Issue 70 - July 2010

New books published

Ugresic, Dubravka, No Body’s Home, transl. into Arabic by Medhat Taha, (Al-Mahrosa Publishing House, Cairo 2010), supported by the South-South Translation Program of Next Page

No Body’s Home is a collection of essays, divided into four sections. The first part consists of very short feuilleton-like pieces. The other sections offer longer essays, mainly reflecting on home and abroad, traveling, Europe and Europeanness, literary geopolitics, and consequences of globalization on national and other identities. It remains to be seen what would the Arab readers’ reception of this emblematic for post-1989 Europe author be.

Al Aswany, Alaa, The Yacoubian Building, transl. into Bulgarian by Nadejda Rozova (“Prozoretz” Publishing House, Sofia 2010), supported by the Encounters Program of Next Page

After numerous translations throughout the world, this best selling Arabic novel for 2002 and 2003 has been translated for the first time into Bulgarian. Written in the vein of roman à clef, The Yacoubian Building is set in 1990 at the time of the first Gulf War, and is a thorough scanning of modern Egyptian society since the Revolution of 1952. It talks about poverty, immigration, corruption of the political system, and the dangers of the extremist Islam, but also introduces the tabooed topic of homosexuality.