Books

The State of Arab Journalism: Emile Menhem’s Dynamic Blend of Text and Visual Aesthetics Modernizes the Arab Newsroom

By

Naomi Pham

Graphic design played a significant role in the evolution of Arab newsprint. Arab graphic design historians locate this art’s roots deep in the region’s visual heritage, drawing from its history of calligraphy, geometric compositions, motifs, and colors. However, the field itself is relatively new, emerging as a discipline only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Graphic design now plays a widespread role in everyday life, whether in public architecture or the design of everyday items.

Emile Menhem: Invigorating Arab Journalism Through Graphic Design

By Lara Balaa

Khatt Books, 2019

Love and Terrorism: Douaihy Novel Transcends Usual Banalities

Lynne Rogers

Jabbour Douaihy begins his multi-generational novel, “The American Quarter,” with the morning rituals that expose the bare lives of those living in the American Quarter of a Lebanese city, in an abandoned building now occupied by the financially disenfranchised. With sparse and carefully crafted detail, Douaihy vividly sketches the historical changes of the city as well as the personal history of each of his engaging and recognizable characters. The scene opens as an old man wakes up and retakes control of his TV set, which sits in the hallway. Later, Douaihy expands his vision into the larger city as the narrative follows his protagonist, Intisar, who readies her children for school, and then walks to the other side of the quarter to reach her work.

On Translated Arabic Books: Novelist Hoda Barakat’s ‘Voices of the Lost’ Catches a Glimpse of the World Refugee Crisis

By Naomi Pham

Millions of people risk life and limb to escape their countries through the sea and other means as a global refugee crisis unfolds. The 2019 winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, Hoda Barakat’s “Voices of the Lost” (Yale University Press, 2021), recently translated from Arabic into English by Marilyn Booth, paints a complex picture of displacement, war, and hope in the bleakest moments among immigrants and refugees.

Books

On New Books: Navigating 'Silence': Syrian Refugee Woman Contends with Trauma and Memory as an Immigrant

Trauma changes people. For the unnamed narrator of Layla AlAmmar’s second novel, trauma pushes her to choose silence. “Silence is a Sense” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2021) follows a Syrian woman who escaped from Syria to the United Kingdom, settling into a quiet English town. She spends her days observing the traumas of her neighbors: from the man who barely ever turns on his lights, to another obsessed with exercising, to an abusive man who beats his wife and children. Her voyeurism feeds into her writing — her only form of expressing herself. She submits essays to a “newsmagazine with a big name” under the pseudonym “the Voiceless,” often discussing the refugee crisis. But as her editor Josie increasingly probes the narrator for intimate details and memories of her experiences in Syria, she begins to question herself: how much of her mind’s ability to make sense of what happened does she trust?

Books

On New Arabic Books: Shocking “Disclosures” Put Focus on Suffering of Syrian Women Inside and Outside of Assad’s Prisons

By Elie Chalala

“Bawh al- Dahaya” (“The Disclosures of Victims”) is not available in English to the best of my knowledge, though its subject matter ranks at the top of human rights violations in war zones. Thus any contribution from historians, research analysts, or journalists on the victims of war are telling about the crimes committed by the Syrian regime against its people. One should not exclude the various attempts to address these stories, whether through films, press interviews, or coverage by other mediums. These stories could enrich the documentation of these crimes regardless of the religious and cultural taboos surrounding them.

Books

New Novel Chronicles Life, Love of Poet Ahmad Rami and Singer Um Kulthum

By Sami Asmar

The story of Arab arts and culture cannot be told without a sizable chapter on Um Kulthum (1904 -1975), the legendary Egyptian singer venerated by generations of Arabs throughout the world. Many historical accounts have been written about Um Kulthum’s life and works, but never a fictional one, with the exception of a television series in which the script’s details were artistically filled in.

Books

ON NEW BOOKS:

Acclaimed Author Leila Slimani’s New Novel Launches Trilogy on Dilemmas Faced by Biracial Families

The author of the Prix Goncourt winner “The Perfect Nanny” (2016), as well as “Adele” (2014) and “Sex and Lies” (2017), Leila Slimani returns with the first installment of a promising trilogy highlighting the struggles of living in between two worlds that both reject you. “Le Pays des Autres” (In the Country of Others), set for an English release on August 10, 2021, is the story of an interracial couple grappling to make ends meet between the Second World War and Morocco’s independence in 1956. Settling in Meknes, Mathilde, a Frenchwoman, and Amine, a Moroccan soldier, face the ire of both French colonizers and Moroccans for their marriage.

Books

ON NEW BOOKS:

Writing the Gift of Immortality in Kamel Daoud’s ‘Zabor, or the Psalms’

Combining the elements of storytelling and magic, Kamel Daoud’s “Zabor, or the Psalms” (Other Press, 2021) follows Zabor — born Ishmael — who tasks himself with an immense responsibility in his small village on the edge of the Sahara: to prevent death and to heal people by writing about them.

Books

The Golden Notebooks

By

Angele Ellis

Zed Books has chosen interesting times in which to re-release the English translation of the two-part autobiography of Nawal El Saadawi, “A Daughter of Isis” and “Walking Through Fire.” One of the most important and distinctive voices of her generation, not only in the Arabic-speaking world, but across the globe, El Saadawi has served as a physician, writer, rebel, and revolutionary. Born in 1931, she explores in these two interwoven volumes her personal struggles for autonomy – for the survival of body, mind, and spirit – as both girl and woman in an Egyptian society warped by patriarchal religion, as well as repressive social traditions and laws. She states in “A Daughter of Isis” that at the age of six, she learned “these three words by heart and they were like one sentence: ‘God, calamity, marriage.’”As I write this review, similar women’s words echo in the halls of the U.S. Capitol and throughout America.

Viruses and Epidemics of Futility

Kim Jensen

“Koolaids: The Art of War” is Rabih Alameddine’s brilliant and perhaps inflammatory debut novel. It depicts the lives of several gay characters who suffer the dual tragedies of the Lebanese Civil War and the AIDS virus.

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