BULAQ | بولاق

‏The Egyptian feminist writer and doctor Nawal El Saadawi always spoke her mind. Her early books were explosive testimonials, based on her medical practice and personal experience, about sexual double standards and the abuses women faced because of them. She went on to write many ...  Show more

‏In this episode from a few years ago, we wandered through Arabic poetry and prose and talked about many different forms of literary love: regretful love, unreciprocated love, bad love, vengeful love, liberating love, married love. We read this poem by Núra al-Hawshán: “O eyes, p ...  Show more

‏Egypt’s January 25 revolution was 15 years ago. Since then many of its young leaders have been persecuted and the history of what happened distorted or denied. After spending over a decade in prison, the activist and writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah was finally released from prison in ...  Show more

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Ursula traveled to Paris to talk to Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat about writing in Arabic while living at a distance from home; listening to the voices of characters who are destined to defeat; and starting each of her books with a question. 

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‏In this sponsored episode, we talk to Sheikh Zayed Book Award winner Andrew Peacock about his work on Arabic literary culture in southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a rich time for the burgeoning Arabic literary culture—alongside Javanese, Malay, Aceh, an ...  Show more