ON THE BLOG
Praise for LAL in the media
The November 20 issue of the Times Literary Supplement ran not one, but two, glowing reviews of LAL titles, making a great conclusion to 2015 for our series. Hugh Kennedy of SOAS described Two Arabic Travel Books as “accounts… full of fascination and wonder,” and Patricia Storace declares Leg over Leg “will eventually be acknowledged as one of the most important translations of the twenty-first century.”

Read both reviews in full here.

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The First Great Arabic Novel
In case you missed it, check out Robyn Creswell’s review of Leg Over Leg in the New York Review of Books‘ October 8 issue here, which explores the “many virtues” of Humphrey Davies’ translation and its source text:

“It is acrobatic, cutting, and baroquely self-aware.

It is the style of a virtuoso in flight from the orthodoxy of his place and time.”
COMING SOON
Check out our new English-only paperbacks!

This week, the Library of Arabic Literature is launching its first English-only paperback editions, with stunningly redesigned covers, of four popular translations in the series: Leg over Leg, Volumes One and Two; Leg over Leg, Volumes Three and Four; The Epistle on Legal Theory; and The Expeditions. Order yours now!
NOW AVAILABLE
Fall 2015
In The Life and Times of Abu Tammam, the courtier and scholar al-Suli (d. 335 or 336 H/946 or 947 AD) mounts a robust defense of Abu Tammam’s significance as a poet against his detractors, while painting a lively picture of literary life in Baghdad and Samarra. Both highly controversial and extremely popular, Abu Tammam’s sophisticated verse epitomized the “modern style” (badi)—an avant-garde aesthetic that was very much in step with the intellectual, artistic and cultural vibrancy of the Abbasid dynasty.
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