maysaa Alamoudi’s Mimosa in Arabic.