Interesting Literature In this week’s Dispatches from the Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle considers the ancient Roman novel that inspired James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald Today is Bloomsday. James Joyce’s vast modernist masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), is set in Dublin on a single day, 16 June 1904. Since at least the 1950s, devotees of Joyce’s novel have… Continue reading The Original Great Gatsby: Petronius’ Satyricon

Interesting list Interesting Literature The best children’s books What are the top ten greatest children’s novels ever written? This is going to prove a contentious list, but below we’ve compiled what we think are ten of the best works of children’s fiction in all of English literature. We’ve had to make some (regrettable) omissions, but… Continue reading 10 of the Best Children’s Novels Everyone Should Read

Looking forward to reading any/all of them 🙂 ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly Five emerging novelists will present their works — that came out of a writing workshop with novelist Sahar Elmougy — on Sunday in Cairo: By Mona Elnamoury If you happen to be in Cairo, try to attend the next cultural event hosted by the Doum… Continue reading Coming in Cairo: Five Books, Five Emerging Authors

ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly Although award-winning in French, Mohammed Hasan Alwan doesn’t have a novel available in English. When he took the this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction, it became certain that would change. Chip Rossetti talks to Alwan about the subject of his IPAF-winning novel, as well as the prize and Alwan’s next… Continue reading ‘The Desire To Go Beyond the Walls and See the World’: In Conversation with IPAF Winner Mohammad Hasan Alwan

Interesting Literature Fun facts about the Victorian novelist 1. A novel written by Victorian author Wilkie Collins when he was 20, titled Iolani and set in Tahiti, was eventually published in 1999. Written in 1844 but not published until 110 years after his death, Iolani: Or, Tahiti as It Was was Collins’s first ever attempt… Continue reading Five Fascinating Facts about Wilkie Collins

Interesting Literature A summary of a much-loved poem Since Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If—’ was first published in Kipling’s volume of short stories and poems, Rewards and Fairies, in 1910, it has become one of Kipling’s best-known poems, and was even voted the UK’s favourite poem of all time in a poll of 1995. Why is… Continue reading A Short Analysis of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If—’

Interesting Literature Fun facts about John Bunyan’s classic book 1. John Bunyan’s most famous book has a claim to being the first English novel. Others have argued that The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), Bunyan’s masterpiece, is less a ‘novel’ and more a religious allegory – which it certainly is. Bunyan the book while imprisoned in Bedford… Continue reading Five Fascinating Facts about The Pilgrim’s Progress

ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly Two years after the death of beloved Egyptian poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi — who passed away on April 21, 2015 — translator, author, and editor Mona Anis brings us a fresh English version of his “Writing”: Anis, a long-time deputy editor-in chief and literary editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, interviewed El-Abnoudi back in 2008. During their talk, El-Abnoudi — one… Continue reading A New Translation of El-Abnoudi’s ‘Writing,’ A Poem the Bard Considered Among His Best

ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly Today, the American University in Kuwait opens its bigger-and-better Biennial LitFest, one of a series of literary initiatives coming out of Kuwait: These new initiatives, which include the new Almultaqa Prize for the Arabic short story, come at a time when Kuwaiti writers are strenuously pushing back against a suffocating period of… Continue reading Opening Today, Kuwait’s Growing Litfest Headines Randa Jarrar, Sinan Antoon

Interesting Literature A summary of an influential essay ‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential essays. It was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the bold claim that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far from being a triumph, is an artistic failure. Why? Eliot is… Continue reading A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Hamlet and his Problems’