Author, commentator and human rights advocate Khaled Mansour joins us to talk about how reading Arab women’s memoirs can help one gain a new understanding of the region’s collective history. After he worked with Egyptian psychoanalyst and feminist Afaf Mahfouz to write her autobiography, Mansour began a journey through Arab women’s memoirs set to culminate in his forthcoming podcast, المرآة (The Mirror). One of the many books he discusses with us is Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled’s account of her life and militancy, published in 1973, My People Shall Live.

Show notes:

You can find Leila Khaled’s My People Shall Live available free through the Internet Archive.

Afaf Mahfouz’s من الخوف إلى الحرية is available from Kotob Khan.

Links to Khaled Mansour’s work can be found on his website.

Memoirs by Nawal El Saadawi, Arwa Saleh, Huda Shaarawi, Latifa al-Zayyat, Radwa Ashour are available in English translation. A list of these and more is available at arablit.org.

You can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you’d like to rate or review us, we’d appreciate that. If you’d like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq.

BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more.

For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at bulaq@sowt.com.

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Journalist, novelist, and memoirist Omar El Akkad talks about his latest book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a blend of memoir, social criticism, and moral philosophy. The book creates and shares space for everyone who is full of grief and rage, who cannot be at home in institutions that support or ignore genocide. We discuss the linguistic obfuscations around Gaza, El Akkad’s critique of Western liberalism, and the possibilities for a different future.

Show notes:

You can get One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This from Penguin Random House, where a sample of the audiobook is available, read by Omar El Akkad.

Omar’s first novel, American War, is also available from Penguin Random.

You can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you’d like to rate or review us, we’d appreciate that. If you’d like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq.

BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more.

For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at bulaq@sowt.com.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Journalist, author and editor Alia Malek tells us about her recent visit to Damascus and about the anthology of Syrian writing she edited for McSweeneys. Aftershocks was released in December 2024, just days after Bashar al-Assad fled Syria and the country's political prisons began to crack open. The collection brings together work by sixteen Syrian authors who write from diasporic and refugee experience, as well as from inside Syria. We discuss these key Syrian literary voices and how they and others are meeting this moment.

Show notes:

Get the Aftershocks anthology from McSweeney’s at store.mcsweeneys.net.

Malek’s 2017 book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, is available from Bold Type Books.

Read Malek’s reflections on the death of her father, “‘He Didn’t Want to Lie in a Grave That Couldn’t Be Visited” and her recent “What Did the World Learn From Syria?” in the New York Times.

Read a short conversation with Aftershocks contributor Rawaa Sonbol, “On Being a Writer in Syria Today” and her short story “The Noose Boy,” both at ArabLit.

We mention the late Syrian writers Khaled Khalifa and Saadallah Wannous.

The photo of Alia Malek in Damascus in January 2025 is by Sabir Hasko.

You can subscribe to BULAQ on all your favorite podcast networks. You can also follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books, where we post about upcoming episodes and literary events.

Please don’t forget to rate and recommend BULAQ.

We are a non-profit, listener-supported program. If you’d like to make a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq.

BULAQ is a co-production with the podcast platform Sowt.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.