Press

The 2023 PEN/Heim Grantees Talk Translation: Part III. My love letter to Khalil Alrez’s novel The Russian Quarter/Giraffe of Damascus. Asymptote, June 5, 2023.

At first it was the rhythm of his sentences: polished and wry, leisurely but not ornamented, like no Arabic prose style I had seen. Next it was the Russianisms: what were all these references to Chekhov, Turgenev, and Bondarchuk doing in contemporary Damascus, as if tailor-made for my research on the literary legacies of Arab-Soviet ties? Finally, it was the personality of Syrian novelist Khalil Alrez himself, glimpsed through every gleaming line. Who else could write such a lovable and quirky novel while escaping from bombed-out Damascus suburbs through Turkey and Greece, eventually completing it in a refugee shelter in Brussels? Who else, well aware of Russia’s role in the war, would set that novel in a fictional zoo run by a Russian former journalist named Victor Ivanitch, and furnish it with a wall newspaper, two wolves, three eagles, a hyena, an Afghan hound, and her friend the poodle Moustache? Khalil and I spoke over Zoom, and for a while I told myself I was just asking questions, not preparing to translate the book. But who was I kidding? The Russian Quarter had captivated me; I needed to share it.

Margaret Litvin Wins PEN/Heim to Translate Khalil Alrez’s Russian Quarter. ArabLit, Nov 17, 2022. Excerpt from the novel here. (Yes, the protagonist is a giraffe.)

“Sonallah Ibrahim’s Moscow.” Interview by Tugrul Mende about my translation of Sonallah Ibrahim’s novel Ice. ArabLit, January 31, 2022.

Short interview with me about my Arab-Russian/Arab-Soviet project published on the TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research in Berlin: “I want to see more rising scholars with large and diverse language sets and really transnational interests – 5in10 with Margaret Litvin”

Coverage of Rebecca Maggor’s production of my translation of Mamduh Adwan’s Hamlet Wakes Up Late, Cornell University, 2017.

A San Francisco Hamlet production inspired by Hamlet’s Arab Journey. SFGate, November 13, 2017.

Some press coverage and reviews of Four Arab Hamlet Plays:

Selected earlier articles and interviews

Rich Barlow, Two CAS Professors Win Respected Fellowships, BU Today, March 26, 2015.

هاملت العربي في… الزعتري؟!  Al-Hayat article by Samir Frangie on Hamlet’s Arab Journey and the future of Arab cultural studies (in Arabic). April 27, 2014.

Susan Seligson, “New Middle East-North Africa Major Fills Gap at CAS,” On the Middle East and North Africa Studies program I founded. BU Today, May 6, 2014.

Interview with Colleen Kennedy on The Shakespeare Standard, posted April 2013.

Interview on Pod Academy: a half-hour podcast about my work with Tanjil Rashid. Posted September 13, 2012.

Should I include my own writing too? “Not Dead Yet,” Cairo dispatch on n+1, June 21, 2012.

For reviews of Hamlet’s Arab Journey, see Margaret Litvin’s Academia.edu page under https://bu.academia.edu/MargaretLitvin/Reviews-of-HAJ. For non-academic reviews and other stuff, see the Hamlet’s Arab Journey Facebook page.

Dec 12, 2011. Q&A in BU Today online magazine: http://www.bu.edu/today/2011/cairo-up-close-and-personal/

December 8, 2011. Write-up by Ibrahim Ouf in Al-Messa (المساء) newspaper, part of the Egyptian state-owned Gumhuriyya conglomerate. http://213.158.162.45/~almessa/index.php?c=html/main/articleDetails&article_id=47676

Dec 4, 2011. The Guardian/Observer mentions Hamlet’s Arab Journey as an “inspired” study and “quirky” Christmas gift.

Nov 26, 2011. Profile by Daniele Raineri (in Italian) in the Rome-based daily Il Foglio.

Nov 24, 2011, 10:30pm. Interview with Motaz Elagamy on the “Panorama of the Theatre” program on Egyptian state radio.  Didn’t get a recording.  It was a little iffy at the Maspero building that night.

Winter 2009. Profile by Bari Walsh in Bostonia magazine. Thanks to Vernon Doucette for the awesome photo shoot with the (genuine; borrowed from the College of Fine Arts) human skull!

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