Katharine Halls won the 2024 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her work as translator of Ahmed Naji’s Rotten Evidence, published in 2023 by McSweeney’s (and currently available for 20 percent off in our store). Publishers Weekly called the book “a moving testament to the power of free expression,” and the Banipal judges called the translation “a brilliant feat” and “a masterclass.” We spoke to Ahmed and Katharine about their work.
AMANDA UHLE: Ahmed, what can you tell us about how this book began in your mind and how you wrote—the first time—in Arabic?
AHMED NAJI: I wrote this book under the gentle but persistent pressure of friends and supporters who stood by me during the trial and the prison time. At the time, all I could share with them were stories that mingled humor with the harsh reality—the moments where the cruelty of prison authority met with the absurdity of it as an institution.
During my imprisonment, I had documented my dreams and wrote notes whenever I could. When I began writing, it came in fragments. One of the first was about the visiting room—an emotional theater of vulnerability. I wrote about the tough men I saw there, men who carried the weight of their lives and experiences like armor, breaking down into tears on their mothers’ shoulders or in their wives’ arms. The image that first inspired me to write this book was of a thick mustache soaked in tears and an old man who couldn’t stop sobbing like a child.
Yes, this is a book about prison and a memoir about censorship. But for me, it is also about something deeper. I wanted to explore masculinity and brotherhood, dreams as a means of escape, a space of signs and prophecies. Above all, it is a meditation on literature and books—on how reading and writing have the power to save us, even in the darkest places.
AU: This makes me want to ask: What reading and writing, other than your own, has felt like a rescue to you?
AN: I saw it as a relief more than a rescue. Through books, I found a voice that carried me beyond the boredom of prison and the unbearable weight of passing time. In reading, I could isolate my mind from the harsh conditions that confined my body. Writing, however, was a different struggle—my trial had been a shocking rupture in our relationship. I was imprisoned because of my writing, and there, I kept asking myself: Was it worth it? I still don’t have a definitive answer. But what I do know is that I survived, and through writing, I found meaning in the absurdity of the trial and everything that followed. Rotten Evidence is my personal revenge—my way of reclaiming and reshaping what happened by turning it into something meaningful, a book that works as a reminder to others, and an invitation to a world that I hope no one visits… the prison.
AU: Katharine, when did you first become aware of the book? Did you know Ahmed’s fiction already?
KATHARINE HALLS: I used to live in Cairo, where Ahmed and I have a bunch of friends in common—I even know some of the people who appear as characters in Using Life—so I was well aware of the obscenity case and the conversations going on around it at the time. By the time Hirz Mikamkim [the Arabic original of Rotten Evidence] came out, it was 2020, I was under lockdown in the UK, and I had a lot more time on my hands than usual, meaning I was able to read and think about the translation projects I wanted to prioritize. I read the book, loved it, and that’s where we started.
When I had the news about the prize a couple of months ago, it struck me that the book is by no means less relevant now than when it was first published in Arabic five years ago. It speaks to so much of what is happening both in Egypt and in the USA. Back in Egypt, prisons are still bursting at the seams, and people like our friend Alaa Abd el-Fattah—known to readers of the book as the Pink Dragon—remain incarcerated even though he finished serving his sentence on September 29 last year. His sixty-eight-year-old mother has been on hunger strike since then, and her life is now in serious danger.
Over in the USA, meanwhile, censorship and book banning continue apace. One of the absurdities of Ahmed’s trial in Egypt was that the plaintiff claimed that reading a raunchy scene had given him palpitations and made him sick, but the US is really taking the biscuit, with rampant censorship of titles that include LGBTQIA+ themes or sex education content, many of them designed to educate and support young readers. In 2023, the year Rotten Evidence was published in the USA, we saw the highest number of attempts at book censorship documented by the American Library Association in more than twenty years of tracking.
Which brings me to a question I have for you, Ahmed. When I started work on the translation, you’d only just arrived in the USA. The country has been going through some pretty unhinged times since then, to put it mildly. What’s it been like for you? Do you think living and working in the USA has changed you as a reader and writer?
AN: I came seeking this opportunity. During my first two years, my focus was on finalizing my book and working on another Arabic novel I was writing at the time. It was also a period of adjustment—an attempt to understand my new reality. I was incredibly fortunate to land in Las Vegas, arriving first as a fellow at the Black Mountain Institute. No city has shown me the love and generosity that Vegas and its people have given me. Being a fellow at BMI also allowed me to meet incredible writers from all over the country and become part of the West Coast literary scene. A new world opened up for me, and over time, I began to grasp my new position as a writer in exile.
I had two options for the future. One was to continue writing in Arabic, for an Arabic-speaking audience, about Egypt and topics related to my homeland. I’ve seen many exiled writers take this path—living for years in New York City yet knowing little about the streets they walk daily while obsessively following every piece of news from their home country. The other option was to let go of the past entirely—unless it could be leveraged for personal gain. Victimhood, for example, can sometimes be useful. In this approach, one adapts to a new place, follows its rules, and finds a niche where they can contribute in ways that are expected of them.
I chose a different path—one that neither erases the past nor allows it to imprison me. I wanted to learn before adapting, to write before assimilating. Writing is what I have always wanted to do. So why not write in both languages? That’s what led me to apply for an MFA and, ultimately, to start writing and publishing in English.
I become a bilingual writer reading and writing in both Arabic and English, and as I do so, I endure a fresh transformation that is meaningful and fresh.
AU: Katharine, we think of you as our go-to Arabic translator. Having such a beautiful experience with your thoughtful and now award-winning translation of Rotten Evidence, we engaged you as a translator on our recent issue of McSweeney’s Quarterly, guest edited by Alia Malek and featuring contemporary Syrian prose. This issue was almost two years in the making, and how could any of us have anticipated the way the situation in Syria would change—on the week we published in December 2024?
KH: I translated three pieces for Aftershocks: a short story by Zakaria Tamer, an excerpt from a play by Berlin-based playwright Mohammad Al Attar based loosely on the trial in Germany of a number of former Syrian regime figures, and four short stories by an author I wasn’t familiar with, Rawaa Sonbol. I really enjoyed working on all of them, but after I submitted and wrapped up the job, I didn’t really think much more about it. It never occurred to me that in December 2024, we’d wake up one day to the utterly breathtaking news that Syria had been liberated and that Bashar al-Assad had run away with his tail between his legs (and that, by coincidence, the issue would come out just days afterward). One result of that event was that I visited Damascus last month with my partner, who is Syrian and hadn’t been able to go back in nearly fifteen years. On that trip, we were lucky enough to meet up with Alia Malek, the guest editor of Aftershocks, and several of the contributors, including Rawaa, whose work I had translated.
Seeing the city made me appreciate her writing even more. As someone who remained in Syria throughout the revolution and the unimaginable repression with which it was met, she is incredibly skillful at writing about the situation without saying anything too direct, tending to focus instead on intimate or mundane details that offer an oblique glimpse of the devastation beyond. I could see how accurately she’d conjured up the texture of the city: the way people dry their freshly purchased bread so it doesn’t stick, the way public transportation crisscrosses the city, and the way the drivers shout out their destinations.
One day, Alia, my partner, and I joined Rawaa on a group hike up Mount Qasyun, which overlooks the whole city, much of which has been out of bounds for years because the former regime stuck military facilities all over it. It was a warm, slightly hazy day, and the view of the city was gorgeous; our route was dotted with vandalized vehicles and buildings and graffiti mocking the former regime. Other people had brought drums and instruments and our group stopped every so often to sing and dance. It was a special day in so many ways—and one that wouldn’t have been possible just six weeks earlier.
I thought a lot about Egypt while I was in Syria. The ripped and defaced posters of Bashar were a truly beautiful sight, and I look forward to the day when the same thing happens to the photos of the grinning idiot dictator that line the highways of Cairo. The most moving sight of all, however, was the footage of freed detainees streaming out of Saydnaya and the regime’s other prisons. What did you feel, Ahmed, when you saw those videos?
AN: It was an intense time. When they entered Halab, I feared the worst and braced myself for a horrific chain of events. But then Iran withdrew, Hezbollah left the country, and I became consumed by stories and news about prisoners being freed—I completely lost control of myself.
I was obsessively following updates about Saydnaya Prison, unable to sleep. The stories and videos documenting Syrian prisons are some of the most harrowing I’ve ever encountered, and I found myself emotionally sensitive to them. They captured my full attention.
At the same time, it was uplifting to witness what seemed like the end of the Assad family’s rule. I’m not optimistic about what comes next, but at the very least, we might have a year or two of a free Damascus. I only wish I could visit before the borders close again.
KH: Ahmed, we’re talking about very serious topics here, but for me, you’re a very funny writer, and despite its depressing subject matter, Rotten Evidence is a very funny book; I was very gratified to see that many reviewers appreciated that. So I wonder how you’ve fared in the USA in this respect. Do Americans get your jokes? Do you get theirs?
AN: I was also happy to see this reflected in the reviews—that they caught the sarcasm and humor woven into sadness and experience. Like anywhere, there are bad jokes I don’t get and good ones that resonate. Over time, I’ve found myself drawn to American Latino culture and humor, as well as other immigrant communities in the city. I guess I’ve become a West Coast person.
As for me, I try not to be funny—I aim to be a serious, respectable writer. Humor is a dangerous thing in America. You make a joke online, and the next day, you could be fired. I remember when Queen Elizabeth passed away—an African postcolonial professor made a joke about her on Twitter. An American billionaire didn’t like it, and by the next day, the university had fired her.
Plus, I feel like Americans don’t like dangerous jokes or new jokes. I go to a lot of stand-up comedy shows here, some are cool, but all of them try not to throw jokes that cross the red line. I arrived here in 2018, and I’m still hearing the same Trump jokes from 2016. It’s unbelievable that people are still laughing at them—and even more surreal to turn on the TV and see them being recycled a decade later. Sometimes, it feels like one big fascist simulation. But maybe that’s the joke—and I’m the punchline.
