“The Apartment In Bab El-Louk” Graphic Novel Discussion | Green Apple Books

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Submited by the Event Organizer

Illustrator Ganzeer and translator Elisabeth Jaquette discuss Donia Maher’s graphic novel, The Apartment in Bab el-Louk. Sponsored by The Center for the Art of Translation.

About The Apartment in Bab el-Louk:  This ‘fabulous noir poem’ has been simply described as ‘the reflections of an old recluse in busy downtown Cairo neighbourhood of Bab El-Louk’ by Egyptian artist, Ganzeer. Cairo-based writer Donia Maher was first published in Arabic by Dar Merit in 2014, and then received the Kahil Award 2015 for the Graphic Novel Prize.

Ganzeer, a graphic designer since 2005, has been involved in contemporary art since 2007 with a variety of exhibitions between Cairo, Germany, Holland, Poland, Italy, Brazil, USA, Emirates, and Amman. He has become most known outside of the typical art sphere for his street art and activism efforts throughout 2011. The Guardian of London has described Ganzeer as a major player in an emerging “counter-culture art scene on the mainstream radar,” and Al-Monitor.com has placed him on a list of fifty people shaping the culture of the Middle East today. Art In America’s C. Viveros-Faune has associated Ganzeer with today’s “New Realism,” a label attributed to an art-form responding to a host of global challenges connected to the majority of people outside the standard art bubble.

Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from the Arabic. She holds an MA from Columbia University, a BA from Swarthmore College, and was a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo. Her work has been published in The Book of Khartoum (Comma Press, 2016), Life from Elsewhere (Pushkin Press, 2015), The Book of Gaza (Comma Press, 2014), the Guardian, and Asymptote, among other places. She is also the Arabic reading group chair for UK publisher And Other Stories, and a judge for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize. Her first novel translation is The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz (Melville House, 2016), which received a 2014 English PEN Translates Award.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.