Arabic language
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Remembering Naguib Mahfouz
″A wave of light on an infinite ocean of darkness″
30 August 2016 marks the tenth anniversary of Naguib Mahfouz′ death. Widely regarded as the father of the Arab novel, the Egyptian author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988: ″through works rich in nuance - now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous″. A volume of his early non-fiction work has recently been published. Marcia Lynx Qualey gives her impressions
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Interview with the Egyptian author Youssef Rakha
"Taken together, these things would make up home..."
The Egyptian poet, essayist, novelist and journalist Youssef Rakha moves between two worlds. He aims to show his Western readers an eclectic Cairo beyond common cliches. Interview by Susanne Schanda
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Novelist and critic Elias Khoury
The nightmare of reality
The Lebanese novelist and critic, Elias Khoury, examines the nature of writing in a world rent repeatedly by violence and vicious conflict – and finds hope
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The poems of Ibn Arabi
Interpreting desire
The famous mystic Ibn Arabi’s 61 poems have been translated into German for the first time by Stefan Weidner. But are the poems really all that easy to understand? By Marian Brehmer
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Interview with the Saudi author Alhanoof Aldegheishem
Traces of the unknown
The Saudi Arabian dentist Alhanoof Aldegheishem wrote her first novel ″Frāībūrġ. riqqatu l-cuzla″, which roughly translates as ′Freiburg – sweet loneliness′, during a long research residency in Germany. In it, she describes how her own perspective changed and developed through her exposure to a foreign culture and the challenges she faced along the way. Interview by Hussein Gaafar
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Book review: Bachtyar Ali′s ″Der letzte Granatapfel″
Buried treasure
The first German translation of a Kurdish-Iraqi novel has been published – and what a novel! Bachtyar Ali′s ″Der letzte Granatapfel″ is a bombshell. Stefan Weidner read the book
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Boualem Sansal′s novel ″2084: The End of the World″
Tyranny of sorts
In his latest novel, Boualem Sansal, attacks the religious tyranny of Islam, yet fails to comment on the West′s hypocrisy with relation to the fallout of colonialism or recent political involvement. By Iman Humaydan
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150th anniversary of Friedrich Ruckert′s death
Forget Goethe, read Ruckert
One of Germany′s greatest poets died 150 years ago – and today, hardly anyone is familiar with him. But all those years ago, Friedrich Ruckert knew how to integrate refugees successfully. By Christoph Meyer
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Arabic literature as a cultural asset
Uncharted waters
Many Arab civil war refugees have been forced to abandon prosperous lives in a homeland destroyed by war in order to reach the safety of Europe. But traumatic experiences are not all they bring with them; there is also a wealth of literature which is still unknown to many of us. By Melanie Christina Mohr
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Interview with the Egyptian poet Iman Mersal
Crossing a universal threshold
Iman Mersal, part of Egypt′s 90s generation, is one of the most interesting voices in contemporary Arabic poetry. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, with poems from her much-awaited ″Until I Give Up the Idea of Houses″ (2013) currently being rendered into English by Robyn Creswell. Interview by Marcia Lynx Qualey
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Goethe and Islam
Religion has no nationality
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe may have had his reservations about Islam – as he did about Christianity – and he certainly wasn′t shy of criticising it, but his credo was without doubt built on the foundations of non-negotiable tolerance. By Melanie Christina Mohr
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Mother-tongue instruction in multi-ethnic Iran
Linguistic diversity as opportunity
Iran is a state of many ethnicities where over a dozen languages are spoken, including, among others, Persian, Baluchi, Luri, Arabic, and Turkish. Unfortunately, the country’s education policy does not take account of this linguistic diversity. By Manutschehr Amirpur