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Sudan

White foam swirling on a river's surface

Photo by kallern, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I float on worry

By Rania Mamoun

I live on the lip, split / between slipping & holding

Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Seale

The covers of the five books featured in the Watchlist

The Watchlist: September 2022

By Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll recommends new and exciting books in translation from Sudan, Belgium, Haiti, France, and South Korea.

Aperture: Sudanese Female Novelists Coming into Focus

By Sawad Hussain

Is there some sort of double marginalization at play?

At the Coffee Shop

By Rania Mamoun

This man must be high on something, I thought.

Translated from Arabic by Nesrin Amin

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Freedom of Flight

She is a woman I have watched for many years, and for as many years she has been unaware of me.

Translated from Arabic by Nariman Youssef

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Al-Nar Street

By Zeinab Belail

Women are forbidden from setting foot in the swamp.

Translated from Arabic by Nesrin Amin

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Basma’s Dream

By Amna al-Fadl

She hovers overhead, aimless, surrendering herself to fate.

Translated from Arabic by Katherine Van de Vate

The Birth of the Spirit

By Sara Al-Jack

I didn’t go to the dorms as I had planned; my feet led me to the river.

Translated from Arabic by Yasmine Zohdi

Razor Blade Rattle and the Beginnings of Being Tamed

By Ishraga Mustafa

How could they, when these women themselves had been through so much pain?

Translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain

Multilingual

Beyond Representation: Life Writing by Women in Arabic

By Sawad Hussain & Nariman Youssef

One cannot write about real-life experiences from the place of the “I” without laying claim to a place in the world.

Biting their Mother Tongue: Three Sudanese Short Stories about Estrangement

By Max Shmookler

Arabic is a language of literary culture in Khartoum and other urban centers but a language of profound violence elsewhere in the country.

Conjunctions

By Nagi Al-Badawi

President Numiri's military vehicles were crossing over the playground of doves.

Translated from Arabic by Max Shmookler & Najlaa Eltom

Multilingual

A Condition

By Adil al-Qassas

The only thing that’s left is the noose itself.

Translated from Arabic by Max Shmookler & Najlaa Eltom

Multilingual

Isolation

By Sabah Babiker Ibraheem Sanhouri

Perhaps, at the least, I would remember who I was.

Translated from Arabic by Max Shmookler & Najlaa Eltom

Multilingual

From “The Grub Hunter”

By Amir Tag Elsir

Some texts I compose naked in a closed room with the drapes drawn and not a breath of air.

Translated from Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins

From “A Nation behind Bars”

By Khalid Oways

Art is forbidden. It calls for immorality and degradation.

Translated from Arabic by Jonathan Smolin