Lost in Translation Reading Challenge

Looking for a New Year's resolution? What about Nonsuch Books' 2009 "Lost in Translation" reading challenge: read six books in translation, and share your thoughts with other challenge participants on the Nonsuch blog. Email Frances on francesevangelista [at] yahoo [dot] com to be added to the list, and include a link to your blog or site if you'll be posting your thoughts on the book. Chad Post at Three Percent is offering a shipping costs refund to participants who order and read any title from the excellent Open Letter catalog of contemporary fiction in translation.

Nonsuch is also taking suggestions for titles, but mine is more of a wish list -- a desire to be surprised by writers that I don't yet know about (Arabic riot grrrl poetry from Saudi Arabia following in the wake of The Accolade?), and the hope that some of the Arabic books I've come across this year will be translated into English. Like Adania Shibli's novels, Kamal Rohaym's The Muslim Jew, the rest of Magdy Al-Shafei's graphic novelMetro, novels by Abdourahman Waberi, more from the poets featured in Modern Poetry in Translation's Palestine issue, more from the writers included in Farafina 15's focus on North African literature...

If you join the challenge, post a link to your blog or reading journal in the comments.

Reading Egypt

The Guardian's Book Blog are travelling around the world via literature, and it's Egypt's turn. Post your suggestions and thoughts here. You can add new discoveries to the Atlas here.

[Updated 2 Dec]

the tanjara posts about the Guardian's literary tourism (aren't we loving the photo of the very contemporary Pyramids?) with some pertinent observations and questions about how the Guardian's tour functions:

So far, the blog entry on Egypt has attracted only 17 comments (some of which weren't on Egyptian literature, but suggested a next stop on the 'tour'), much fewer than the 45 for Portugal, the previous stop, Nigeria (42), Australia (116 comments), Ireland (213). Of course it's not really appropiate to compare interest, as indicated by comments, in relatively newly available Egyptian fiction with that in literature from Anglophone countries.
Egypt was chosen as a destination by readers of the blog, but there was a miniscule number of votes. It got 2 votes, tied with the same number for a combined destination of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. As Egypt had been shortlisted a few times previously it was the final choice. Surely Moroccan literature (including poetry) is 'present' enough to merit inclusion in its own right rather than only as part of a general Maghreb entry. Or, if one insists on a general North African entry, why not expand to include Libya

So there's lots of space to make your opinion heard (unusual on a Guardian blog!) and put the names of classics and exciting new novels out there... Great to see Bahaa Taher getting attention alongside Naguib Mahfouz, and also Khalid al-Khamissy.

If you're lucky enough to be in Cairo, Kamal Rohaym is reading from his novel "Ayam al-shataat" on Wednesday 8th December at the last Sphinx Agency salon of the year. Rohaym won a prize for the first novel, "Quloub munhaka" (The Muslim Jew), which is being translating into German at the moment. The next big thing?!