Q. You write in French but your books have been translated into many languages. What do you see as the challenges of publishing your work in translation? What is the relationship between author and translator when re-creating a text in another language?

Writing in a language that is not my mother tongue occasionally produces phrases or even turns of thought which are unusual in French. Some of my translators, particularly those from Nordic countries, often ask me to make clear how my characters are related. Others, like the Japanese, ask me to translate some Arabic words or specify the location of certain geographical places. In general, those familiar with North Africa and the Mediterranean do not ask me many questions. The only translation I can read and correct is the Arabic, when it is not one pirated by Syrian publishers. [. . .]

Q. Edward Said argued that literature and criticism from the West about the East creates false impressions of Arab and Eastern countries and reinforces a divide between the cultures. Do you agree with this? Where do you feel you are within this divide? What cultural concerns do you feel your work addresses?

He is right. The view that the West imposed on the Arab world has always been one of superiority, resulting in colonization. However, there have been very talented Orientalists, honest people like Jacques Berque, Maxime Rodinson, Louis Massignon, etc. They tried to talk about the Arab world from the inside. They spoke Arabic and were acquainted with the basic texts of the language. Today we are witnessing a vision based on prejudice and mediocrity. Arab culture is devalued, poorly understood, even ignored. This is because of political problems and nondemocratic leaders, and then also because of the oil that has distorted the true meanings of this civilization.

• William Giraldi’s of Aharon Appelfeld’s “Being labeled a Holocaust writer might indeed irritate Appelfeld, but no living novelist—not Wiesel, not Amos Oz—better chronicles the spiritual vacuum and extreme disorientation that ensued in the aftermath of Auschwitz.”

• John Freeman’s of Impac Prize winner Tahar Ben Jelloun’s “Leaving Tangier would read like a blunt political instrument for such sentiments were Ben Jelloun not such a wonderfully specific writer.”

• Thomas Israel Hopkin’s of Albert Sánchez Piñol’s “Some British reviewers have judged the novel to be postmodern, satiric, and anti-imperialist, but the Garvey/not-Garvey gimmick is more like listening to a protracted joke told by the bastard offspring of Jules Verne and the Eric Idle character Mr. Smoke-Too-Much. It’s not funny. It is, rather, sort of maddening. If I’ve completely missed something clever here, I’d be delighted to learn what it is.”

• Matthew Ladd’s on Abdourahman A. Waberi’s “f there is a sharp glimmer of the absurd in Waberi’s premise, it suits his satire as well as the absurdity of the Lilliputians did Swift’s or that of Pangloss did Voltaire’s. The satirists of the eighteenth century are in fact Waberi’s most evident formal predecessors; his short chapters open with such archaic and mellifluous titles as “‘In which the author gives a brief account of the origins of our prosperity and the reasons why the Caucasians were thrown onto the paths of exile.’ “

• and, Irene Gammel’s at Ghérasim Luca’s “Praised by Gilles Deleuze as ‘a great poet among the greatest,’ Luca is well served here not only by Krzysztof Fijałkowski’s faithful translation but also by the elegant introduction, which provides fascinating biographical details and deftly situates the book ‘as a missing piece in the history of international surrealism.’ “ (Gwen Dawson also this book at Literary License, giving it a solid four stars.)

Of course, there are many more good articles in this new issue worth checking out, all of which are available

(And just to note—links from the titles above go to Harvard Book Store’s online ordering system. Unfortunately a few of the titles aren’t currently in stock, but I’m sure they can get the book pretty quickly . . .)