Most recent articles by Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Sahar Khalifeh's "Passage to the Plaza"
It's all a question of timing
When Sahar Khalifeh’s "Passage to the Plaza" appeared in English this year, thirty years after its initial publication, it seemed out of sync – too late and too overshadowed by the coronavirus. Yet perhaps this is just the right time: its locked-in world of curfews and domestic violence speak to 2020 as much as it did to 1990. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Mohamed Elshahed's "Cairo Since 1900"
In pursuit of other modernisms
Cairo is often described as an ancient city, full of wonders that are thousands of years old. Yet Mohamed Elshahed persuasively argues, in the newly released "Cairo Since 1900: An Architectural Guide", that the city we see today was largely shaped by twentieth-century concerns. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Tawfiq al-Hakim’s "Return of the Spirit"
Awaiting the day of resurrection
In 2019, the long-running Penguin Classics series released its first novel translated from Arabic: Tawfiq al-Hakim’s "Return of the Spirit", conveyed into English by William Hutchins. Al-Hakim wrote his popular novel in Paris in 1927 and published it in Cairo six years later, in 1933. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Ismail Fahd Ismail’s "The Old Woman and the River"
Hemingway, eat your heart out!
Part desert-island novel, part war story, part ‘Don Quixote’ and part folktale, the last novel by Kuwaiti writer Ismail Fahd Ismail (1940-2018) brings us the Iran-Iraq war through the eyes of a wise old fool. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Ibtisam Azem's "The Book of Disappearance"
We woke to find them gone
In her latest novel, "The Book of Disappearance", Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem strikes a nerve with a fantastical tale that simultaneously fascinates and moves the reader, presenting the moral drift that can set in when people are confronted with the insoluble. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Raja Alem's "Sarab"
Gender under siege in Mecca
On 20 November 1979, Islamic militants took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam. Hundreds were killed in the ensuing two-week siege. This pivotal event in modern Islamic history changed Saudi Arabia. It provides the backdrop for Raja Alem's new novel "Sarab", an extraordinary story of love, faith, violence and gender. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Previously unpublished work
Naguib Mahfouz' "The Quarter"
Last year, Egyptian critic Mohammed Shoair made an unusual and thrilling announcement: the discovery of never-before-seen stories by Egyptʹs only Nobel laureate for literature, Naguib Mahfouz. Filed in a cardboard box in the possession of Mahfouzʹs daughter, this slender trove of texts has now yielded "The Quarter". By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Interview with Sudanese writer Rania Mamoun and translator Elisabeth Jaquette
For the sheer pleasure of reading
Rania Mamounʹs 10-story collection – "Thirteen Months of Sunrise" – explores the connections and walls between people and communities. Marcia Lynx Qualey had a three-way discussion with Mamoun, the bookʹs Sudanese author, and its translator, Elisabeth Jaquette, who has rendered the book into vibrant, compelling English
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Portrait of the Syrian writer Shahla Ujayli
Lessons in empathy
Born into a family of celebrated Syrian authors and academics, Shahla Ujayli is herself a successful writer. Winning the Jordan State Award for Literature in 2006 with her debut publication, "The Cat's Eye", Ujayli has now been shortlisted – for the second time – for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Man Booker International award
Johka Alharthi scoops a first for Arabic literature
Omani novelist Johka Alharthi confounded regional literary pundits earlier this month when she carried off the highly prestigious Man Booker International prize for "Celestial Bodies". Marcia Lynx Qualey caught up with her and the novelʹs translator, Marilyn Booth, the morning after the award was announced
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Book review: Ibrahim al-Koniʹs "The Fetishists"
Intricate patterns of the mind
Imagine a book of more than 500 pages where plot and character donʹt matter, a giant multi-room museum piece that asks to be read in stages and puzzled over. Ibrahim al-Koniʹs epic novel "Al-Majus" – newly available in English translation as "The Fetishists" – is just such a read. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Review: Mustafa Khalifa′s ″The Shell″
Guilty onlookers
Published in Arabic in 2006, Mustafa Khalifa′s novel ″The Shell″ takes us deep inside the de-humanising cruelty that fed the Assad regime and the current civil war. Now translated into English by Paul Starkey, it must be one of the twenty-first century′s most emotionally devastating reads. A review by Marcia Lynx Qualey