The Latest

Saïd Khatibi’s I Resist the River’s Course — on the shortlist for the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF), with a winner set to be announced online April 9 — chronicles half a century of Algerian history, from the Second World War to the early 1990s.

“Abu Shalakh, the Chameleon” is a 2002 fantastical, satirical novel by Ghazi Algosaibi (1940-2010) in which the Saudi literary giant and politician recounts the history of the Kingdom and its global entanglements through Abu Shalakh, a lovable liar, unreliable storyteller, and self-proclaimed “truth-teller.”

“He did not say goodbye when he rose to leave.”

“Are you tired of walking / My son, are you tired?”

“No electricity tonight. / Boredom is about to kill me.”

Refaat Al Areer had set the scene, declaring, “If I must die,” and Alaa Al Qatarawi’s sorrow metamorphosed into a butterfly that perseveres. She writes, “If I die, my butterfly does not die.”

“Sometimes, I believe that silence itself could carry meaning in the face of this barbarity. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’ll stop documenting atrocities and only write literature. But all of this only makes sense in the context of our desire for justice, our desire to preserve the true essence of humanity.”

Iman Humaydan, Michelle Hartman, and Emma Hardy discuss the new translation of Iman’s book “Songs for Darkness” and songs as a tool for the transmission of memory, of solidarity, and as a method of resistance.

In this conversation with ArabLit’s Tugrul Mende, translator Alex Elinson talks about how literary prizes affect the translation landscape, the draw of detective novels, and how he hones voice in a novel with many starring characters.