Author Description

The DREAMS-themed issue of ArabLit Quarterly features dream manuals, short stories, poetry, essays, reflections, art, dream manuals, recipes, and a graphic novel from the murky world of dreams, where we have both play and nightmares. As always, work ranges over eras, and includes a dreamy tenth-century recipe, an excerpt from the dream manual by Syrian scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (1641-1731), translated by his descendent Yasmine Seale; essays by the great Lebanese modernist Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (d. 1887), here in seance-conversation with Rana Issa and Suneela Mubayi; and a poem by the award-winning colloquial Egyptian poet and booktuber Nada El Shabrawy (b. 1995) and a short story by the young Palestinian writer Ameer Hamad (b. 1992). For the first time, we also feature a graphic-novel excerpt from Samandal's Barrack Rima, translated by David Kanbergs.This issue also features the four stories shortlisted for the 2020 ArabLit Story Prize as well as our winner, Hadiya Hussein's "Tunnels," translated by Shakir Mustafa.