The Strange: Winter/Spring 2019

The second edition of ArabLit Quarterly will unsettle and awe you with an appreciation of “the Strange” in Arabic literature translated into English. Rachel Schine splices the personal demons of rapper Kendrick Lamar with the ghouls that afflicted fifth-century poet Ta’abbata Sharran. Fadwa Suleiman of Syria talks to her suitcase in a poem translated by Marilyn Hacker. Trays “loaded with skulls and spiced with hearts” pass by in works of the late Syrian Abd al-Latif Khattab translated by Daniel Behar. Astonishing worlds in the poetry of Morocco’s Abdallah Zrika are explored in an interview by Ali Abdeddine and Shireen Hamza and translation by Hamza and Tim DeMay. Nada Menzalji of Syria finds herself in a “Land of Strangers” in her poem translated...