Banipal 62 – A Literary Journey through Arab Cinema is a special collaboration with London’s SAFAR Arab film festival (13-18 September) and features articles and reviews on book and film pairs, including Horses of God, Men in the Sun, The Wedding of Zein, For Bread Alone and Gate of the Sun, plus presentations and an interview with Daoud Abdel Sayed, director of the famous Egyptian film Kit Kat, adapted from the novel The Heron. Banipal 62 also celebrates the 40th year of Morocco’s Assilah Festival – an international and inspirational meeting point every year for dialogue, discovery and creativity. The issue opens with excerpts from novels: Memoirs in the Sun by Azouz Begag, Lutfiya al-Dulaimi’s Lovers, a Phonograph and Times, The Seer by Ahmad Ali El-Zein and After Coffee by Abdelrashid Mahmoudi. Liana Badr, writing on her “Literary Influences” mentions how learning to read at a very early age opened up a “wonderland” that never closed, that made her a persistent witness and a writer whose mission was “to see, hear and learn”.