Al-Tayyib Salih passes away

It is with sadness that we note the passing of novelist Al-Tayyib Salih (الطيّب صالح).  He was born 12 July 1928in Karmakol, in northern Sudan and died 18 February 2009.

Salih is most well known for Season of Migration to the North ( موسم الهجرة إلى الشمال Mawsim al-Hiǧra ilā ash-Shamāl ), a classic post-colonial Sudanese novel originally published in Arabic in 1966.  Salih was a writer of truly universal proportions, and one whose work will continue to resonate through coming generations.  He is survived by his wife, Julia, and three daughters, Zainab, Sara and Samira.

For more about the author and his life:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/936/cu1.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/20/obituary-tayeb-salih
http://www.pfd.co.uk/clients/saliht/b-aut.html
http://collegerelations.vassar.edu/2001/677/
http://maduba.free.fr/mawsim.htm -”Lire Saison de la migration vers le Nord de Tayeb Sâlih”, by Salah NATIJ, in Website : Maduba/Invitation à l’adab
Tayeb Salih (Alain Mourgue. In french)

Yalo By Elias Khoury

Yalo By Elias Khoury was discussed on Monday, February 2nd. 

After his acclaimed Gate of the Sun, Khoury returns with the spellbinding confession of Beirut criminal Daniel Jal’u, aka Yalo, who is picked up by the cops for rape, robbery and suspicion of arms smuggling. Under torture and the threat of more torture, Yalo writes numerous confessions, but seems unable to grasp the whole of his life, producing instead a series of conflicting sequences and inexplicable omissions. Brought up by his grandfather Ephraim, a half-mad Syriac priest, and his mother, Gaby, Yalo joins the army in 1979 and fights in the horrific Lebanese civil wars already under way. Deserting 10 years later, Yalo, after a series of adventures, ends up working as a guard for a rich lawyer whose villa is close to a wooded lovers lane; he progresses from voyeurism to robbing and, in some cases, rape. In so doing he meets Shirin, who will change his life—partially by turning him in. Khoury refuses to give the reader an easy position from which to judge Yalo—either as a poor soul or a serial rapist, criminal or victim of torture—or from which to judge Lebanon’s tragic and violent fate. His novel is a dense and stunning work of art.

EAIFL – Dubai International Festival of Literature

Dubai’s first literature festival, The Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature (or EAIFL), was held from 26th February – 1st March 2009 at Dubai Festival City. The festival featured several renowned translators (including the venerable Denys Johnson-Davies) for a series on Arab Literature Through the Translators’ Eyes – and an international host of poets for A Celebration of the Life & Work Of Mahmoud Darwish.