View of Bulaq quarter, Cairo. HAY, Robert, Esq. Illustrations of Cairo, London, Tilt and Bogue, 1840.

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.

38: "Insufficiently Westernized"

We discussed a picaresque, surprisingly joyful tale set in an evacuated village during the Iran-Iraq war; and the TV adaption of a noir set in Baghdad during the US occupation. We also looked at how reviews of Arabic literature in translation have evolved. MLQ got to settle an old grudge with John Updike. (Episode partly recorded and produced in the offices of the Sowt network).

Show Notes

The Old Woman and the River by Ismail Fahd Ismail was translated by Sophia Vasalou.
Elliott Colla’s Baghdad Central was adapted into a TV mini-series by Channel 4.
John Updike wrote a condescending 1988 review of the first installment of Saudi writer Abdelrahman Mounif’s Cities of Salt.
Patricia Lockwood assassinated Updike in a recent issue of the London Review of Books.
James Wood gave Jokha Alharthi’s award-winning novel Celestial Bodies a rave review.