Issa J Boullata

Biographic Data

ID978236
NAMEIssa J Boullata
GIVEN NAMESIssa J
FAMILY NAMEBoullata
SIGNATUREBOULLATA I J
AFFILIATIONSMcGill University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS92
TOTAL CITATIONS5
AUTHOR COUNT92
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1970
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2021
H-INDEX1

  • Man of Wiles in Popular Arabic Literature: A Study of a Medieval Arab Hero. By Malcolm C. Lyons

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEJournal of the American Oriental…2021

    The Man of Wiles in Popular Arabic Literature: A Study of a Medieval Arab Hero. By Malcolm C. Lyons. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 254. $105

  • Salt Houses

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2017

    tries to meet loss in the eye, not just the loss of the lover but also that of the self and the others gripped in the chaos around her. Razi’s decentered, fluid narrative perfectly matches the mood and experience she is trying to capture. It, however, sometimes feels too much: too many shifts happening, in time (as well as verb tenses) and in perspective ; too many people and events that are touched upon without becoming flesh and blood for us to…

  • In the Wake of the Poetic: Palestinian Artists after Darwish

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2016

    well as inject contemporary tidbits into the collective literary psyche. Most of us are familiar with the quips of Oscar Wilde and the memorable one-liners from the endless plays of William Shakespeare. So much work is done with so few words. Editors James Lough and Alex Stein have collected thirty-two contributions by a variety of writers for this project, including poet Charles Simic. Each writer offers a narrative of his or her relationship to…

  • Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora by Yasir Suleiman

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2016

    environmentally conscious poem, the poet exposes the harm that oil companies are doing to the local communities. Dike Okoro’s In the Company of the Muse helps revitalize the exhausted African poetic scene. Here and there he experiments , as in his tributes to Kofi Awoonor, where he has the halo tradition of the Anlo Ewe of Ghana and Togo in mind. He also has a one-line poem in which the title of the poem, “Because I Was Thinking of You,” is longe…

  • Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    picture of the city whose residents’ lives are complicated by the social and political issues woven into their very being. From two friends growing up together and involved in the murder of the woman they both love to a banker whose life is forever haunted by men from the “shadow government”; from a journalist following the case of a missing person to a woman who shares a night with a hustler at her husband’s hangout apartment; from an Afghan cor…

  • Petra: The Concealed Rose by Amjad Nasser

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    Amjad Nasser. Petra: The Concealed Rose. Fady Joudah, tr. Portland, Oregon. Tavern Books. 2014. isbn 9781935635406 Petra is a beautiful hand-sewn chapbook whose text is set in handsome Garamond typeface printed on archival-quality paper and published as a small paperback of thirty -two pages. It offers a poetic translation of Amjad Nasser’s Arabic prose lyric on Petra, the Nabataean city about which the English Anglican clergyman John William Bur…

  • Monarch of the Square: An Anthology of Muhammad Zafzaf's Short Stories by Muhammad Zafzaf

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2015

    70 WLT SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2015 the collection, although not a complex one for readers looking for plot intricacies and formal artifices, can still serve as an enjoyable read introducing its audience to a slice of Iranian life and literature across governments and geographies. Raha Namy University of Denver Muhammad Zafzaf. Monarch of the Square: An Anthology of Muhammad Zafzaf’s Short Stories. Mbarek Sryfi & Roger Allen, tr. Syracuse, New York. …

  • Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice by Lawrence Venuti

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2014

    Zhu Wen The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan Julia Lovell, tr. Columbia University Press The second volume of short stories produced by Zhu Wen offers a quick, observant account of contemporary Chinese society. With political unrest, economic plunders, murder, and the omnipresent American influence, Zhu writes in a concise manner that will leave a lasting impression. Wallis Wilde-Menozzi Toscanelli’s Ray Cadmus Editions A vibrant …

  • The Secret of Rose-Anne Riley by Shaw J. Dallal

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2014

    Joséphine Bacon Message Sticks / Tshissinuatshitakana Phyllis Aronoff, tr. TSAR Message Sticks provides a rare and welcome glimpse into the Innu-aimun language and way of life through the poetry of Joséphine Bacon. She says, “We are a people of oral tradition. Today we can write. Poetry lets us bring the language of the nutshimit, our land, back to life, and through the words, the sound of the drum still resonates.” Moniza Alvi At the Time of Par…

  • Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qu'ran

    Issa J BoullataBOOKLiterary Structures of Religious…2013

  • Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’ān

    Charles J Adams, Mahmoud Ayoub et al.BOOKApproaches to the History of the…2013

    In recent years, the Qur'ān has come to the forefront of scholarly investigations in Islamic studies. However, the traditional interpretation of the book, commonly termed tafsīr, remains a vast, virtually untapped field of investigation. Many Muslims tend to ignore the material, seeing it as a storehouse of traditional restraints, and scholars frequently gloss over its importance as a historical record of the Muslim community, not appreciating th…

  • Creative Constraints: Translation and Authorship by Rita Wilson & Leah Gerber, ed

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    156 World Literature Today reviews once attributed to a photograph. Despite this broad generalization, the photograph still has the power to stun us and capture our attention. Such is the case with Robert Adams’s traveling retrospective exhibition organized by Yale University Art Gallery and represented in the three-volume catalog The Place We Live, which covers the period from 1964 to 2009. Adams’s black-andwhite images are at once sublime and u…

  • The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    the above-mentioned earthquake in Haiti to abandon his family and move in with another woman. After the earthquake, the status of the child, which the pregnant mother tried to protect with her arms, remains indeterminate : the gender isn’t revealed, and il bambino / la creatura is hovering between life and nonlife in a hospital incubator. Ultimately, Dalembert evokes two seismic convulsions taking place simultaneously in L’Aquila. One occurs ever…

  • Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2013

    72 worldliteraturetoday.org reviews “My life was formed by keen distractions designed to control / my body’s great awakening, which brought to bloom / the passion upon which I had wagered my soul” (“The Elastic Cord”). Published by Wigestrand in a bilingual edition, An Elastic State of Mind makes Powell a full-fledged American Norwegian poet who has been translated in six languages and has translated eleven books into Norwegian. With this, her fi…

  • A Muslim Suicide by Bensalem Himmich

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    to him because he is unable to envision a future for himself. Luckily—and this redeems the book, and perhaps its fictive narrator —there is the earth mother Maria, who is as smart as she is sensual and who has whole handfuls of palpable plans. She may yet animate this otherwise hollow man. Ulf Zimmermann Kennesaw State University Bensalem Himmich. A Muslim Suicide . Roger Allen, tr. Syracuse, New York. Syracuse University Press. 2011. isbn 978081…

  • The Traveler and the Innkeeper by Fadhil al-Azzawi

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2012

    fiction Fadhil al-Azzawi. The Traveler and the Innkeeper. William M. Hutchins, tr. Cairo. The American University in Cairo Press (Oxford University Press, distr.). 2011. isbn 9789774164620 Fadhil al-Azzawi (b. 1940), an Iraqi author of several novels and poetry collections, has lived in Germany since 1977. The Traveler and the Innkeeper , written in 1976 and published in Arabic in Germany in 1989, is now elegantly rendered into English by well-kn…

  • Charles J. Adams 1924–2011

    Open AccessIssa J BoullataARTICLEReview of Middle East Studies2011

    An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button

  • The Calligrapher's Secret by Rafik Schami , Anthea Bell (review)

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    featured in the guidebooks. Bea's questrequires twotrips toParisand, bychoice, anexcursion toCalifornia, thus becoming herbrother's ambassadortorestore a fragmented family towholeness, butwith dubioussuccess .LikeJames, Ozickis a moralist ,cynically referring to thefaux expatriates whodescend onParisto livetheexistentialist life as "literary tourists/' as distinct fromthereal expatriates. Foreign Bodies isCynthia Ozick'smost mature novel; notonly…

  • The Literary Life of Cairo: One Hundred Years in the Heart of the City by Samia Mehrez

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    TheLiterary Life ofCairo:OneHundredYearsintheHeartoftheCity . Samia Mehrez, ed.Cairo. TheAmerican University inCairo Press. 2011.xv+ 433 pages. $39.95. isbn 978-977-416-390-6 Samia Mehrezhas chosento portray theliterary lifeofCairointhe lastonehundred yearsbyselecting passagesfrom whatliterary writers who livedin thecityhavewritten aboutitand itspeople.Unlikeher Literary AtlasofCairo(2010),which focuseson theliterary geopolitics ofthecity, thisco…

  • Selected Poems by Adonis, Khaled Mattawa

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2011

    bya cadreofnew friends. As the narratorrelives those events in Germanhistory from1945to the present thatshapedher,she provides readerswithan eyewitness accountofthehistory oftheGDR andtheWende, orturning point, as theculmination ofEastGermany's peaceful revolution is called.They are also made privyto the fears and anxieties, thefeelings ofguilt, shame,remorse, and the depression the narrator experiences as, dayafter day,sheis inundated by faxesfr…

  • Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman's Journey Toward Independence, and Other Short Stories (Rev. ed.) – By Leila Abouzeid

    Open AccessIssa J BoullataARTICLEDigest of Middle East Studies2010

  • It's Easier to Reach Heaven than the End of the Street: A Jerusalem Memoir - By Emma Williams

    Open AccessIssa J Boullata, Issa BoullataARTICLEDigest of Middle East Studies2010

  • If I Were Another by Mahmoud Darwish, Fady Joudah

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2010

    I, highlighted by lucid observations 1 and fresh perspectives rather than , mere descriptions, Carle has created 1 a poetic vision of the overlooked I things of our world. 1 RobertBonazzi I San Antonio, Texas Ii Mahmoud Darwish. If I Were Anoth i er. Fady Joudah, tr. New York. Farrar, 1 Straus & Giroux. 2009. xxviii + 201 ! pages. $28. isbn978-0-374-17429-3 I If IWere Another is Fady Joudah's [ second book of translations from I Mahmoud Darwish's…

  • The Loved Ones: Alia Mamdouh, Marilyn Booth

    Open AccessIssa J BoullataARTICLEDigest of Middle East Studies2009

  • Blood Test by Abbas Beydoun, Max Weiss

    Issa J BoullataARTICLEWorld Literature Today2009

    vignettes?brief oral histories that Fitzroy had collected before he left town. Throughout the story, Fitz roy attempts to reconnect with his retired office-manager father, a well heeled, country-club type, but uncommunicative enough to make it a frustrating endeavor. The dynam icsof a familysufferingfrom watch ing helplessly the deterioration of an accomplished, fifty-six-year-old woman with Alzheimer's is an almost unbearable agony. The title re…