Author Description

In this issue of the ground-breaking ARABLIT QUARTERLY, we feature works about the road, both concrete and metaphorical. We have a dizzying story about a spiritual journey by Muhammad Khudayyir, translated by Zeena Faulk, where autobiography and fiction meld together and we return to Khudayyir's Basra childhood, when his South Asian teacher took him to hypnosis sessions. In "The Hadith is Written," by Wafik Khansa, the hadith is reclaimed as a literary genre. Roads -- both real and metaphorical -- feature in poems by Ammar Bin Hatim, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Rasha Omran, Ali Jazo, and Mohammad al-Amin. Mai Serhan translates a letter by Ali Shaath about his journey back to Palestine, and Hadil Ghoneim translates a section from Egyptian writer Safynaz Kazem's sharp-witted Romantikayyat, about her travels to the US. Anny Gaul closes the issue by following the journey of couscous from Western North Africa around the world -- and back.