In Arabic literature found in translation in The National Jessica Holland reports that:
You can actually already pre-order the two-volume edition from Amazon.com (volume one and two) or Amazon.co.uk (volume one and two); I look forward to seeing them.
Note also that the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute is holding a conference on World Literature and Translation for the next three days which looks worth a look -- beginning with Davies speaking on 'Translating Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Leg over Leg' tonight.
The award-winning translator Humphrey T Davies [...] is currently hard at work on a translation of al-Shidyaq's masterpiece, the 720-page tome Al-Saq 'ala al-Saq, or Leg Over Leg.This work -- الساق على الساق -- by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (أحمد فارس الشدياق) sounds quite fascinating -- as does al-Shidyaq, about whom Holland notes: "Experts call him the first Arab novelist and a modernist before modernism existed"; see also Barbara Winckler's older portrait at Qantara.de, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Literary Investigations.
The book (whose original, much longer title is practically an essay in itself) is scheduled to be released late next year in two volumes, as part of NYU Press's new Library of Arabic Literature series.
You can actually already pre-order the two-volume edition from Amazon.com (volume one and two) or Amazon.co.uk (volume one and two); I look forward to seeing them.
Note also that the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute is holding a conference on World Literature and Translation for the next three days which looks worth a look -- beginning with Davies speaking on 'Translating Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Leg over Leg' tonight.