War, Women, Exile, and Translation: Award-winning Syrian Novelist Talks about Writing Fiction

CMES, the Mahindra Center's Rethinking Translation Seminar, and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction present a talk with Syrian novelist

Shahla Ujayli

Author of "A Sky So Close to Us" and " Summer with the Enemy" and her translator

Michelle Hartman
Professor of Arabic Literature, McGill University and literary translator of fiction

This talk will be a conversation with award-winning Syrian novelist Shahla Ujayli, author of "A Sky So Close to Us" and "Summer with the Enemy", both shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF). Joining the discussion to talk about her work and challenges of translating Arabic literature will be translator Michelle Hartman, Professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University. 

In the words of Shahla Ujayli: “Writing about war means writing about oneself—the harsh fate of the family, the home, the special places, and memories. But writing about your place at war is a great challenge, since you find the whole world talking about your house, slums, and city, yet no one who debated its fate had ever visited it or known it before the war. They talk about strange, complicated, fantastic things, and you find yourself writing novels to tell them that only you know the truth.”

Shahla Ujayli is a Syrian writer, born in 1976. She holds a doctorate in Modern Arabic Literature and Cultural Studies from Aleppo University in Syria and is currently a professor of Modern Arabic Literature at the University of Aleppo and the American University in Madaba, Jordan. She is the author of two short-story collections "The Mashrabiyya" (2005) and "The Bed of the King’s Daughter" (2017), winner of Al Multaqa Prize, and four novels: "The Cat’s Eye" (2006), winner of the Jordan State Award for Literature; "Persian Carpet" (2013); "A Sky So Close to Us", shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Interlink, 2016); and "Summer with the Enemy", shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (Interlink, 2018). She has also published a number of critical studies, including "The Syrian Novel: Experimentalism and Theoretical Categories" (2009), "Cultural Particularity in the Arabic Novel" (2011) and "Mirror of Strangeness: Articles on Cultural Criticism" (2006).

Michelle Hartman is a professor of Arabic Literature at McGill University and literary translator of fiction, based in Montreal. She has written extensively on women’s writing and the politics of language use and translation and literary solidarities. She is the translator of several works from Arabic, including Asmaa Alatawna’s  "A Long Walk from Gaza", Radwa Ashour’s memoir "The Journey", Iman Humaydan’s novels "Wild Mulberries and Other Lives", Jana Elhassan’s IPAF shortlisted novels "The Ninety-Ninth Floor" and "All the Women inside Me", Alexandra Chreiteh’s novels "Always Coca Cola" and "Ali and His Russian Mother" as well as Shahla Ujayli’s IPAF shortlisted novels "A Sky So Close to Us" and "Summer with the Enemy".

Co-sponsors: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Mahindra Center's Rethinking Translation Seminar, International Prize for Arabic Fiction
Contact: Liz Flanagan