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Rana Asfour

Ahmed Naji is an Egyptian novelist and journalist (b. Mansoura, 1985) and criminal. Naji has been a vocal critic of official corruption under the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. He is the author of Rogers (2007), Seven Lessons Learned from Ahmed Makky (2009), The Use of Life (2014), and Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison (2020). He has won several prizes including a Dubai Press Club Award, a PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, and an Open Eye Award. He was recently a City of Asylum Fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute. Follow him on Twitter @AhmedNajiTW

Rana Asfour is a freelance writer, book critic and translator. Her work has appeared in such publications as Madame Magazine, The Guardian UK and The National/UAE. She blogs at BookFabulous.com and is TMR's Book Editor, culling and assigning new titles for review. Rana also chairs the TMR English-language BookGroup, which meets online the last Sunday of every month. She tweets @bookfabulous.

15 June, 2022 • Ahmed Naji, Rana Asfour

Ahmed Naji: “Godshow.com”

The Egyptian novelist and author of "Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison" finds versions of Islam in the Nevada desert.

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15 June, 2022 • Joumana Haddad, Rana Asfour

Joumana Haddad: “Victim #232”

A preview of the new Arabic novel from the author of "I Killed Scheherazade" and "Superman is an Arab."

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25 April, 2022 • Rana Asfour

Siena and Her Art Soothe a Writer’s Grieving Soul

Rana Asfour reviews Libyan-American author Hisham Matar's memoir of his time in Siena, Italy.

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7 March, 2022 • Rana Asfour

A Miscarriage of Justice in the Case of Mahmood Hussain Mattan

Rana Asfour reviews the Booker Prize-nominated novel by Nadifa Mohamed based on the true story of a wrongly-convicted Somali in 1950s Cardiff.

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14 February, 2022 • Fadi Zaghmout, Rana Asfour

Fadi Zaghmout’s banned-in-Jordan “Laila”: a TMR Valentine

In this excerpt of the banned Jordanian novel "Laila," introduced by Rana Asfour and translated by Hajer Almosleh, readers get a sense of Fadi Zaghmout's prose and purpose.

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15 January, 2022 • Ahmed Naji, Rana Asfour

Taming the Immigrant: Musings of a Writer in Exile

Former prisoner and Egyptian writer in exile Ahmed Naji contemplates what it means to be a "brown writer" in exile in America.

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15 January, 2022 • Rana Asfour

Meditations on “The Ungrateful Refugee”

Rana Asfour shares her thoughts on the widely-celebrated book from Dina Nayeri, who writes that escaping and becoming a refugee preoccupied her life for more than 20 years.

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10 January, 2022 • Rana Asfour

Temptations of the Imagination: how Jana Elhassan and Samar Yazbek transmogrify the world

Rana Asfour provides an intimate look at two new Arab novels in translation, from Lebanese and Syrian authors.

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29 November, 2021 • Rana Asfour

From Jerusalem to a Kingdom by the Sea

Rana Asfour reviews a new memoir about the legendary Dajani family, charged by a Turkish sultan with watching over King David's Tomb in Jerusalem, but exiled in 1948.

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22 November, 2021 • Rana Asfour

Three Banned Saudi Novels Everyone Should Read

Despite its repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia has produced a number of world-class novelists — several of whom have seen their best work banned. Rana Asfour reviews three in English translation.

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30 May, 2021 • Rana Asfour

The Maps of Our Destruction: Two Novels on Syria

Rana Asfour reviews Faysal Khartash's Roundabout of Death and Zeyn Joukhadar's The Map of Salt and Stars.

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9 May, 2021 • Rana Asfour

Beirut Brings a Fragmented Family Together in “The Arsonists’ City”

Rana Asfour reviews the new novel by Hala Alyan, revisiting the city that marked her and the author profoundly.

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25 April, 2021 • Rana Asfour

Three North African Novels Dance Between Colonial & Postcolonial Worlds

BookFabulous' Rana Asfour delivers capsule reviews of three recent North African novels from Libya and Morocco.

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10 January, 2021 • Rana Asfour

Muhammad Malas, Syria’s Auteur, is the subject of a Film Biography

Rana Asfour reviews a documentary by Nezar Andary on the Syrian auteur filmmaker, Muhammad Malas.

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15 October, 2020 • Rana Asfour

The “Surreal Hell” That Made Tahar Ben Jelloun a Writer

The Punishment is a first-person account from an author who considers writers to be "witnesses of history."

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