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Anton Shammas
Anton Shammas is a Palestinian poet and author, essayist and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English. His novel Arabesques, written in Hebrew and first published in 1986, was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the best seven novels of 1988. It is translated into eight languages including English, French, German, Spanish and Italian (Hebrew: Tel Aviv, 1986; English: Viking, 1988; Penguin International Writers, 1990; University of California Press, 2001). A new edition of the English translation of Arabesques will be published by New York Review Books (NYRB Classics) in January 2023.
He has written three plays and has a three poetry collections, the first written in Arabic, and second and third in Hebrew. He has translated plays of Dario Fo, Athol Fugard, Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett and Edward Albee into Arabic and Hebrew, as well as a number of works of Hebrew literature into Arabic. He has translated into Hebrew three novels of the Palestinian writer Emile Habiby, and a collection of poems by Taha Muhammad Ali.
His essays have been published in Harper's Magazine, New York Review of Books, and the New York Times magazine.
He is a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, where he has lived since 1987.
He is currently working on a book entitled Blind Spots and Other Essays on Translation. He is a contributing editor of Banipal.
On 14 October 2016 Anton Shammas gave the Inaugural Lecture of the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. The establishment of the annual lecture on literary translation in the name of the prize marked the 10th successful year of awarding prizes for literary translation of contemporary Arabic literature into English.
The Lecture took place at The British Library's Conference Centre, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.
The Lecture was entitled :
Blind Spots: A millennium of Arabic in translation
– from Ibn Al-Haytham to William Faulkner via Don Quixote
To go to the British Library webpage, click here
Contributor's Issues
Banipal 45 - Writers from Palestine (2012)
Banipal 53 - The Short Stories of Zakaria Tamer (2015)
The Tent Generations
Things I Left Behind by Shada Mustafa, translated by Nancy Roberts
Shadow of the Sun by Taleb Alrefai
Birds of Nabaa, A Mauritanian Tale by Abdallah Uld Mohamadi Bah
The Stone Serpent, Barates of Palmyra’s Elegy for Regina his Beloved by Nouri Al-Jarrah
Mansi A Rare Man in His Own Way by Tayeb Saleh (Banipal Books, 2020)
Tayeb Salih
Goat Mountain by Habib Selmi
Habib Selmi, author of Goat Mountain and 3 times shortlisted for the IPAF
The Mariner by Taleb Alrefai (Banipal Books, 2020)
Taleb Alrefai, author of Shadow of the Sun and The Mariner
Digital images
Fadhil Al-Azzawi's Beautiful Creatures by Fadhil al-Azzawi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Fadhil al-Azzawi
Poems of Alexandria and New York by Ahmed Morsi (Banipal Books, 2021)
Digital Banipal promotion B67
Saïd Khatibi
Amjad Nasser (1955–2019)
Digital Banipal the full archive
Denys Johnson-Davies (1922–2017) 70 years translating Arabic literature
Ahmed Morsi, author of Poems of Alexandria and New York
Sarajevo Firewood
The Madness of Despair
Mahmoud Shukair – see special feature of Banipal 70 (Spring 2021)
LATEST NEWS
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Link to poems by Mosab Abu Toha, published in Banipal 71 (Summer 2021), available to read online
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Link to poem by Liana Badr published in Banipal 74, now available as an online selection
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GRIFFIN PRIZE SHORTLIST 2023
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Banipal's first audiobook* * *
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Banipal Book Club
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