Sawad Hussain

Last updated
Sawad Hussain
Sawad Hussain, translator, at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading 3 (cropped).jpg
Hussain at the 2024 National Book Awards finalist reading
OccupationLiterary translator from Arabic to English, writer
Alma materSchool of Oriental and African Studies
Period2012 - present
Genre
  • Contemporary Arabic literature
  • Arabic Young Adults literature
Website
Official website

Sawad Hussain is a writer and translator of contemporary Arabic literature into English, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She is known for her award-winning translations, as lecturer and speaker on the field of literary translation and for her contributions to contemporary Arabic literature in English-language publications.

Contents

Life and career

Hussain graduated with an MA in Modern Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Apart from her translations of Arabic novels and short stories into English, she is a regular contributor to literary journals such as ArabLit [1] and Asymptote magazine. Through her participation in international conferences and workshops, she is active in mentoring literary translators and in developing the field of literary translation in general. [2] She has been a lecturer and guest speaker at numerous literary events, including the Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture in London. [3] Among other literary organizations, the English PEN writers association, the Anglo-Omani Society, the Armory Square Prize for Literary Translation and the Palestine Book Awards have commended her work. Further, Hussain served as one of the Chair officers of the Translator's Association in the United Kingdom. [2] [4]

Hussain is a member of the board of trustees of the "Bait Al Ghasham - Dar Arab International Award" for translating Arabic literature into English, organized in cooperation by the Omani Bait Al Ghasham Foundation and London-based Dar Arab publishers. During a conference on the occasion of the 2024 award ceremony, she said that for most Western publishers, Arabic literature still evokes expectations of "desert scenes with palm trees" and similar stereotypes. [5]

Commenting on the scant number of translations of African literature written in Arabic, for example from Sudan or by Eritrean-born writer Haji Jaber, Hussain has also been spreading narratives by African writers for Western audiences. [6] [7] Another sub-genre Hussain has been translating are Arabic novels for young adults, including The Djinn's Apple by Algerian writer Djamila Morani [8] and Ghady and Rawan by Lebanese authors Fatima Sharafeddine and Samar Mahfouz Barraj, co-translated with Marcia Lynx Qualey. [9]

In September 2020, the American magazine Publishing Perspectives and the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award [10] organized a webinar entitled "The Reality of Translating Children's Literature from Arabic to Other Languages". The webinar featured Hussain and Robert Morgan, publisher and director of Canadian publishing house Bookland Press, and was moderated by Porter Anderson, editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives. A focus of this virtual conference was the significance of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award's annual prize for Arabic children's literature since 2017. [11]

Critical reception

In 2023, Hussain's translation of Bushra al-Maqtari's non-fiction work What Have You Left Behind? was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. [12] Also in 2023, the English PEN Translates programme awarded a grant to Hussain for her forthcoming translation of Ishraga Mustafa ' s Woman of the Rivers, the first memoir of a woman writer from Sudan in English translation. [13]

Awards and distinctions

Selected works

Literary translations

Articles

See also

Related Research Articles

Sudanese literature consists of both oral as well as written works of fiction and nonfiction that were created during the cultural history of today's Republic of the Sudan. This includes the territory of what was once Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the independent country's history since 1956 as well as its changing geographical scope in the 21st century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reem Bassiouney</span> Egyptian writer

Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author, professor of sociolinguistics and Chair Department of Applied Linguistics at The American University in Cairo. In Addition, Bassiouney is the editor of the Routledge Series of Language and Identity. She is also the editor and creator of the journal Arabic Sociolinguistics Edinburgh. She has written several novels and a number of short stories and won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers for her novel Dr. Hanaa. While a substantial amount of her fiction has yet to be translated into English, her novel The Pistachio Seller was published by Syracuse University Press in 2009, and won the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Bassiouney also won Naguib Mahfouz Award from Egypt's Supreme Council for Culture in the best Egyptian novel category for her best selling novel, The Mamluk Trilogy. She was also the winner of the National Prize for Excellence in Literature of the year 2022 from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Bassiouney won Sheikh Zaid Literature Award for her novel Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy in 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mansoura Ez-Eldin</span> Egyptian novelist and journalist

Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and journalist.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheikh Zayed Book Award</span> Annual book award

The Sheikh Zayed Book Award is a literary award begun in the UAE. It is presented yearly to "Arab writers, intellectuals, publishers as well as young talent whose writings and translations of humanities have scholarly and objectively enriched Arab cultural, literary and social life." The first award was in 2007. The total value of the prizes is DH 7,000,000 making it one of the richest literary awards in the world.

Hamdi Abu Golayyel was an Egyptian writer. The author of several novels and collections of short stories, he is known as one of the new voices in Egyptian fiction. Among other awards, he won the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in 2022. The literary magazine ArabLit called him a "chronicler of the lives of Egypt’s marginalized and working-class."

Edwar al-Kharrat was an Egyptian novelist, writer and critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maha Hassan</span> Syrian-Kurdish journalist and novelist

Maha Hassan is a Syrian-Kurdish journalist and novelist. A native Kurdish speaker, she writes in Arabic. In 2000, she was banned from publishing in Syria for her "morally condemnable" writing, and since August 2004, she has been living in exile in Paris.

Hammour Ziada is a Sudanese writer and journalist, born in Omdurman. He has worked as a civil society and human rights researcher, and currently works as journalist in Cairo. Before, he had been writing for a number of left-wing newspapers in Sudan. Two of his novels were selected for Arabic literary awards and appeared in English translations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Dost</span> Syrian-Kurdish writer, born 1965

Jan Dost,, is a Syrian Kurdish poet, writer and translator. He has written several novels both in his native Kurmanji Kurdish language and in Arabic. He is known as a prolific Kurdish writer, with several of his novels in the context of the Syrian civil war. Apart from his own works, Dost has translated Kurdish and Persian works into Arabic, including Mem and Zin, a classical Kurdish love story, written by Ahmad Khani in the 17th century and considered as the national epic of the Kurdish people.

Shahla Ujayli is a Syrian fiction writer and academic. A laureate of the Al Multaqa Prize for Arabic short stories, she became notable for her short story collection A Bed for the King’s Daughter and for her novels Summer with the Enemy and A Sky Close to Our House. Some of her works have been translated into English and German. Her work is part of contemporary Syrian literature in the context of imprisonment, war and exile.

Haji Jabir is an Eritrean novelist and journalist. He was born in the city of Massawa on the Red Sea coast. Writing in Arabic, he has published five novels until 2021. With the nomination of Black Foam (2018), Jabir became the first Eritrean novelist to be longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stella Gaitano</span> South Sudanese literary writer

Stella Gaitano is a literary writer, activist and former pharmacist from South Sudan. She is known for her stories, often dealing with the harsh living conditions of people from southern Sudan, who have endured discrimination and military dictatorship, war and displacement in the northern part of Sudan. Since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, she has also published short stories about life in her new nation.

Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin is a Sudanese fiction writer with roots in Darfur in western Sudan, whose literary work was banned in Sudan in 2011. Since 2012, he has lived in exile in Austria and later in France. He is mostly known for his novels The Messiah of Darfur and The Jungo, translated from the original Arabic into French, English, Spanish and German.

Samar Mahfouz Barraj is an author, poet, playwright, songwriter, trainer, and children's literature translator. A number of her books have been nominated and won prestigious awards from all over the world, including Arabic and regional awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bothayna El Essa</span> Kuwaiti writer

Bothayna El Essa is a novelist from Kuwait. A well-known author in modern Arabic literature, her novel The Book Censor's Library was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction in their category for translated literature.

Bushra al-Maqtari is a Yemeni writer and activist. She came to prominence as an anti-government protest leader in her hometown of Taiz during the 2011 Yemeni Revolution. As a writer, she is best known for her 2012 novel Behind the Sun and her 2018 nonfiction work What You Have Left Behind: Voices from the Land of the Forgotten War.

Ishraga Mustafa Hamid is an Austrian writer, translator, academic and human rights activist of Sudanese origin, living in Vienna, Austria, since 1993. A member of the Austrian PEN-Club, her works mainly deal with her own or other migrants' experience of displacement, racism or other forms of discrimination.

Adil Babikir is a Sudanese literary critic and translator into and out of English and Arabic. He has translated several novels, short stories and poems by renowned Sudanese writers and edited the anthology Modern Sudanese Poetry. He lives and works in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

<i>ArabLit</i> Literary online magazine and publisher

ArabLit is an online magazine for information about translations of Arabic literature into English. The editors also publish ArabLit Quarterly as a print and electronic magazine, books with selected contemporary Arabic literary works and a daily newsletter about current publications of different genres of Arabic literature in English translation. Further, ArabLit's promotion of Arabic literature in English has been distinguished by British and Canadian literary awards.

References

  1. "Search Results for "Sawad Hussain"". ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY. 2022-10-05. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  2. 1 2 3 "Sawad Hussain". Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  3. "Behind 'The Slave Yards'". Shubbak Festival London. 2021-03-30. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  4. "Sawad Hussain". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  5. "نقاش حول الأدب العربي.. وجائزة بيت الغشام دار عرب الدولية تكرم الفائزين". جريدة عمان (in Arabic). 2024-02-26. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  6. "June: Arab African Literature". ArabLit’s Monthly Newsletter for Publishing Professionals. 2024-06-15. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  7. "Mo(a)t: Stories from Arabic edited by Garen Torikian". uea-publishing. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  8. "An Excerpt from 'The Djinn's Apple,' Out This Month". ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY. 2024-02-05. Retrieved 2024-09-14.
  9. GHADY & RAWAN | Kirkus Reviews.
  10. "About Sheikh Zayed Book Award". sheikh zayed book award. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  11. "واقع ترجمة أعمال أدب الطفل من اللغة العربية للّغات الأخرى: جلسة حوارية مع ناشرين ومترجمين". جائزة الشيخ زايد للكتاب (in Arabic). Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  12. 1 2 "Shortlist 2023". warwick.ac.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  13. 1 2 "PEN Translates winners announced". English PEN. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  14. "Bushra al-Maqtari's 'What Have You Left Behind' Longlisted for 2023 Moore Prize For Human Rights Writing". ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY. 2023-06-28. Retrieved 2024-09-12.
  15. "Banipal Trust for Arab Literature - The Banipal Translation Prize - The 2021 Award". www.banipaltrust.org.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-12.