First Draft

(Shahad Al Rawi) Photo by Kareem El Deeb  The Iraqi writer Shahad Al Rawi has won the Book Festival’s 2018 First Book Award with her debut novel, The Baghdad Clock. The...

I enter through the caverns mouth, Into a bustling fair, And all about there’s shouts without, Of rumoured trades allure, And goods not seen before, Which tempt me to procure,...

Industry on the go These are good times for the Pakistan film industry, at least in terms of the number of films that are being made. Nowadays, three ad film...

The Sahel region stretches like a wide belt across Africa’s northern midriff. It is a 3,860-km semi-arid belt of barren, sandy and rock-strewn land that marks a transition from the...

My book The Case Against Jihad has just been published, aptly on the anniversary of 9/11. This may seem rather a late repudiation of the hateful ideology behind those attacks, but it remains...

THIS WEEK, AS the world marks one year since the beginning of the Rohingya exodus – one of the most critical refugee crises of our times – images of helpless refugee...

In the world of adults, the Supreme Court has upheld a travel ban from some mostly Muslim nations, and refugee arrivals from Syria as well as other Middle East hot spots have slowed...

He raised his hand, ready to assert what he considered his right in a male-dominated society where the husband’s word is final. She was an accomplished police detective feared by...

English-language genre writing from Bahraini authors is a growing phenomenon. Mohamed G. Darwish talks about why he was drawn to writing fantasy in English, and what role it plays on...

Any contemporary novelist who takes on themes of Islamic identity and jihad in their work risks being labeled a political writer. But for Elnathan John, a debut novelist from Nigeria,...