Arabic letters are enjoying a well-deserved spotlight in the English-speaking world. Since 2009 at least three publishing houses have turned their focus to the translation of Arabic fiction: the American University in Cairo Press, which launched the imprint Hoopoe; U.K.-based Darf Publishers, formerly devoted to travel books and historical reprints; and Hamad bin Khalifa University Press, formerly Bloomsbury Qatar. Stoking English-reader anticipation for the Next Big Arabic Novel, a growing number of awards—the so-called Arabic Booker prize (the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, which is affiliated with the Man Booker Prize), the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, and the Katara Prize for the Arabic Novel—all include translation assistance to bring first-place works into English. A slew of gigantic regional book fairs gather publishers from across the Arab region as well as prospective translation houses.
In parallel with the rise in available Arabic fiction there has...
Nora Parr is a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Her work for the Open World Research Initiative project on Creative Multilingualism explores literature and translation. She has lectured at King’s College London in comparative literature, and was a visiting fellow in Jordan and Palestine with the Council for British Research in the Levant.
Advertisement
Advertisement