Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer,author,and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier,where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life.
Tangier or Tangiers is a city in northwestern Morocco,on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region,as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Morocco.
Mohamed Choukri was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone,which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as "a true document of human desperation,shattering in its impact".
Moroccan literature are the written and oral works of Moroccan culture. These works have been produced and shared by people who lived in Morocco and the historical states that have existed partially or entirely within the geographical area of modern-day Morocco. Apart from the various forms of oral literature,the written literature of Morocco encompasses various genres,including poetry,prose,theater,and nonfiction including philosophical and religious literature. Moroccan literature has mainly been written in Arabic and French,and to a lesser extent also in Berber languages,Judeo-Arabic,Spanish,and after the mid-19th century in English.[pages needed] Through translations into English and other languages,Moroccan literature has become accessible to readers worldwide.
Mohamed Zafzaf was a Moroccan Arabic-language novelist and poet. He played a pivotal role in the development of Moroccan literature in the second half of the 20th century and,due to his contributions,came to be known by such titles as "the godfather of Moroccan literature","the Moroccan Tolstoy","the Moroccan Dostoyevsky" and as "our great author" among his Moroccan peers.
Mohammed Bennis is a Moroccan poet and one of the most prominent writers of modern Arabic poetry. Since the 1970s,he has enjoyed a particular status within Arab culture. Muhsin J al-Musawi states that "Bennis’articulations tend to validate his poetry in the first place,to encapsulate the overlapping and contestation of genres in a dialectic,that takes into account power politics whose tropes are special. As a discursive threshold between Arab East and the Moroccan West,tradition and modernity,and also a site of contestation and configuration,Muhammad Bennis' self-justifications may reveal another poetic predilection,too."
Hoda Barakat is a Lebanese novelist. She lived most of her early life in Beirut before moving to Paris,where she now resides. She has published six novels,two plays,a book of short stories,and a book of memoirs. Her works are originally written in Arabic and have been translated into English,Hebrew,French,Italian,Spanish,Turkish,Romanian,Dutch,Brazilian Portuguese,and Greek.
Banipal is an independent literary magazine dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Arab literature through translations in English. It was founded in London in 1998 by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon. The magazine is published three times a year. Since its inception,it has published works and interviews of numerous Arab authors and poets,many of them translated for the first time into English. It is also co-sponsor of the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.
Ghadah Al-Samman is a Syrian writer,journalist and novelist born in Damascus in 1942 to a prominent and conservative Damascene family. Her father was Ahmed Al-Samman,a president of the University of Damascus. She is distantly related to poet Nizar Qabbani,and was deeply influenced by him after her mother died at a very young age.
Mohamed Saïd Raïhani is a Moroccan translator,novelist and short-story writer born on December 23,1968,in Ksar el Kebir,north of Morocco. He is a member of Moroccan Writers’Union,holder of a PhD degree in Translation from King Fahd Advanced School of Translation in Tangier/Morocco,an M.A. degree in Creative Writing from Lancaster University,a second M.A. degree in Translation,Communication &Journalism from King Fahd Advanced School of Translation and a B.A. degree in English Literature from Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Tétouan/Morocco.
Syrian literature is modern fiction written or orally performed in Arabic by writers from Syria since the independence of the Syrian Arab Republic in 1946. It is part of the historically and geographically wider Arabic literature. Literary works by Syrian authors in the historical region of Syria since the Umayyad era are considered general Arabic literature. In its historical development since the beginnings of compilations of the Quran in the 7th century and later written records,the Arabic language has been considered a geographically comprehensive,standardized written language due to the religious or literary works written in classical Arabic. This sometimes differs considerably from the individual regionally spoken variants,such as Syrian,Egyptian or Moroccan spoken forms of Arabic.
The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
The Banipal Prize,officially the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation,is an annual prize awarded to a translator for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine Banipal,which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK,and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009,the prize money amounted to £3000.
Humphrey T. Davies was a British translator of Arabic fiction,historical and classical texts. Born in Great Britain,he studied Arabic in college and graduate school. He worked for decades in the Arab world and was based in Cairo from the late 20th century to 2021. He translated at least 18 Arabic works into English,including contemporary literature. He is a two-time winner of the Banipal Prize.
Wajdi al-Ahdal is a Yemeni novelist,short story writer and playwright. Laureate of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) in 2008,is known for his contemporary literary style and sometimes socially critical works,some of which have been censored in Yemen. Until 2019,he has published five novels,four collections of short stories,a play and a film screenplay.
Samah Selim is an Egyptian scholar and translator of Arabic literature. She studied English literature at Barnard College,and obtained her PhD from Columbia University in 1997. At present she is an associate professor at the Department of African,Middle Eastern,and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers,the State University of New Jersey. She has also taught at Columbia,Princeton and Aix-en-Provence universities.
Paula Haydar is an American academic and translator. She has a PhD in Comparative literature and an MFA in Literary translation. She won an Arkansas Arabic Translation Prize for her translation of Elias Khoury's The Kingdom of Strangers. Her work has appeared in Banipal magazine and she has translated the literary work of Jabbour Douaihy,Rachid Al-Daif,and others.
Mohamed el-Bisatie was an Egyptian novelist and short story writer.
Al Adab was an Arabic avant-garde existentialist literary print magazine published in Beirut,Lebanon,in the period 1953–2012. It was restarted in 2015 as an online-only publication. Encyclopædia Britannica describes it as one of the leading publications founded in the Arab countries in the latter half of the 20th century. Although the magazine was headquartered in Beirut,it was distributed all over the Arabic-speaking regions.
For Bread Alone is a controversial autobiographical work by Mohammed Choukri. It was written in Arabic in 1972 and translated into English by Paul Bowles in 1973. In 1980,it was published in French as Le Pain Nu in a translation by Tahar Ben Jelloun. The novel has been translated into 39 foreign languages and adapted into a French graphic novel by Abdelaziz Mouride.
