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.

New: Toot and Farafina 15

Two items of excitement today: a new Arabic blogging aggregator, Toot, with a focus on

intelligent, passionate, interesting, funny, knowledgeable and courageous people… using the web to make their voices heard.

They're featuring 181 blogs so far, in both Arabic and English, and readers can vote blogs on the site up and down to reflect "what's tooting." Bloggers are invited to submit their blogs for consideration.

Blogger Laila Lalami, perhaps one of the most-read litbloggers and/or Arab bloggers, flags up her guest-edited issue of Nigerian literary magazine Farafina, with a focus on "Remapping Africanness," as Moroccoan writer Anouar Majid titles his essay, to include North Africa. The issue includes an excerpt from Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men, a wonderful serial poem about the Nile by Coptic poet Matthew Shenoda, a report on Darfur by Fady Joudah (Mahmoud Darwish's translator) and an essay on Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih.

Farafina started as an online magazine in 2004, but since October 2005 has had a print issue as well. You can buy a single issue or subscription from the Kachifo webstore, which has a great selection of African books as well.