Most recent articles by Valentina Viene
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Interview with Palestinian poet and artist Farid Bitar″I must either be the voice of sanity or justice″
Palestinian artist and poet Farid Bitar's work was recently included in Smokestack Books' "A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry", edited by Naomi Foyle. One of the 60 people allowed to enter the Gaza strip for a few hours during the Gaza Freedom March in 2009, Bitar talks to Valentina Viene about his activism and his art
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Tayeb Salih′s ″Season of Migration to the North″A literary hall of mirrors
Described as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century by the Arab Literary Academy, Tayeb Salih's ″Season of Migration to the North″ was first published in 1966. For this year′s Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize Lecture, Professor Robert Irwin reflected on Salih′s unique mode of engaging with Western culture and the counternarrative he provides to post-colonial discourse. By Valentina Viene
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Interview with the Yemeni author Habib Abdulrab SaroriThe pendulum of conviction
″Suslov′s Daughter″ is the inward and outward journey of a Yemeni revolutionary in search of answers; a man struggling to find his equilibrium, while the Yemeni revolution turns from a dream into a nightmare. Habib Abdulrab Sarori talks to Valentina Viene
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Libyan author Najwa Binshatwan on "The Slave Pens"Confronting a dark chapter
Najwa Binshatwan′s novel ″The Slave Pens″ was the only one of six novels shortlisted for this year′s International Prize for Arab Fiction to be written by a woman. At the Abu Dhabi award ceremony, she talked to Valentina Viene about her novel and the importance of origins and identity