30: The Case of Alaa al-Aswany

We talk about a newly released collection of five compelling and highly quotable interviews with the great late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, titled Palestine as Metaphor, translated by Amira El-Zein and Carolyn Forché. We also talk about recent protests in Lebanon and how th ...  Show more

In the first half of the episode, we paid tribute to Jordanian poet, activist, novelist, travel writer, and editor Amjad Nasser (1955-2019), who died at the end of October. In the second, we talked about the political space occupied by Moroccan-French writers Tahar Ben Jelloun an ...  Show more

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany about his latest novel which charts the country's social upheaval through the prism of Cairo's elite Automobile Club of Egypt. The foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson looks back at the Egyptian re ...

Harriett Gilbert talks to acclaimed Egyptian writer Alaa Al-Aswany about his bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building. It was the Arab world’s number-one bestseller for five years running after it was published in 2002. The Yacoubian Building interweaves the stories of a group of ...  Show more

We examine AUB English Professor Robert Myers and his colleague Sonja Mejcher-Atassi’s new book, The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous – A critical study of the Syrian playwright and public intellectual, which explores the life and work of the late Syrian dramatist and intellectual. M ...  Show more

In 2018 journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi regime operatives, shocking the world and drawing widespread condemnation. Mohammad bin Salman, the kingdom’s young crown prince, denied any involvement in the killing but his reputation as a moderniser was tarnished. Bin S ...  Show more