Most recent articles by Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: ″Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution″
The drama of protest
Despite bearing the title ″Tahrir Tales: Plays from the Egyptian Revolution″, the works in this new anthology, translated and edited by Rebekah Maggor and Mohammad Albakry, aren′t limited to the events of January and February 2011, nor to other uprisings that have taken place in Cairo′s iconic downtown square. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Hilal Chouman′s ″Limbo Beirut″
Hybrid lives
″Limbo Beirut″ is Hilal Chouman′s third novel, but his first to cross over into English. Beautifully translated by Anna Ziajka Stanton, this illustrated novel is a five-part portrait of interconnected lives, written in markedly different styles. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Ghassan Zaqtan's "Describing the past"
The vapours of memory
Ghassan Zaqtan′s slender ″Describing the Past″ is a fiction. But it′s less like a novel than a brew of philosophy, memoir, and poetry, writes Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Remembering Naguib Mahfouz
″A wave of light on an infinite ocean of darkness″
30 August 2016 marks the tenth anniversary of Naguib Mahfouz′ death. Widely regarded as the father of the Arab novel, the Egyptian author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988: ″through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous″. A volume of his early non-fiction work has recently been published. Marcia Lynx Qualey gives her impressions
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Sayed Kashua′s ″Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life″
His family′s grace
Reading Sayed Kashua′s "Native: Dispatches from a Palestinian-Israeli Life" is like binge-watching a laugh-out-loud, buffoonish TV sitcom that offers surprisingly astute social criticism. A review by Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: Muhammad Zafzaf′s ″Elusive Fox″
One rule for them
Translated into English for the first time, Zafzaf′s novel plunges the reader into the free-living, free-loving culture of the Moroccan fringe during the hippie era – and examines the relative nature of freedom. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Basma Abdel Aziz′s ″The Queue″
Disturbingly prescient
Were George Orwell′s ″1984″ to meet and mingle with the rich, detailed portrait of Cairo in Naguib Mahfouz′s ″Trilogy″, the two would birth a novel something like Basma Abdel Aziz′s ″The Queue″. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Ali Bader and ″Al-Kafira″
When Fatima became Sophie
Bader has achieved significant acclaim both in Arabic and in translation as an author of philosophical fiction. The Iraqi writer′s twelfth novel, ″Al-Kafira″ (The Infidel Woman), published last year, however, signals a major break with his previous body of work. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review: ″The New Waw: Saharan Oasis″ by Ibrahim al-Koni
Cultivating the strange
Recognised with the 2015 National Translation Award last autumn, Ibrahim al-Koni′s novel ″The New Waw: Saharan Oasis″ may seem an odd choice. After all his latest work manages to flout Western literary conventions and confound reader expectations. And yet, argues Marcia Lynx Qualey, that is precisely its appeal
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Book review: "The Drone Eats with Me" by Atef Abu Saif
A war without distinct edges
Throughout history, countless literary accounts of war and the suffering it brings have been written. Gazan author Atef Abu Saif has added something new to this body of literature, namely an account of civilian life during the Gaza conflict in 2014 that describes the war and the impact of drone warfare from the viewpoint of a non-combatant. By Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Book review ″Beirut Noir″
Chronicling life in the corrupt city
The smoke of abandonment permeates ″Beirut Noir″. In this collection of short stories, we find the remains of the crippled, the lonely, the lost, and the dead. They move – or fail to move – through a landscape violently reshaped by fifteen years of civil war. Many of the characters are stuck in an afterlife of one sort or another. Or, if they′re still alive, time has stopped. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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Book review: Kamal Ruhayyim's "Diary of a Muslim Jew"
An engaging take on a complex theme
In the first half of the twentieth century, about 75,000 Jews lived in Egypt. With the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, their lives in Egypt became increasingly difficult and many emigrated to Europe. Kamal Ruhayyim believes that Jewish Egyptians were an important part of the Egyptian community and wrote a book to keep their memory alive. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the English translation of the first book in Ruhayyim's trilogy "Diary of a Muslim Jew"