Liu Xiaobo Is Locked Up in China, and Locked Out of the Translation of a Paul Auster Novel

  The New York Times By Chris Buckley May 20, 2015 The works of the New York writer Paul Auster often hinge on ominous disappearances, and his novel “Sunset Park” has passages about the secretive detention of the Chinese dissident-writer Liu Xiaobo in 2008 and the efforts of the PEN American Center, a writers’ advocacy group, to secure his release. Lately, Mr.

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Update: Egypt confiscates revolution-time graffiti book for “instigating revolt”

Egypt Independent Mohamed Mostafa   Egypt’s customs services in Alexandria have seized 400 copies of  “Walls of Freedom”, a book depicting Egypt’s street graffitti art in the context of the 2011 uprising,  for “instigating revolt,” says the Finance Ministry.   Ahmed al-Sayyad, the ministry’s undersecretary, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the book contains elements that give “advice on confronting police and army forces,”

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The news website that’s keeping press freedom alive in Egypt

Mada Masr was formed just before military coup of 2013. Amid growing censorship, its staff have risked their lives to continue reporting. Can they stay true to their mission? Leslie T Chang Tuesday 27 January 2015 On the afternoon of 17 June 2013, a group of friends gathered in a fourth-floor apartment in downtown Cairo. They sat on the floor

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Translation and Politics

University of Liege, 7-9 May 2015 The words ‘translation’ and ‘politics’ are so frequently used in a metaphorical sense that it can be safely claimed both that everything depends on translation and that everything is involved in politics. It is clear, however, that from the beginning the two fields, as indeed language and power, are closely related. Translation is about

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Revolutionary Street Art: Complicating the Discourse

  by Hannah Elansary Sept 01 2014 The graffiti and street art of revolutionary Egypt have been researched many times over by now.Journalists and scholars have explored the phenomenon in its many aspects—as evolving visual text, as political rhetoric and as an act of protest in its own right. The claims about the protest street art and graffiti that have proliferated across public Egyptian walls since 2011 have been

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The Case of the Arabic Noirs

  August 20, 2014 | by Jonathan Guyer Cairo: the metal detector beeps. The security man wears a crisp white uniform. He nods and leans back in his chair. The lobby’s red oriental carpet, so worn it’s barely red, leads upstairs to the hotel tavern. Enter the glass doors, where a cat in a smart bow tie and vest reaches for a lonely

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