Arabic language
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Book review ″Beirut Noir″
Chronicling life in the corrupt city
The smoke of abandonment permeates ″Beirut Noir″. In this collection of short stories, we find the remains of the crippled, the lonely, the lost, and the dead. They move – or fail to move – through a landscape violently reshaped by fifteen years of civil war. Many of the characters are stuck in an afterlife of one sort or another. Or, if they′re still alive, time has stopped. Marcia Lynx Qualey read the book
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The Arab world
(Not) an unlimited book market?
With the increasing efforts to revive the book market in the Arab world by publishers and cultural institutions, intermittently hindered by economic, political and social factors, the limitations of this market are yet to be explored and redefined. By Amira Elmasry
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Mahmoud Darwish
Building bridges with Arabic poetry
Anyone seeking to understand the Arab soul will find large parts of the Arab people’s collective memory in poetry, and another in the Palestinian tragedy of 1948. Mahmoud Darwish, one of the most prominent Arab poets of the modern age, united these two all his life. By Melanie Christina Mohr
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Goethe′s fascination with the "Thousand and One Nights"
Mephistopheles spoke; Scheherazade beguiled
To date, critical studies of Faust have given little consideration to its Oriental elements, in particular the fables from the "Thousand and One Nights". Goethe′s fascination with the famous storyteller Scheherazade, and his adoption of her narrative techniques and themes, has been underestimated. By Melanie Christina Mohr
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Arabic bookshop in Istanbul
"We want to be a cultural centre"
The first Arabic bookshop in Istanbul opened its doors in June. It is run by Syrian refugees, together with Turkish publishers. They want the shop to become a meeting place for Arabs and Turks. It already offers much more than just Arabic literature. Ekrem Guzeldere took a look around "Pages"
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Profile: the Syrian–German author Rafik Schami
An exile in his homeland
Rafik Schami is one of the most important authors writing in the German language. Though he first came to Germany when he was 25 years old, his Syrian homeland is never far from his thoughts. It is also the setting for many of his stories. Markus Clauer introduces the best-selling author
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Najwa Barakat on Arabic literature
Combating the desertification of Arab culture
Lebanese writer Najwa Barakat has written six novels since 1986. Over the past ten years, her work has been garnering increased critical acclaim. However, instead of resting on her laurels and focusing solely on her own work, Barakat is reaching out to young writers across the region, acting as a guide and organising workshops for emerging writers. Marcia Lynx-Qualey spoke to her about her work
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Book review: "Details" by Dima Wannous
Everyday life in a dictatorship
Dima Wannous' short story collection "Details", which was published in English several years ago, has recently been published in German translation. It centres on people from different layers of society who are united by a single fate: life in a dictatorial regime that has reached the end of the line but from which there still seems to be no escape. By Volker Kaminski
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Women writers in Iraq
Writing to stay alive
The anthology "Through the Eyes of Inana" is a collection of poetry and short stories by 19 Iraqi women writers. It is a cross-section of what women are writing in the country right now – about their lives and how they survive in a state of war, their wishes, their dreams and their sufferings. By Rosa Gosch
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Book review: Etel Adnan's "Conversations with My Soul"
Illuminating the obscure
In 1980, the Lebanese artist and writer Etel Adnan published the book-length poem "The Arab Apocalypse", which to this day is still regarded as one of the most important works on the civil war in Lebanon. A selection of some of Adnan's works has been translated into German and published under the title "Gespräche mit meiner Seele" (Conversations with My Soul). A review by Claudia Kramatschek
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Amjad Nasser on the role of Arab writers in Arab society
Speaking out in societies without words
In the last four years, Arab public intellectuals have come in for much close scrutiny and criticism. Some people complain that Arab thinkers and writers have disappeared from political life, while others argue that most of them are too much in the public eye, having allied themselves with one dictator or another. Marcia Lynx Qualey spoke to Jordanian poet and journalist Amjad Nasser about the role of Arab writers in contemporary Arab society
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Book review: Jabbour Douaihy's "June Rain"
A "whodunit" without the "who"
A "whodunit" without the "who"? What sounds like a recipe for disappointment for the reader is, according to Marcia Lynx Qualey, an important and a delightful book and certainly not the first contemporary Lebanese novel to take this approach