Banipal issues include reviews of some of the latest works by Arab authors, either from their original editions or as published in translation, presenting a combination of reviews in works in English, Arabic, French or German.
Book Reviews
Banipal 62
Ibn Khaldun, An Intellectual Biography
Ibn Khaldun was a polymath and has been seen as anticipating the theories of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, among others. He was certainly a great inspiration to Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975), but has also been an influence on the science fiction of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert. Robert Irwin writes with authority, and his book is a delight to read.
Banipal 62
The Baghdad Clock
Shahad Al Rawi’s novel describes in colourful detail the Baghdad neighbourhood in which its young protagonist grows up, in the period between the First Gulf War and the present, while many of the rhetorical questions posed by the young protagonist reveal her anger towards the outside world for the pain it has inflicted on her country.
Banipal 61
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Iraqi author Ahmed Saadawi’s novel is a profound, powerful and extraordinarily imaginative work. Part thriller, part horror story, part supernatural fantasy, part meditation on violence and justice, it is both harrowing and darkly comic.
Banipal 61
All the Battles
A novel about sport is a new thing in Arabic. Jordanian author Maan Abu Taleb acknowledges the linguistic challenges of writing in a novel about boxing, that is also about the universal human predicament, and thus the experimental nature of the Arabic version.
Banipal 60
The Book of Safety
Yasser Abdel Hafez’s wonderful satire on modern-day Cairo is by no means a quick, easy ‘lit-fix’ read. Rich, profound and with a depth of imagination and whip-smart narrative stratigraphy, it can grab you from the very first line, hold your attention tight. Translated by Robin Moger, it won the 2017 Saif Ghobash Banipal Translation Prize.
Banipal 60
Tuyour al-Nab’a Birds of al-Nab’a by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
Mauritanians have such a passion for poetry that their country is widely known as the land of a million poets.
Banipal 60
Farewell, Damascus by Ghada Samman
Ghada Samman’s latest novel in English translation, Farewell, Damascus, was published in Arabic in 2014 and is set in mid-sixties Damascus and Beirut.
Banipal 60
No Road to Paradise by Hassan Daoud
Hassan Daoud is the author of ten novels and three short story collections, and has recently been described as ‘one of Lebanon’s most important living writers’.
Banipal 59
The President’s Gardens by Muhsin al-Ramli
“In a land without bananas, the village awoke to nine banana crates, each containing the severed head of one of its sons . . . Each head had a story.
Banipal 58
Al-Khaima al-Baidha’ (The White Tent) by Liana Badr
In her many works the writer and filmmaker Liana Badr documents the different stages of Palestinian national struggle against occupation and chronicles the Palestinian diaspora experience, including the Nakba of 1948.
Banipal 58
Saba’t Gurabaa’ fil-Madina (Seven Strangers in Town)
“Sergeant Abdel Hai’s job was to keep an eye all night on the insurgents held in custody at the military garrison, and hand them over at dawn to the firing squad.
Banipal 57
The Ninety-Ninth Floor by Jana Fawaz El Hassan
The novel is a frank look at love between two conflicting characters: their deep and divisive family roots, irreconcilable backgrounds, and the underlying forces that hold them together. Set in both New York and Lebanon, two worlds collide in the most painful, frustrating and fitful of ways.
Banipal 57
No Knives in the Kitchens of this City by Khaled Khalifa
No Knives in the Kitchens of this City tells the story of the decline of a Syrian family over a period of sixty years. There are no winners in a country where freedom is limited not only by the regime, but also by the fear of other people’s judgement.
Banipal 56
The Televangelist
The novel follows the fortunes of celebrity sheikh Hatem el-Shenawi, exposing the tensions within Egyptian society and the complex web of the country’s power structures. Essa explores the relationships between Egypt’s religious, political and business elites and state control of the media and the religious establishment, drawing a portrait of contemporary Egyptian society.
Banipal 56
The Jungo: Stakes of the Earth
When The Jungo Stakes of the Earth was published in Arabic in Sudan in 2009 it won the national Tayeb Salih literary prize but in 2010 every copy was confiscated and burned by the Sudanese authorities.
Banipal 54
My Torturess
The novel’s first-person protagonist Hamuda is a blameless and scholarly bookseller from the Moroccan town of Oujda. His ordeal begins when he is dragged from his bookstore by three masked men claiming to be from the secret police. They inject him with drugs, put him aboard a helicopter and dress him in a blue uniform.
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Memories in Translation: A Life between the Lines of Arabic Literature by Denys Johnson-Davies
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Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation
