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The new book censor hasn’t slept soundly in weeks. By day, he combs through manuscripts at a government office, looking for anything that would make a book unfit to publish—allusions to queerness, unapproved religions, any mention of life before the Revolution. By night, pilfered novels pile up in the house he shares with his wife and daughter, and the characters of literary classics crowd his dreams. More about this book >
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognized by English PEN, the British Omani Society, and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award in Prose. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her most recent translations include Black Foam by Haji Jaber and What Have You Left Behind? by Bushra al-Maqtari. She was selected to be a Princeton University Translator in Residence in 2025. She is based in Cambridge, UK.
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