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.

27: Where Do I Start?

What should you recommend to someone who is interested in exploring Arabic literature? We tackle this big question this week; we also talk about the authors short-listed on the International Prize for Arabic Fiction and about North African literature in English translation.

Show notes:

There are many opinions on where you should start with Arabic literature. Back in 2010, Ursula’s five-to-read-before-you-die were: Memory for Forgetfulness, Mahmoud Darwish; Season of Migration to the North, Tayyeb Saleh; The Trilogy or Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz; Bleeding of the Stone, Ibrahim al-Koni; Youssef Idris’s stories in Arabic.
The shortlist for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, for the first time, features more women writers than men. MLQ was already profiling shortlisted writer Shahla Ujayli: outtakes from the interview are on ArabLit, where you can also read a long Q&A with the translator of Ujayli’s A Sky So Close to Us, Michelle Hartman.
The long list of 100 Algerian books available in English translation, put together by Nadia Ghanem also comes with a 6-book starter kit from Dr. Ghanem and MLQ. Next up are Moroccan and Tunisian literatures in translation.