This month we continue our exploration of the Arab Spring with literature from the countries of the uprisings. Moving from North Africa to the Middle East, we present writing from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.  In prison memoirs and comic fiction, from the distance of exile and the immediacy of the barricades, writers interpret both the insurrections and the contexts in which they occurred, providing an invaluable perspective from which to consider this ongoing revolution.

We open with an interview with Rafik Schami, whose work has been banned in his native Syria for forty years, discussing the tortured history and uncertain future of his country. Cécile Oumhani and Syrian poet Aïcha Arnaout discuss writing the revolt. Jordan’s Elias Farkouh finds a child’s dream day ends in a nightmare, while Beirut39 honoree Mohammed Hasan Alwan observes a young man’s musical (and sentimental) education. Bahraini poet-activist Ali Al Jallawi recalls his brutal arrest and imprisonment. On the brink of his departure from Yemen, Mohammed Algharbi Amran’s young medical student confronts the past, and the father, he’s never known.  And Arab Booker nominee Wajdi Muhammad Abduh al-Ahdal tests the grammar of freedom.