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Contributor

Hosam Aboul-Ela

Contributor

Hosam Aboul-Ela

Hosam Aboul-Ela teaches in the department of English and the program in World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston. He has lived most of his life in two exotic foreign countries—Egypt and Texas. He is the English translator of the novels Voices by Soleiman Fayyad and Distant Train by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid. He is also the author of a critical/theoretical text entitled Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariátegui Tradition. He spent the spring of 2008 in Cairo, Egypt as a CASA III/Fulbright fellow.

Articles by Hosam Aboul-Ela

Imagining more Autumns for North Africa’s Patriarchs: The Dictator Novel in Egypt
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
In the mid 1970s, at a time when Latin American countries chafed under brutal dictatorships, an amazing literary phenomenon swept through the region. Three powerful novels were published within months…
From the Symposium: Studying the Arab World in Western Universities
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
Last month I attended the symposium “The Study of the Arab World in Western Universities,” sponsored by ALESCO, the Arab League Educational and Scientific Organization, and hosted by the Arabic…
On Mahmoud Darwish
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
In an earlier post, I raised the issue of the dearth of translations done of intellectual and critical writing from Arabic (and most of the other languages of the world). The translation of poetry also…
A Kind of Farewell
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
Over the past months, I've been living in Cairo and posting regularly about the local literary scene to this blog. In a matter of days, perhaps even by the time this is posted, I'll be back in…
The Changing Times of the Egyptian Novel
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
One of my main activities since arriving in Cairo has been to try to update myself on recent developments in the Egyptian novel. I have just finished a work that's received much attention in the local…
Thinkers
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
In conjunction with the London Book Fair's acknowledgement of the 'Arabic Book' this year (previously mentioned in this blog), the Guardian published a forum in which it asked Arab writers…
Troubles
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
Egypt has been through a troubling few weeks, culminating in several tense days around a general strike last Sunday April 6. During this time, talk of politics and economics has pushed aside talk of literature…
Why Do We Hate Us?
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
The first thing that must be said about visiting the United Arab Emirates is that the traveler does not get a full picture due to the invisibility of migrant workers hidden away in work camps outside…
Who’s Not Translating Whom? The State of Arabic-Language Translation Six Years Later
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
Many readers of WWB will probably still remember the exchange between historian Paul Kennedy and translator Esther Allen in the letters section of Harper's Magazine in fall of 2002. In his letter,…
Hosam Aboul-Ela in Cairo
By Hosam Aboul-Ela
Hosam Aboul-Ela teaches in the department of English and the program in World Cultures and Literatures at the University of Houston. He has lived most of his life in two exotic foreign countries—Egypt…