Receive Our Newsletter
For news of readings, events and new titles.
Mai Ghoussoub
2 November 1952 – 17 February 2007
The sudden and untimely death of Mai Ghoussoub shocked the arts and literary worlds. Mai was such an icon of life, of creative force and imagination. She was always daring, always humanistic and caring in her words, her actions and her art, always there, always approachable, utterly indefatigable in her support of freedom of expression, relentlessly tireless in her rejection of any form of censorship.
It will be difficult for a long time to really comprehend that this vibrant and endearing personality is no longer at the end of a phone, or sitting at her desk, or smiling in her sweet way with her head cocked on one side, walking towards you from across a room.
Mai was one of the first people we interviewed when we started Banipal magazine, keen for her to tell us how she established Saqi Books, the first Arab publishing house and bookshop in the UK.
“What we wanted to do,” she explained, “was enable expression of all opinions, making them available, so to speak, publishing things we liked and things we hated, it did not matter. What was vital for us was giving readers a choice.”
How much she packed into her 55 years, after that chance visit to London in 1978 where she discovered “so much Arab life . . . but no Arabic bookshop, not one”.
In London, she also studied sculpture, already having studied French Literature and having a Mathematics degree. She became a writer, witness to the age she lived in, an iconoclastic installation artist, a playwright, an artist who was always ready to fuse genres and styles and come up with unexpected visual and aural ways of tackling issues of human failure, of repression, of discrimination, of censorship.
In the last years she saw her work performed and exhibited in many countries and cities, her titles and publishing house winning awards, she founded a new imprint for international literature, and surely, was about to enthrall us with yet newer works and projects.
She is terribly missed.
Contributor's Issues
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
Digital images
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)
Digital Banipal promotion B67
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Denys Johnson-Davies (1922–2017) 70 years translating Arabic literature
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
Mahmoud Shukair – see special feature of Banipal 70 (Spring 2021)
LATEST NEWS
* * *
* * *
* * *
Link to poems by Mosab Abu Toha, published in Banipal 71 (Summer 2021), available to read online
* * *
Link to poem by Liana Badr published in Banipal 74, now available as an online selection
* * *
* * *
GRIFFIN PRIZE SHORTLIST 2023
* * *
* * *
* * *
Banipal's first audiobook* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
* * *
Banipal Book Club
* * *
