Banipal’s first issue of 2010 celebrates authors from Iraq with over half its 224 pages devoted to fiction and poetry by 21 writers from different generations, some spread across the world, but many writing from within the country. We celebrate, in particular, a new generation of Iraqi fiction writers and poets who are free to write the story of Iraq we’ve been waiting to hear, however hard, and are indebted to all the translators and copy-editors who made the issue possible.
• Writers who are completely new to Western readers are Nazum al-Obeidi and Nassif Falak (who has his own hair-raising personal story of flight, capture on a number of borders and imprisonment in Abu Ghraib during the Saddam regime), the atmospheric writer Enas al-Badran, Ahmad Saadawi and Shakir Nouri. PLUS many more . . .
PLUS
• Glimpses into the powerful fiction of Yemeni author Ali Mohammed Zayd, of Egyptian novelists Mohamed al-Bisatie and Ezzat el-Kamhawi
• An excerpt from Algerian poet Habib Tengour’s historical epic poem Ce Tatar-là, in translation by Marilyn Hacker
• A short story from Flemish author Rachida Lamrabet, translated from the Dutch.
PLUS book reviews, and literary festivals photo-reports
• Writers who are completely new to Western readers are Nazum al-Obeidi and Nassif Falak (who has his own hair-raising personal story of flight, capture on a number of borders and imprisonment in Abu Ghraib during the Saddam regime), the atmospheric writer Enas al-Badran, Ahmad Saadawi and Shakir Nouri. PLUS many more . . .
PLUS
• Glimpses into the powerful fiction of Yemeni author Ali Mohammed Zayd, of Egyptian novelists Mohamed al-Bisatie and Ezzat el-Kamhawi
• An excerpt from Algerian poet Habib Tengour’s historical epic poem Ce Tatar-là, in translation by Marilyn Hacker
• A short story from Flemish author Rachida Lamrabet, translated from the Dutch.
PLUS book reviews, and literary festivals photo-reports