November: Publishing Palestinian Literature in Translation

This month, we focus on Palestinian literature (from detective stories to children's books to poetry to historical novels), magazines, grants for Palestinians, and on Palestinian translators.

As many have said in recent weeks, we mourn the dead & fight like hell for the living.

🔦Translator spotlight: Fady Joudah

Palestinian-American poet-doctor-translator Fady Joudah has worked hard, over the years, to spotlight work by Palestinian writers. This does not just include the book-length works he’s translated, such as books by Mahmoud Darwish (who needs no introduction), Griffin Prize-winning poet and novelist Ghassan Zaqtan (who has two new books out in November from Seagull), and the brilliant poet-editor-writer Maya Abu al-Hayyat; Joudah has also translated and edited the work of dozens of other poets, many of whom you can find in The Baffler’s “Poems from Palestine” section.

You can also read Fady’s recent essay “Good Morning Gaza” in The Baffler. And, as discussed below, his “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation: Thirteen Maqams for an Afterlife,” which appears in LitHub.

📚LEILA Recommends: 9 Novels from Palestine

The LEILA website allows you to search through authors whose works have been recommended by the LEILA project’s jury members (Arabic literature specialists, translators, and writers) by country; there are nine Palestinians books on the list. Three have been translated to English (Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance, Huzama Habayeb’s Velvet, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s In Search of Walid Masoud), but the other six have not:

*Abdallah Al Zayoud’s يلتهم نفسه بادئًا بقدميه (Devours Himself Starting at His Feet), a horror mystery that is also an allegory about the writing process.

*Rana Zeid’s ملاك متردد (Hesitant Angel), a debut collection of deeply affecting poems about a young woman’s experience living through the trauma of the Syrian revolution in 2011.

*Saleem Albeik’s عين الديك (The Cock’s Eye), about a writer caught between two lives, two languages, two women.

*Ahmad Rafiq Awad’s العذراء في القرية (The Virgin in the Village), about life in a Palestinian village that suddenly becomes a border town in 1948.

*Ziad Khaddash’s غارقون بالضحك (Drowned in Laughter), Palestinian stories on fictional attempts to escape the reality of life under occupation.

*Ahmad Harb’s إسماعيل (Ismail), the first volume of a historical trilogy about Palestine during three different time periods: after the 1967 war, during the first Intifada (1987-1993), and after the Oslo agreements.

You can explore the LEILA site at leila-arabicliterature.com and find all the Palestinian writers they recommend here.

📚Novel from Gaza: Atef Abu Saif’s ‘Running in Place’

Atef Abu Saif's acclaimed 2019 novel مشاة لا يعبرون الطريق (Running in Place), which Haaretz called an “excellent detective story set in Gaza,” is his third in a series that began with his International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted حياة معلقة (A Suspended Life). In a review posted on GoodReads, the award-winning Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha writes that the novel “takes us on a journey into a new sort of journalistic/police investigation.” At the start of the novel, the journalist, along with police and an onlooker, believe the man was injured (and put in a coma) in a hit-and-run. But as the story unfolds, they come to doubt this version. (Another reviewer says simply: “Genius novel, shocking ending.”)

Interested publishers can reach out via info@arablit.org.

📚Novel from Gaza: The Late Heba Abu Nada’s ‘Oxygen is Not for the Dead’

In 2017, Heba Abu Nada — who died in October under Israeli bombardment — took the second place Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity in the novel category for her debut, الأكسجين ليس للموتى (Oxygen is Not for the Dead). No sample is available yet, but you can read some fragments from her final poem in Fady Joudah’s “A Palestinian Meditation in a Time of Annihilation: Thirteen Maqams for an Afterlife.”

Publishers can contact Yasmina Jraissati at Raya Agency for more on this novel.

📚We Recommend: Palestinian Literature for Young Readers

If you’re interested in Palestinian literature for young readers, we hope you’re following librarian Elisabet Risberg on instagram, @arabarnlitt, and also at her blog, Arabisk barnlitteratur. (Yes, it’s in Swedish, but you can at least get a sense of the book interiors and titles that might interest you.)

We worked with several Swedish translators to bring a few of her reviews into English; you can find reviews of the charming Damdum the Cloud-maker, The Shy Radish, and more at ArabLit. We also have a list from 2021 that recommends not just picture books, but also Palestinian middle grade and YA novels for translation.

🗓️Upcoming events

The Casablanca International Children's and Youth Book Fair is set for Nov 15-22.

On December 8, 9 and 10 of this year, iReMMO will curate and coordinates a literature festival in Paris open to the public at Maison de la Poésie, that focus on contemporary literature from the Mediterranean and the greater Middle East.

You can find more events on our calendar. Email us at info@arablit.org to add yours.

💰Grants, subsidies, & support

Don’t miss LEILA’s list of grants, subsidies, and support on their new website.

Also note that you can direct Palestinian authors toward Sundress Publications, which is offering both a microgrant and a fully funded residency for Palestinian authors.

If you know if grants or subsidies targeting Arabic literature, please let us know at info@arablit.org.

🔦Magazine Spotlight: 28 Magazine

28 Magazine is a beautiful Gaza-based publication with work you can download in both Arabic and English. In Yahya Ashour’s “From loss to solitude and not the other way around!” which appeared in the Coronaphone issue and was translated by Bishan Samamreh, he writes about the Covid pandemic with a dark humor, saying, “For the first time, many here thought the blockade was finally good for something.”

Find more at the magazine’s website.