Latest news with #HishamMatar
Asharq Al-Awsat
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Three Rivers, One Bridge: Mahfouz's Last Dreams Revisited
With refreshing honesty, the Libyan British novelist Hisham Matar begins his translation of Naguib Mahfouz's last dreams with a confession. During their only meeting in the 1990s, Matar asked Mahfouz how he viewed writers who write in a language other than their mother tongue. The question reflected the concerns of a young writer born in America, raised partly in Cairo, and later sent to a British boarding school under a false identity to evade persecution by Gaddafi's regime, which had disappeared his dissident father. Naguib Mahfouz on the balcony of his café overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo, 1988. (AFP) Mahfouz's reply was as concise and sharp as his prose: "You belong to the language you write in." Yet Matar admits that, in later recollections of this exchange, he often caught himself embellishing Mahfouz's words, adding an unspoken elaboration: "Every language is its own river, with its own terrain and ecology, its own banks and tides, its own source and destinations where it empties, and therefore, every writer who writes in that language must swim in its river." In this sense, I Found Myself... The Last Dreams, published by Penguin's Viking last week, attempts to be a bridge between three rivers: the Arabic in which Mahfouz wrote his original text, the English into which Matar translated it, and the visual language of the American photographer Diana Matar; the translator's wife whose images of Cairo are interspersed throughout the book. No easy task. Mahfouz's translations have often sparked debate—whether over inaccuracies, neglected context, or occasional editorial interference. A touch of this affects Matar's attempt without ruining it. For instance, in translating Dream 211, where Mahfouz finds himself facing Saad Zaghloul, leader of the 1919 revolution, alongside "Umm al-Masriyyin" (Mother of the Egyptians)—a title referring to Zaghloul's wife, Safiya—Matar misinterprets the epithet as a symbolic allusion to Egypt itself, rendering it "Mother Egypt." Beyond this, however, the first published translation by Pulitzer-winning Matar flows smoothly, matching the simplicity of his project's origin story: it began one morning over coffee at the kitchen table, where he translated a few dreams for his wife, only to find himself having done dozens—eventually deciding to publish them as his first major translation. The images complement the dreamlike atmosphere without attempting to directly translate any of them. (Courtesy of Diana Matar) Perhaps the concise, economical language of Mahfouz's final dreams made the task easier. Between dreams, Diana Matar's photographs of Cairo—Mahfouz's city and muse—appear shrouded in shadows, dust, and fleeting impressions, sometimes ghostly in detail, complementing the dreamscapes without directly illustrating them. Here, she joins Mahfouz in her love for Cairo, which became her "muse" after accompanying her husband to that summer meeting with the Arab world's sole Nobel laureate in literature. Relying on black-and-white imagery and abstraction where possible, Diana seems to bridge the temporal gap between her Cairo and Mahfouz's. Diana Matar took most of the book's photographs between the late 1990s and early 2000s. (Courtesy of Diana Matar) In his introduction's closing lines, Hisham Matar imagines Mahfouz flipping through the translation and remarking, in his trademark brevity: "Of course." But perhaps closer to the truth is that he would repeat his original verdict: "You belong to the language you write in." Perhaps we must accept that translation—not just of this book, but in general—is a bridge, not a mirror. And that is enough.
New York Times
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Aleksei Navalny Among National Book Critics Circle Award Winners
A posthumous memoir by the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, which detailed his fight against autocracy and corruption in Russia and was published eight months after he died in prison, won a National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. Announcing the award, Rebecca Hussey, a member of the autobiography committee, praised the memoir, 'Patriot,' as a masterpiece and 'an eyewitness account of history, and a work of moral imperative and literary intelligence.' Hisham Matar's novel 'My Friends,' a story about a Libyan man living in exile in London, won the fiction prize. The awards, which were announced Thursday at a ceremony at the New School in New York City, are among the most highly regarded literary prizes in the United States. The winners are chosen by book critics instead of committees made up of authors or academics, which is how most literary prizes are administered. The organization, which dates to 1974, is made up of more than 800 critics and review editors. This year's awards recognized works published in 2024 and were open to authors of books published in English in the United States. Along with awards in categories like biography, criticism, autobiography, fiction and poetry, the group also recognizes individuals and organizations for their work in support of literary culture. This year, Lauren Michele Jackson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker and the author of 'White Negroes,' received the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. The award, named in honor of a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, goes to an N.B.C.C. member for literary criticism. The service award was given to Lori Lynn Turner, the associate director of the New School's creative writing program. Sandra Cisneros, the author of the groundbreaking novel 'The House on Mango Street,' whose work helped pave the way for Mexican American and other Latino writers, received the lifetime achievement award. Third World Press, one of the largest independent Black-owned presses in the U.S., which was founded in 1967 and has published major Black writers such as Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez and Gwendolyn Brooks, won the Toni Morrison Achievement Award. Below is a list of this year's award-winning titles. 'Patriot: A Memoir' by Aleksei Navalny, translated from Russian by Arch Tait with Stephen Dalziel, is a memoir Navalny started writing after surviving a near-fatal poisoning with the lethal nerve agent Novichok in Siberia in 2020, and continued writing while in prison, where he died at age 47. 'Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar' by Cynthia Carr, is a biography of the transgender actress and star of some of Andy Warhol's films. 'There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension,' is Hanif Abdurraqib's best seller about how sports can anchor us to a sense of place, told through the story of a 2002 basketball game in Columbus, Ohio, where he grew up. 'My Friends' by Hisham Matar, follows a young Libyan man who is granted asylum in London after he is targeted for attending an anti-Qaddafi protest, and has to rebuild a new life exile. 'Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space' by Adam Higginbotham, is a propulsive and devastating account of the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, and the causes behind the disaster. 'Wrong Norma' by Anne Carson, is a collection of verse that often reads like essays or prose, and covers such wide ranging subjects as snow, Joseph Conrad, Flaubert, poverty, Roget's Thesaurus and Carson's father. 'A Last Supper of Queer Apostles' by Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper, is a selection of essays about political and cultural icons including Che Guevara and Elizabeth Taylor, the messy aftermath of following the collapse of authoritarian rule under Augusto Pinochet and living through the AIDS epidemic in Chile. 'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir' by Tessa Hulls, is a graphic memoir that tells the story of the author's family, folding in reflections on Chinese history, immigration, and trauma.
