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Past Events
26 June 2024
6.30 to 8.00pm BST (UK time)
Zoom Bookclub Meeting 26 June 2024
Published by MacLehose Press, 28 March 2024
Deftly translated from the Arabic by Kay Heikkinen, this is an absorbing novel about the Palestinian diaspora . . . Memorable ― Sunday Post
Huzama Habayeb describes many worlds within one world. She weaves the East and the West within the Middle East, and explores the feeling of living in exile even when at home. She cares for the lives of children and women, always filled with difficulties and great hopes, in a compassionate and magical language. While searching for a solution in despair, she holds up a new mirror to the world, a mirror that everyone is invited to look at and question themselves – Burhan Sönmez
Huzama Habayeb is a Palestinian writer who was born and raised in Kuwait, where she started writing and publishing short stories, poetry, and journalistic pieces as a student of English language and literature. She started writing and publishing short stories and poetry as a student, and her journalistic writings were published in several newspapers and magazines. When the Gulf War erupted in 1990, she fled to Jordan and established her reputation as a short-story writer. Habayeb’s first novel, Asl al-hawa (Root of Passion), was published in 2007, gaining wide critical acclaim, and her second novel, Qabla an Tanama al-Malika (Before The Queen Falls Asleep), published in 2011, was described by critics as an epic novel of the Palestinian diaspora. Her third novel, Mukhmal (Velvet), for which in December 2017 she was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, was first published in Arabic in Beirut in 2016 by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing.
Kay Heikkinen is a translator from Arabic and academic who holds a PhD from Harvard University and before her retirement was the Ibn Rushd Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Chicago.
6.30 to 8.00pm BST (UK time)
Zoom Bookclub Meeting 26 June 2024
Published by MacLehose Press, 28 March 2024
Deftly translated from the Arabic by Kay Heikkinen, this is an absorbing novel about the Palestinian diaspora . . . Memorable ― Sunday Post
Huzama Habayeb describes many worlds within one world. She weaves the East and the West within the Middle East, and explores the feeling of living in exile even when at home. She cares for the lives of children and women, always filled with difficulties and great hopes, in a compassionate and magical language. While searching for a solution in despair, she holds up a new mirror to the world, a mirror that everyone is invited to look at and question themselves – Burhan Sönmez
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A daring and captivating novel about a Palestinian family, told with love, wisdom and black humour.
Born a girl to parents who expected a boy, Jihad grows up treated like the eldest son, wearing boy's clothing and sharing the financial burden of head of the household with her father.
Now middle-aged, each night Jihad tells her daughter a story from her life. As Maleka prepares to leave home to attend university abroad, her mother revisits the past of their Palestinian family, tenderly describing their life in exile in Kuwait and her own experiences of love and loss as she grows up.
Huzama Habayeb weaves a richly observed and affectionate portrait of a Palestinian family displaced from their homeland, exploring with humour and poise the love and betrayal that pursues Jihad and her family from Kuwait to Jordan to Dubai. This is a novel whose words will resound long after you finish the final page.
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Huzama Habayeb is a Palestinian writer who was born and raised in Kuwait, where she started writing and publishing short stories, poetry, and journalistic pieces as a student of English language and literature. She started writing and publishing short stories and poetry as a student, and her journalistic writings were published in several newspapers and magazines. When the Gulf War erupted in 1990, she fled to Jordan and established her reputation as a short-story writer. Habayeb’s first novel, Asl al-hawa (Root of Passion), was published in 2007, gaining wide critical acclaim, and her second novel, Qabla an Tanama al-Malika (Before The Queen Falls Asleep), published in 2011, was described by critics as an epic novel of the Palestinian diaspora. Her third novel, Mukhmal (Velvet), for which in December 2017 she was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, was first published in Arabic in Beirut in 2016 by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing.Kay Heikkinen is a translator from Arabic and academic who holds a PhD from Harvard University and before her retirement was the Ibn Rushd Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Chicago. Among other books, she has translated Naguib Mahfouz’s In the Time of Love, Radwa Ashour’s The Woman From Tantoura, and won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for her translation of Velvet by Huzama Habayeb.
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ALL WELCOME
Please email bookclub@banipal.co.uk to request the Zoom Login.
If you like, do also use Facebook Messenger to tell us you'd like to join the discussion.
The Book Club Facebook page is https://www.facebook.com/BanipalBookClub/
The Zoom Login will be emailed out on Monday 24 June 2024
to everyone who has emailed/messaged to attend.
An Iraqi in Paris by Samuel Shimon
The Cinderellas of Muscat by Huda Hamed (Banipal Books, 2025)
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Poems of Alexandria and New York by Ahmed Morsi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
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Link to poems by Mosab Abu Toha, published in Banipal 71 (Summer 2021), available to read online
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Link to poem by Liana Badr published in Banipal 74, now available as an online selection
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GRIFFIN PRIZE SHORTLIST 2023
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Banipal's first audiobook* * *
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Banipal Book Club
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