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.

26: Bad Parents

We’re back! And ready to talk about two poets who have moved into prose: the Egyptian Iman Mersal and the Palestinian Mazen Maarouf, who have written books that explore the bonds between children and parents, among other things. We also talk about the Cairo book fair’s recent make-over, and about the vibrant but struggling cultural scene in Casablanca.

Show notes

Iman Mersal’s How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts was translated by Robin Moger and published by the Kayfa Ta initiative. It’s available from Neel wa Furat and Jamalon and, we hope, from good bookstores everywhere.
Mazen Maarouf’s Jokes for the Gunmen, winner of the inaugural Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story, was translated by Jonathan Wright and published by Granta. You can read the story “Portion of Jam,” from the collection, on the Granta website.
The Cairo International Book Fair (@cairobookfair), which has moved from the Nasr City Fairgrounds to the exhibition center in New Cairo, runs through February 5. Ursula has written about previous iterations here and here.
Casablanca, nid d'artistes just came out from Malika éditions, ed. Kenza Sefri and Leïla Slimani, featuring profiles and work by 115 artists.
Here is a link to the discussion that got the Moroccan cultural NGO Racines in legal trouble.