Ljubljana, Slovenia, 18 October. EMUNI Foundation in cooperation with the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) hosted a new EMUNI Talks event with a prominent author Samuel Shimon and Margaret Obank, editors of the Banipal magazine, one of the leading magazines for the promotion of Arab literature in the world.  

Samuel Shimon spoke about the development of Arab literature in the last century, which has throughout reflected the changing of political and social circumstances. In the first half of the previous century there was a lot of topics marked with poverty, poor living conditions and anti-colonial themes. However, after the Israel situations these themes could not develop further. The nationalist politics of Abdel Nasser in Egypt had a huge impact also on the literature that was since full of political slogans, racism, nationalism, anger and hatred and the quality of poetry got poor. One of the decisive moments was the civil war in Lebanon, which started in 1975. Numerous intellectuals and artists fled to Beirut, where they were able to work without threats of censorship and control for the first time in their lives. Also Paris became an important centre for the development of Arab literature. The focus of writing was put on human lives instead of the political situation. However, internal political upheavals in dictatorship regimes caused more censorship and no freedom in expression and the literature “lost touch with reality.”

Shimon said that the Arab literature has changed completely in the last 10 years and got a more established position in the world literature. Shimon also presented his view on the 2011 revolution that according to him was strongly influenced by the young Egyptian writers and their work.  In the Arab countries there is a growing number of young writers, female writers and more fiction. Also the number of translations of literary works from the Arabic language is increasing and the recent trends show that numerous poets are now turning to fiction. At the end Shimon stressed the issues of education systems in Arab countries which do not devote enough attention to other cultures and the way to handle them.

The feature of Margaret Obank, Banipal co-editor, focused on the role of the Banipal magazine and it's contribution to the development of intercultural dialogue.

The purpose of the Banipal magazine, an independent literary magazine based in London, with is promoting and diffusing contemporary Arab literature through translations into English. Since its inception in 1998 until today, it has published works and interviews of more than 700 authors and poets, many of them translated for the first time into English.

Obank said that there were three main ideas behind the establishment of the magazine: to correct the fact that it is not a part of world literature, to deepen dialogue and simply because it is always joyful and exciting to read beautiful literature.  She said that literary translation has a big power to develop dialogue and the authors are interpreters of human lives and true peace makers.

The magazine has been praised both by non-Arab and Arab for its role in diffusing Arab literature to a wider audience. Also Heba Sidhom, new Ambassador of Egypt and one of the guests at the lecture warmly thanked the guest for the lecture as well as for their work and said they are the »true ambassadors of Arab literature.«

Samuel Shimon was born in Iraq. He left Iraq in 1979 to go to Hollywood and become a film-maker, and got as far as Damascus, Amman, Beirut, Nicosia, Cairo and Tunis. In 1985 he settled in Paris, where he started the small press Gilgamesh Editions. In 1996 he moved to London, where he has lived ever since. 

He co-founded Banipal magazine, and from September 2010 is its Editor. In 2000, he and Margaret Obank (co-founder and editor of Banipal) edited A Crack in the Wall, poems by sixty contemporary Arab poets. 

His autobiographical novel An Iraqi in Paris, was published in Arabic in 2005, and a limited first edition in English translation was published the same year. The Arab press described it as “unique in Arabic language – reminds us of Henry Miller” and “one of the gems of autobiographical writings in the modern period – the era of the image and the revolution of the spectacle”, and “a manifesto of tolerance”.  Samuel is the founder editor of the most popular literary website in Arabicwww.kikah.com and a profile in the Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung in 2003 described him as “the Initiator” and “a tireless missionary for literary matters”.

Margaret Obank was a language teacher in Bradford and lecturer in London Further Education Colleges, and spent many years in printing and publishing, starting at the Africa Publications Trust. She is co-founder of Banipal magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation and co-editor of A Crack in the Wall (Saqi Books, 2000). In 2004 and 2006 she put on two Banipal Live UK tours of Arab authors. She established The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, which in turn set up the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, now in its 6th year, and in January 2010 the Banipal – Arab British Centre Library of Modern Arab Literature in original English and  English translation. Banipal Books, which she founded in 2005, publishes works by contemporary Arab authors in translation.

In 2007 she became a trustee of the newly-established International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and a member of the Outreach Committee of the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World, a joint project between the universities of Edinburgh, Durham and Manchester in the UK. She is married to Iraqi author and journalist Samuel Shimon.