Arabic | Egypt | Short Fiction
November, 2018In my recent article published in World Literature Today, “Sheltering Words: Collaboratively Translating Montasser Al-Qaffash,” I write: “One of the reasons I love living in Cairo is the fact that everyone spins yarns: the porter, the maid, the taxi driver. No one has the corner on stories—many of these stories rely on rumor, humor, and hyperbole. Still, the problems of daily life are real and life is hard: many Egyptians vent their frustrations through anecdotes and jokes.” Montasser Al-Qaffash’s collection of short stories, At Eye Level, does just this—he takes humdrum problems and spins yarns around them. For example, in his story “To Describe It a Little More,” the narrator describes the relationships of tenants in a building through the eyes of one of its inhabitants. The narrator describes his father’s fascination with a ground-floor apartment, his dream residence. As a mature adult, looking back, the narrator understands that his father’s obsession with the ground-floor apartment masked an attraction to the widow who owned it, and his help in selling the apartment provided an excuse to call old friends. The complexity of his father’s relationship to the ground floor apartment--and of social relationships more broadly--is mirrored by the crossword puzzles the son would solve with his father.
- Gretchen McCullough
Egypt | Hungarian | Short Fiction
September, 2013Like most of Sándor Jászberényi's fiction, "How Ahmed Salem Abandoned God" is a story steeped in a violent reality. Drawing on his experiences as a journalist in Middle East conflict zones, Jászberényi's stories read like dispatches from the human side of war. It is the kind of writing that keeps good company with great journalist-observers of wars past, such as John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene. His settings range from Libya to Syria, Egypt to Sudan, but his writing is always rooted in universal questions of faith, fidelity, and personal responsibility.
Mohamed Metwalli was born in Cairo in 1970. He was awarded a B.A. in English Literature from Cairo University, Faculty of Arts in 1992. The same year, he won the Yussef el-Khal prize by Riyad el-Rayes Publishers in Lebanon for his poetry collection, Once Upon a Time. He co-founded an independent literary magazine, el-Garad, in which appeared his second volume of poems, The Story the People Tell in the Harbor (1998). He was selected to represent Egypt in the International Writing' Program at The University of Iowa in 1997. Later he was Poet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago in 1998. He compiled and co-edited an anthology of offbeat Egyptian poetry, Angry Voices (University of Arkansas Press, 2002). He published his third collection, The Lost Promenades, in 2010 with the independent publisher al-Ketaba al-Okhra. The same collection is forthcoming from the General Egyptian Book Organization (GEBO).
Mohamed Metwalli was born in Cairo in 1970. He was awarded a BA in English Literature from Cairo University, Faculty of Arts in 1992. The same year, he won the Yussef el-Khal Prize by Riyad el-Rayes Publishers in Lebanon for his poetry collection Once Upon a Time. He co-founded an independent literary magazine, el-Garad, in which his second volume of poems, The Story the People Tell in the Harbor, appeared in 1998. He was selected to represent Egypt in the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 1997, and served as Poet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago in 1998. He compiled and co-edited Angry Voices, an anthology of offbeat Egyptian poetry published by the University of Arkansas press in 2002. His most recent collection, Lost Promenades, was published by al-Kitaba al-Ukhra in 2010.
Mohamed Metwalli was awarded a B.A. in English Literature from Cairo University, Faculty of Arts in 1992. The same year, he won the Yussef el-Khal prize by Riad el-Reyes Publishers in Lebanon for his poetry collection, Once Upon A Time. He co-founded an independent literary magazine, El-Garad, in which his second volume of poems appeared (The Story the People Tell in the Harbor, 1998). He was selected to represent Egypt in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 1997. Later he was Poet-in-Residence at the University of Chicago in 1998. He compiled and co-edited an anthology of Modern Egyptian Poetry, Angry Voices, published by the University of Arkansas press in 2002.
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).