Last week, over ninety members of the public, readers of Banipal magazine, representatives of the International Prize for Arab Fiction and supporters of Arabic literature filled the fourth floor of Waterstones Piccadilly, the flagship store of the UK’s leading bookshop chain. The event, whose patrons included the Kuwaiti ambassador to London, His Excellency Mr Khaled Al-Duwaisan, was to introduce the English translation of the award-winning book, The Bamboo Stalk, published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP).
BQFP, a joint collaboration between Qatar Foundation and Bloomsbury Publishing in London, supports QF on its mission to preserve and develop the Arabic language and promoting the cultural heritage of the region.
Introduced by critic and broadcaster Paul Blezard, the author, Saud Alsanousi, was in conversation with Dima Choukr, editor of the London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed’s cultural supplement, about his novel. The Bamboo Stalk, which won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2013, was published in English translation by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing on 23 April. Exploring themes of identity, racism and belonging, it takes an unflinching look at Kuwaiti society.
At the event, Saud discussed the ramifications of writing as a Filipino narrator whose story is to be translated into Arabic. He talked about living in the Philippines for a year to research the novel, and how he inhabited the persona of his half-Kuwaiti, half-Filipino protagonist while writing the book. Paul Blezard read extracts from the book in English and interviewed the translator Jonathan Wright about the collaborative process between him and Saud. Enthusiastic questions from the audience were followed by a book signing and reception.
During his visit to the UK, Saud Alsanousi was also interviewed on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. Reviews in the UK have been ecstatic, with more to come:
The Peninsula
