{"id":269626,"date":"2009-03-24T17:22:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T17:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/03\/24\/for-english-speaking-readers\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:24:12","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:24:12","slug":"for-english-speaking-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/03\/24\/for-english-speaking-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"For English-Speaking Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair<\/a> blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

After spending a week in Abu Dhabi talking with Arabic publishers, looking at Arabic stands, I\u2019m personally very interested in reading a few contemporary Arabic works. As most everybody knows, translation ain\u2019t a specialty of American\/UK publishers, so unfortunately outside of a handful of Mahfouz titles and Munif\u2019s Cities of Salt, it\u2019s unlikely you\u2019ll find many other books on the shelves of your local bookstores.<\/p>\n

That said, there are a few good sources and publications (which your bookstores should be able to order for you at least) that are worth checking out:<\/p>\n

American University of Cairo Press is probably the cream of the crop. They publish upwards of 100 titles a year about the Middle East, ranging from academic books to general novels. Their three big categories are \u201cIslamic Art & Architecture,\u201d \u201cMiddle East Studies,\u201d and \u201cModern Arabic Literature in Translation.\u201d As more of a fiction reader than anything else, I picked up a copy of Gamal al-Ghitani\u2019s The Zafarani Files, which was published just after it was announced that al-Ghitani won this year\u2019s Sheikh Zayed\u2019s Book Award for Fiction. (Instead of an overview or teaser about the book, I\u2019ll just say that a full review will be available on the Three Percent website in the not too distant future.)<\/p>\n

Saqi Books. The Alsaqi Bookshop is the UK\u2019s largest bookshop specializing in Middle Eastern titles. And in addition to selling, they also publish books about the Middle East. Saqi Books publishes a wide range of titles from a number of languages and countries, and across a number of categories, including history, biography, culture & society, literature, philosophy & religion, and food & drink. Their \u201cshort stories by ___ women\u201d series is a great introduction to writing from around the world. And in terms of the Middle East, Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women looks quite good.<\/p>\n

In a Fertile Desert: Modern Writing from the United Arab Emirates was specially published for the ADIBF<\/span> by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. Featuring twenty stories by UAE<\/span> writers, this is the first collection of Emirati short fiction to be published. As mentioned on the flap copy, fiction writing is a very new genre for UAE<\/span> writers, having traditionally worked within the poetry tradition. Selected and translated by Denys Johnson-Davies\u2013one of the best Arabic translators working today\u2013this book in a fantastic introduction to the literature of the region.<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair blog. After spending a week in Abu Dhabi talking with Arabic publishers, looking at Arabic stands, I\u2019m personally very interested in reading a few contemporary Arabic works. As most everybody knows, translation ain\u2019t a specialty of American\/UK publishers, so unfortunately outside of a handful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[19766,1836,1646],"class_list":["post-269626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-abu-dhabi-book-fair","tag-cwp","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324236,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269626\/revisions\/324236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}