Past Events

The Old Woman and the River

The book under discussion will be The Old Woman and the River by the late Kuwaiti writer Ismail Fahd Ismail, translated by Sophia Vasalou, and published by Interlink. Sophia Vasalou will join the discussion for a short Q&A at the start of the meeting, so please do join promptly.

The Old Woman and the River was originally published in Arabic as Al-Sabiliyat and was shortlisted for the 2017 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. There is an extract of it, translated by William Hutchins, in Banipal 58.

The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

The judges commented that:

“Ismail Fahd Ismail’s novella tells the story of an Iraqi woman, Um Qasem, who is forced from her home during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war but determines to return her husband’s bones to their final resting place, now a parched military zone. Her journey, in the company of her faithful donkey Good Omen, provides the material for a haunting, Quixotic narrative that is also a life-affirming novella of defiance. Despite Um Qasem’s apparent naivety, her indomitable spirit brings life and hope to the land she loves, and her story presents a warm parable of human resilience and the waste of war. Sophia Vasalou’s translation, in which every word has been chosen with care, perfectly captures the cheeky spirit of the original Arabic, leaving the reader with a lingering image both of Um Qasem’s donkey and of her indomitable will.”

Ismail Fahd Ismail (1940 – 25 September 2018) is regarded as the founder of the art of the novel in Kuwait. After the appearance of The Sky Was Blue, in 1970, he published 27 novels, as well as three short story collections, two plays and several critical studies. The Phoenix and the Faithful Friend was long-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014. He was revered for his encouragement of new Kuwaiti and Arab literary talent. You can read some of Ismail Fahd Ismail’s work in Banipal 47 – Fiction from Kuwait, and more about him after his sad passing in September 2018, in this news item HERE.

Sophia Vasalou studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at SOAS and Cambridge (where she took her PhD in 2006). She has held research fellowships at Gonville & Caius College in Cambridge, Orient Institut Beirut, Oxford Brookes University, and New York University Abu Dhabi. At present, she works in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Birmingham as a Senior Lecturer and Birmingham Fellow in philosophical theology. Her translation work has ranged from pre-modern to modern Arabic texts, and includes both fiction and philosophy. She had two works published in 2019: a translation of the anthology of literary-philosophical Q&A between the litterateur Abu Ḥayyan al-Tawḥidi and the philosopher Abu ’Ali Miskawayh, and Ismail Fahd Ismail’s The Old Woman and the River. You can read more about Sophia and her work on her website: http://www.vasalou.net/the-old-woman-and-the-river.html

If you would like to join the Banipal Book Club discussion of this novel please register in advance by sending an email to bookclub@banipal.co.uk. You will then be sent the details required to access the Zoom meeting.