BULAQ | بولاق

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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. 

This podcast is p ...

‏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 ...  عرض المزيد

‏As a teenager in Cairo in the early 1940s, Inji Efflatoun made two great discoveries: art and the Communist Party. Although she was from an elite French-speaking background, Efflatoun chose to “re-Egyptianize” herself, pursue painting and throw herself full-heartedly into anti-i ...  عرض المزيد

‏The great Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim passed away earlier this month. Several years ago, we discussed his novel Warda – the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the myste ...  عرض المزيد

‏The Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri grew up poor and illiterate on the streets of Tangier in the waning years of colonialism. He told the story of his childhood in his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone – El Khubz El Hafi in Arabic, Le Pain Nu in French. Choukri went on to w ...  عرض المزيد