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May Menassa (1939–2019)
May Menassa (1939–2019) was a pioneering journalist and highly regarded novelist and critic, who was born in Beirut, and held a postgraduate diploma in French Literature.
She published ten novels, as well as two children’s books and many translations, mainly from French. Her first, Pages from Notebooks of a Pomegranate Tree, was published in 1998. Her fifth, Walking in the Dust, which tells the powerful story of dealing with tragedy and loss in war from a very young age, was shortlisted for the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction. An excerpt from it, translated by Paula Haydar, was published in Banipal 32, Summer 2008. To date, this is the only part of her work translated into English.
May Menassa began her journalistic career in television in 1959, where she was the first woman TV journalist. In 1969 she started work as literary and music critic for the Lebanese daily newspaper An Nahar, continuing there for much of her career. Her sister is the renowned poet Vénus Khoury-Ghata.
Her passing came just two weeks after her latest novel I Killed My Mother in Order to Live was longlisted for the 2019 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.
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
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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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