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Sinan Antoon
Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist and translator, born and raised in Baghdad. He earned a BA in English from Baghdad University. He left Iraq after the Gulf War in 1991 and continued his studies in the US where he earned an MA from Georgetown and a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Harvard in 2006.
He has published two collections of poetry in Arabic; Mawshur Muballal bil-Hurub (Cairo, 2003) and Laylun Wahidun fi Kull al-Mudun (One Night in All Cities) (Dar al-Jamal, 2010), and one in English; The Baghdad Blues (Harbor Mountain Press, 2006). His first novel I'jaam (2003), was published in English translation as I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody (City Lights, 2006) as well as in Norwegian, German, Portuguese, and Italian editions. His second novel Wahdaha Shajarat al-Rumman (The Pomegranate Alone) was translated by himself and published as The Corpse Washer (Yale University Press, 2013) which has won the 2014 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, the 2014 Arab American Book Award of the Arab American National Museum (fiction category), and was longlisted for the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Translations in French, Turkish, Polish, and Malayalam are forthcoming. His third novel, Ya Maryam (Dar al-Jamal, 2012) was shortlisted for the 2013 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (The Arabic Booker) and was translated to Spanish and published as Fragmentos de Bagdad (Turner Libros, 2014).
His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's last prose book In the Presence of Absence, (Archipelago, 2011) won the 2012 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). His co-translation (with Peter Money) of a selection of Saadi Youssef's late poetry, Nostalgia, My Enemy, was published by Graywolf in November 2012.
His essays have appeared in major Arabic newspapers and journals as well as The Nation, Al-Ahram Weekly, Middle East Report, and New York Timesamong others. His scholarly works include essays on contemporary Arab poetry and politics, and Iraqi history, as well as The Poetics of the Obscene: Ibn al-Hajjaj and Sukhf (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013). He is a member of the Editorial Review Board of the Arab Studies Journal. He is an associate professor at the Gallatin School, New York University and co-founder of Jadaliyya and co-editor of its culture page.
Contributor's Issues
Banipal 34 - The World of Arab Fiction (2009)
Banipal 38 - Arab American Authors (2010)
Banipal 59 - The Longlist (Summer 2017)
Banipal 46 - 80 New Poems (2013)
Banipal 33 - Autumn/Winter 2008
Banipal 56 - Generation '56 (Summer 2016)
Banipal 54 - ECHOES (Autumn/Winter 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 Book Club
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