Most recent articles by Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Peter Heineʹs "The Culinary Crescent"
Pepper... a universally-used condiment
Delving into Peter Heine's cookbook, now also available in English, you are left with the feeling that he bit off more than he could chew. "The Culinary Crescent" reads like a mishmash of a thousand and one culinary arts. 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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Profile: Hoda Marmar, administrator of Beirutʹs Bookoholics
Truly, madly, deeply into books
Hoda Marmar is the administrator of the popular bilingual "Bookoholics" group in Beirut, which recently celebrated its sixth anniversary and which has, in those six years, discussed 125 books in Arabic and English. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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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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Book review: Mbarek Ould Beyroukʹs "The Desert and the Drum"
One of a kind
Mbarek Ould Beyroukʹs "The Desert and the Drum" centres on a young womanʹs coming-to-political-consciousness in contemporary Mauritania. Winner of an English PEN Award, this translation, from the French by Rachael McGill, is being touted as the first-ever Mauritanian novel to be published in English. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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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
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Book review: Shahad al-Rawiʹs "The Baghdad Clock"
Romance and sanctions in ʹ90s Iraq
Now available in English translation, Shahad al-Rawiʹs bestselling debut novel "The Baghdad Clock" offers a strikingly direct portrayal of life in Iraq in the nineteen nineties, combining magical-realist elements with the advantage of hindsight. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Radwa Ashour's "The Journey"
An inheritance of grief and joy
In Radwa Ashour's "The Journey", newly translated by Michelle Hartman, the Egyptian novelist chronicles the four years she spent doing a PhD in African-American Literature at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970s. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabappleʹs "Brothers of the Gun"
Immortal art and immortal words
Tracing his own coming-of-age and the fateful changes that take place in Raqqa between 2011 and 2016, Syrian journalist Marwan Hisham’s memoir – deftly complimented by Molly Crabappleʹs moody illustrations – explores timeless issues: growing up, teenage rebellion and the inevitable moral quandaries. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Poetry anthology: Fady Joudah's "Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance"
A web of living tissue
At a time when we have almost become accustomed to the poetry of witness, recounting events or a poet's reaction to them, the latest anthology by acclaimed Palestinian-American poet and physician Fady Joudah cuts deeper, with appropriately surgical precision, to reveal connections beneath the surface of things. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Non-fiction: Dunya Mikhailʹs "The Beekeeper"
Rescuing the stolen women
In a harrowing compilation of true stories charting the fate of women abducted by IS in Iraq, Dunya Mikhail shows how the best of human qualities can persist even in the worst of times. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Mohammad Sabaaneh′s "White and Black: Political Cartoons from Palestine"
Punching through the glass
Packed with more than a hundred single-page political cartoons, this compilation of Mohammad Sabaaneh′s work, which draws on different periods of the artist′s life, offers a complex and often surrealist take on the daily struggles facing those in the West Bank and Gaza. By Marcia Lynx Qualey