Qantara.de - Dialog mit der islamischen Welt

Ghassan Zaqtan′s slender ″Describing the Past″ is a fiction. But it′s less like a novel than a brew of philosophy, memoir, and poetry, writes Marcia Lynx Qualey More

The so-called ″Morgenland Campus″, one of the new formats of this year's festival in Osnabruck, opened a week of intensive encounters between young musicians and world stars. Sara-Duana Meyer took a closer lookMore

Six composers from five Arab countries translated their impressions of the Arab Spring into music, providing the pianist Seda Roder with material for her multimedia ″Songs of Spring″ performance, rich in hope and disappointment. By Gaby ReucherMore

A writing project has turned young refugees from Afghanistan into poets. The creative talents read their work at the International Literature Festival in Berlin, where many listeners found themselves fighting back the tears. By Sabine Peschel More

Afia Nathaniel's first full-length feature film "Dukhtar", has been enjoying a great deal of success on the international festival circuit – and causing quite a stir in her home country too. By Marian BrehmerMore

In ″The Angels Die″, released this August, the perils of boxing intersect with the precarious arena of colonial politics. Broached with the reflections of a convicted fighter awaiting the guillotine, celebrated Algerian-Francophone author Yasmina Khadra brings to life a psychological exploration of Algeria′s 20th century interwar period. By Sherif DhaimishMore

Political theatre from the Arab world five years after the Arabellion: from a country in a permanent vegetative state comes the piece "While I Was Waiting" by the Syrian playwright Mohammad Al Attar. And in "Zig Zig," an Egyptian theatre group headed by Laila Soliman tells the tale of a gang rape. By Susanne SchandaMore

30 August 2016 marks the tenth anniversary of Naguib Mahfouz′ death. Widely regarded as the father of the Arab novel, the Egyptian author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988: ″through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous″. A volume of his early non-fiction work has recently been published. Marcia Lynx Qualey gives her impressionsMore

You don′t expect a film about seven young women getting together for a hen-party the night before a wedding to turn out to be a moving political statement concerning equal rights and sexual freedom. But the Indian film ″Angry Indian Goddesses″ is exactly that: a hilarious and entertaining story about seven girls and, at the same time, a bold and loud outcry against sexual harassment and rape – still all too common in India. By Sheila MysorekarMore