"Polychrome paths from modern Arab art and literature" is the title of the new issue of Banipal magazine, number 11, which pays tribute to the Iraqi painter Hanoos Hanoos, who has been living in Madrid for four decades.
The magazine includes a special supplement that includes an interview with the artist by Ana Fernández Parrilla, in which she takes a look at his professional life, from his early years in his native country to his arrival in the Spanish capital, where he experienced the so-called movida madrileña.
The honoree also writes, explaining the foundations of his own aesthetic thinking halfway between East and West; Professor Salvador Peña, who delves into the artistic work of Hanoos Hanoos from a multimodal perspective, relating his canvas number 15 of the series "Scheherezade and the Arabian Nights" with the miliunanochesque manifestations existing in literature, architecture, music and film; the Chilean filmmaker Tomás Benavente, who shares his feelings after visiting the painter's studio; the Egyptian poet Ahmad Yamani, who draws a more personal and affective image, reflecting not only his admiration for the artist, but also their friendship and the journey they have made together in the cultural sphere; the poet Trino Cruz, who reflects on the union between art and poetry; and, finally, the poet Joselyn Michelle Almeida, who, inspired by Hanoos' work, "develops a dialectic between the philosophy and the chromatic longing of the painter of Mesopotamian origin in her poem".
Alongside this special feature, readers of Banipal magazine will find an extensive report on the winners of the Sheikh Zayed Book Prize 2023: Ali Ja'Al-Allaq with his work Where are you going, poem? and Saïd Khatibi Zayed with his detective novel The End of the Desert. As well as articles by the Moroccan critic Abdel Latif Al- Ouarrari, who delves into the first book, and the Lebanese novelist and journalist Fayez Ghazi, who writes about the second.
As in previous issues, there is no shortage of narrative and poetry in both Arabic and Spanish. We can enjoy two short stories (Magic Eye Collection) by the Egyptian writer May Telmissany; 16 poems by the Iraqi poet and editor Khalid Al-Maaly, translated by María Luisa Prieto; and, in the "Guest Poet" section, the verses of the Cantabrian Yolanda Soler Onís, presented by Jaafar Al-Aluni, and the Uruguayan Rafael Courtoisie, by Joselyn Michelle Almeida.
To close, the reviews section includes the bilingual (French/English) divan Emerald Wounds by the French-language Judeo-Egyptian poet Joyce Mansour (1928-1986).
Edited by Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon, this journal, named after the emperor Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC), founder of the world's first library, was launched in London in 1988 in English. Since 2020, it has also been published in Spanish as "a platform for dialogue, mutual understanding, tolerance and knowledge of cultures, which aims to establish a base of readers who love and value Arab literature", Shimon stressed.
