An elegant study of friendship amid the rootedness of political exile—Shayera Dark reviews Hisham Matar’s novel My Friends
In My Friends, Hisham Matar hones in on the push and pull of friendships, their guiding light and the cushion-like…
Tag: Arabic
Interrogating the tensions and contradictions around questions of identity—Shayera Dark reviews If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga
Shayera Dark reviews Noor Naga’s experimental debut novel If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, winner of the Graywolf Press Africa…
[Sampler issue] ‘The last moments before the downfall of any dictator are all surprisingly similar’—Read an excerpt from The Dictatorship Syndrome by Alaa Al Aswany
The JRB presents an excerpt from The Dictatorship Syndrome by noted author Alaa Al Aswany. Alaa Aswany first and foremost…
‘The majority of writers in Africa, of us, confine ourselves, rather than having great ambition’—An interview with Nuruddin Farah, by Lebohang Mojapelo
Internationally renowned Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah is known for his politically conscious writing, which led him into exile as a…
‘We are African writers, we write as Africans and we share our books as Africans’—The tiny island of Mayotte has big plans for books, reports James Murua
The JRB Editorial Advisory Panel member James Murua reports back from his trip to the Salon du Livre de Mayotte, which took place…
‘Not your traditional immigrant novel’—Efemia Chela reviews Beyond Babylon, the newly translated English debut by Somali–Italian author Igiaba Scego
In Beyond Babylon, by Igiaba Scego, migrants come to rebuild their lives in the midst of ruins, writes Francophone and…
New poetry by Robin Moger—Two versions of ‘Poem Six’ from The Interpreter of Desires by Ibn Arabi
The following two translations are responses to the sixth poem in The Interpreter of Desires, a cycle of sixty-one poems…
[Temporary Sojourner] Efemia Chela travels to Sudan with Rania Mamoun’s newly translated collection of short stories, Thirteen Months of Sunrise
The JRB Francophone and Contributing Editor Efemia Chela travels to Sudan with Rania Mamoun’s debut collection of short stories, Thirteen Months of Sunrise,…