Moody's upgrades Saudi Arabia's credit rating to Aa3 with stable outlook    Riyadh Metro to begin partial operations next Wednesday: Report    Al Okhdood halts Al Shabab's winning streak with a 1-1 draw in Saudi Pro League    Mahrez leads Al Ahli to victory over Al Fayha in Saudi Pro League    Al Qadsiah hands Al Nassr their first defeat in the Saudi Pro League    Saudi musical marvels takes center stage in Tokyo's iconic opera hall    Downing Street indicates Netanyahu faces arrest if he enters UK    London's Gatwick airport reopens terminal after bomb scare evacuation    Civil Defense warns of thunderstorms across Saudi Arabia until Tuesday    Saudi Arabia, Japan strengthen cultural collaboration with new MoU    Slovak president meets Saudi delegation to bolster trade and investment ties    Saudi defense minister meets with Swedish state secretary    Navigating healthcare's future: Solutions for a sustainable system    Al Khaleej qualifies for Asian Men's Club League Handball Championship final    Sixth foreign tourist dies of suspected methanol poisoning in Laos    Katy Perry v Katie Perry: Singer wins right to use name in Australia    Trump picks Pam Bondi as attorney general after Matt Gaetz withdraws    Al-Jasser: Saudi Arabia to expand rail network to over 8,000 km    Sitting too much linked to heart disease –– even if you work out    Denmark's Victoria Kjær Theilvig wins Miss Universe 2024    Order vs. Morality: Lessons from New York's 1977 Blackout    India puts blockbuster Pakistani film on hold    The Vikings and the Islamic world    Filipino pilgrim's incredible evolution from an enemy of Islam to its staunch advocate    Exotic Taif Roses Simulation Performed at Taif Rose Festival    Asian shares mixed Tuesday    Weather Forecast for Tuesday    Saudi Tourism Authority Participates in Arabian Travel Market Exhibition in Dubai    Minister of Industry Announces 50 Investment Opportunities Worth over SAR 96 Billion in Machinery, Equipment Sector    HRH Crown Prince Offers Condolences to Crown Prince of Kuwait on Death of Sheikh Fawaz Salman Abdullah Al-Ali Al-Malek Al-Sabah    HRH Crown Prince Congratulates Santiago Peña on Winning Presidential Election in Paraguay    SDAIA Launches 1st Phase of 'Elevate Program' to Train 1,000 Women on Data, AI    41 Saudi Citizens and 171 Others from Brotherly and Friendly Countries Arrive in Saudi Arabia from Sudan    Saudi Arabia Hosts 1st Meeting of Arab Authorities Controlling Medicines    General Directorate of Narcotics Control Foils Attempt to Smuggle over 5 Million Amphetamine Pills    NAVI Javelins Crowned as Champions of Women's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) Competitions    Saudi Karate Team Wins Four Medals in World Youth League Championship    Third Edition of FIFA Forward Program Kicks off in Riyadh    Evacuated from Sudan, 187 Nationals from Several Countries Arrive in Jeddah    SPA Documents Thajjud Prayer at Prophet's Mosque in Madinah    SFDA Recommends to Test Blood Sugar at Home Two or Three Hours after Meals    SFDA Offers Various Recommendations for Safe Food Frying    SFDA Provides Five Tips for Using Home Blood Pressure Monitor    SFDA: Instant Soup Contains Large Amounts of Salt    Mawani: New shipping service to connect Jubail Commercial Port to 11 global ports    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Delivers Speech to Pilgrims, Citizens, Residents and Muslims around the World    Sheikh Al-Issa in Arafah's Sermon: Allaah Blessed You by Making It Easy for You to Carry out This Obligation. Thus, Ensure Following the Guidance of Your Prophet    Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques addresses citizens and all Muslims on the occasion of the Holy month of Ramadan    

Articles of the author Susannah Tarbush
The road less traveled
SAMI Traifi, the central character in Anglo-Syrian writer Robin Yassin-Kassab's debut novel “The Road from Damascus”, was born in Britain to Syrian parents and lives in London with his Iraqi wife Muntaha. His wife's decision to start wearing the (...)

17 - 11 - 2008
Magic of the ‘very, very, short stories'
IT is a sign of the stature of the Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer within Arabic literature that Garnet Publishing of the UK chose his short story collection “Breaking Knees” as one of the first titles in its new Arab Writers in Translation series. The (...)

10 - 11 - 2008
Translating cultures through poetry
THIS past month in the UK has been an especially rich time for poetry linked to the Middle East and South Asia. The Poetry International festival, held at London's Southbank center every two years, attracted some of the some of the brightest poetry (...)

03 - 11 - 2008
Celebrating a catastrophe
AT the end of ‘Palestine Aloud', a cultural celebration held in London's Cadogan Hall last Wednesday night, the General Secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) Betty Hunter came on stage to thank those who had made the evening such a (...)

27 - 10 - 2008
Tragedy on tape
year-old British humanitarian volunteer Tom Hurndall by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sniper in Rafah, Gaza in April 2003 was a tragedy that changed the lives of his parents, sister and two brothers forever. Tom was left brain dead and remained in (...)

20 - 10 - 2008
A magical metamorphosis
THE awarding of the annual Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation at a ceremony in London had a particular poignancy this year, as the award went to the translator of poems by the hugely-lamented Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, (...)

13 - 10 - 2008
Striking the right note on Ramadan Nights
FOR the fourth year running, the last days of Ramadan and the approach of Eid Al-Fitr were celebrated in London through the Ramadan Nights season of concerts organized by the Barbican Center. Far from being a fringe event, the hugely popular series (...)

06 - 10 - 2008
Modernity grapples with tradition in the work of Iranian photographers
FOR her series of photographs ‘Qajar', the Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian dressed young women in early 20th century clothing, and photographed them holding Western objects that had been smuggled into Iran. In one portrait a woman stands with a (...)

22 - 09 - 2008
Readability scores over obscurantism in this year's Booker shortlist
ONE of the surest signs that autumn is on its way is the eruption of the annual brouhaha over the shortlist of five novels for the Man Booker prize, worth £50,000 to the winner. The Booker, Britain's most prestigious literary award, is open to (...)

15 - 09 - 2008
‘Chicago' is launched in London
Aswany remembers vividly his first day in the student residency at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where he went as a post-graduate dental student in the mid-1980s. “I opened the window and saw some African-Americans looking for something to (...)

08 - 09 - 2008
Londoners get
a taste of ice cream from GazaEARLIER this year, the artistic director of Britain's National Youth Theatre (NYT), Paul Roseby, approached the playwright Shelley Silas to ask if she would write a play about Gaza for the New York Times. The resulting (...)

01 - 09 - 2008
A Palestinian-Israeli ‘Treaty of Love'
Youssef's new novel “A Treaty of Love” traces the course of a relationship between a Palestinian man and Israeli woman living in London. Such a theme of passion across the Israeli-Palestinian divide could lend itself to a sentimental treatment, a (...)

25 - 08 - 2008
New film focuses on US soldiers whose consciences have turned them against war
IN the four years since its foundation, the London-based documentary production company Tourist with a Typewriter has carved a niche for itself in the production of offbeat and topical films related to the Middle East. Its latest production, “The (...)

18 - 08 - 2008
Around the Arab world in a dozen short stories
IN Egyptian writer Salwa Bakr's compelling short story “Ancestral Hair”, the first-person narrator is a lonely woman on the cusp of 40 whose husband has long since deserted her and their Down's Syndrome boy. The son is now a man of 24 with “a wild (...)

11 - 08 - 2008
‘House of Saddam' brings Saddam's complexities to the small screen
part mini-series “House of Saddam”, the first episode of which was screened on BBC TV last week, gives a remarkably vivid and convincing portrayal of the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and his relationships with his inner circle and his (...)

04 - 08 - 2008
The London Magazine goes Arab
THE London Magazine, which can trace its roots back to 1732, has a reputation as a publication that has featured many of the greatest names in English literature as well as encouraging new writers and breaking boundaries. Now, with the publication (...)

28 - 07 - 2008
Disquieting metaphor for our anxiety-ridden times
SOUTH African writer Henrietta Rose-Innes's powerful short story “Poison”, for which she has won the £10,000 Sterling (nearly SR75,000) Caine Prize for African Writing, gives a vivid and disquieting portrayal of people fleeing Cape Town in the (...)

14 - 07 - 2008
Eva Figes' “Journey to Nowhere”
JEWISH writer Eva Figes' latest book “Journey to Nowhere: One Woman Looks for the Promised Land” is both a memoir of the Second World War, and a polemic against Israel. In her unsentimental yet moving prose, Figes tells of how her family's Jewish (...)

07 - 07 - 2008
Al-Saqi Books wins a precious British award
THE announcement of the winner of the first Arab-British Culture and Society Award, at a ceremony held at the Arab-British Center (ABC) in London last Wednesday, came as a welcome development for the community of several hundred thousand Arabs in (...)

30 - 06 - 2008
Taxi odyssey through Cairo realities
Khamissi's book “Taxi” gives a teeming portrait of Egyptian society through 58 taxi rides taken by the first-person narrator along the crammed and polluted streets of Cairo. Each ride is depicted in a short chapter of one to three pages in which the (...)

23 - 06 - 2008
Syrian writers appear both live and on the page in Britain
BY the medieval market town of Ledbury nestling in the Malvern Hills, Herefordshire, has established itself as Britain's largest poetry festival. This year four Syrian poets will perform their work at the festival, to be held on July 4-13. During (...)

16 - 06 - 2008
Pass on a Poem for free
ON a recent weekday evening, dozens of people crowded into the Oxfam charity bookshop in Portbello Road, West London for a poetry reading organized by the steadily growing grassroots poetry movement Pass on a Poem. Some 20 people among the (...)

09 - 06 - 2008
‘Power of culture' vs. ‘culture of power'
In the latest issue of the London Review of Books, Scottish novelist and essayist Andrew O'Hagan reflects on the inaugural Palestine Festival of Literature held recently in the West Bank and Jerusalem. “Thousands of people turned out: they wanted to (...)

02 - 06 - 2008
A fruitful summer for Orientalist painting in London
The reputation of Orientalist painting has taken something of a battering in the past three decades, due to its supposed role in creating stereotypes of Arabs through focusing on subjects such as harems, odalisques, khans, warriors on horseback, (...)

26 - 05 - 2008
The story of a British Muslim woman revived
In 1934 the London publisher John Murray issued “Pilgrimage to Makkah”, an account by Anglo-Scottish convert to Islam Lady Evelyn Cobbold of the Haj she had undertaken the previous year, at the age of 65. Lady Evelyn was the first British-born (...)

19 - 05 - 2008
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