Selections of poems and fiction, sampling the richness and variety of the hundreds of authors in the issues. Plus a chance to hear and see a few of the authors in performance.
Selections
Selected Issue: Banipal 69, 9 New Novels (Autumn/Winter 2020)
FICTION
Camera Obscura
Rula Jurdi’s novel is an intricately plotted global novel that follows the lives of Lebanese immigrants to New York City. Jurdi fills an important gap in contemporary literature by focusing on members of Lebanon’s Druze ethnicity, a minority group whose spiritual ideals of peace and universality have historically struggled with sectarian conflict.
OTHER SELECTIONS
Shimon Ballas – The Iraqi Jewish outsider
Shimon was a friend of mine, and I use the word “friend” metaphorically because I met the man only three times in my life, twice in New York and once in Geneva. As soon as I met him, I knew that Shimon, an Iraqi citizen who experienced the tragedy that befell Iraqi Jews at the hands of Zionism and the Iraqi government, had already been my friend for a long time.
OTHER SELECTIONS
Tribute to Shimon Ballas (1930–2019)
Shimon Ballas was an author, intellectual, mentor, and political trailblazer. He gave voice to his generation of postcolonial Arabs in exile, writing about diaspora life with tremendous empathy. His commitment to Arabic and to Arab culture echoes through his literary body of work, as he would reiterate time and time again, “I never deny my Arab origins or the Arabic language".
OTHER SELECTIONS
The City of Strangers
Beirut . . . a new city, then, whose port began to expand in the mid-nineteenth century and that lives today a moment not unlike the agony of death, as though the monstrous explosion on 4 August 2020 did not simply blast the city and destroy almost one third of it, but came also to deliver the kiss of death to an Arab Levant murdered by occupation and tyranny.
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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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