{"id":358926,"date":"2023-10-15T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2023-10-15T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/brazilian-literature-in-arabic-pages\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T17:02:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T20:02:52","slug":"brazilian-literature-in-arabic-pages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/brazilian-literature-in-arabic-pages\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian literature in Arabic pages"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 Egypt\u2019s<\/strong> Al Arabi Publishing and Distributing general manager, Sherif Bakr, wants to take Brazilian author Raphael Montes to Egypt. The company<\/a>, which he runs alongside his sister and CEO, Ranya Bakr, is a family business established 48 years ago that publishes several books by Brazilian authors<\/strong> in the Arab country, including crime novels by Raphael Montes, who has a legion of fans. Adriana Lisboa and Patr\u00edcia Mello are other authors the publishing house distributes in Arabic and also have captive readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some literary and commercial work, and we started a huge collection of crime novels from all over the world three years ago because we discovered we apparently don\u00b4t have crime authors in the Arab world, very few and not so good. And I think one of the reasons is we have enough crime in the news, so nobody can beat them if they start writing,\u201d he said. Bakr said another reason Brazilian books are translated into Arabic is the desire of Egyptian readers to learn more about Brazil and Latin America.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Ana Maria Machado is one of the authors published by the Egyptian company<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen you talk about Brazil, people think of football, mainly, maybe coffee, the Amazon, beautiful girls, rainforest, Carnival. These are, like, maybe, the stereotypes and what we think of Brazil,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, we tried to introduce more the everyday life, the real life, the people in that modern life, what people do, what they feel, it is always reflected in the books,\u201d he said. Bakr also said there are more similarities between Brazil and Egypt than one could imagine. \u201cI always say that in many of these books, apart from the lots of drinking we don\u00b4t have, you could change many names and put Arabic names, and the story would fit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The first contacts with works by Latin American authors, mainly Brazilians, were bridged by a German company representing them. It was from that contact Al Arabi<\/strong> got to know the work of Adriana Lisboa (Symphony in White<\/em> [Sinfonia em Branco<\/em>], 2013). The list of Brazilians in Al Arabi\u2019s portfolio includes Patr\u00edcia Melo, Ana Maria Machado, Ant\u00f4nio Xerxenesky, Tatiana Salem Levy, Leonardo Garzaro<\/strong>, and Raphael Montes<\/strong>, the latter with five books published in Egypt.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s primary market is Egypt, and Saudi Arabia is its second largest. Al Arabi also sells and operates throughout the Arab world. Starting this month, Bakr will participate in fairs and meetings in Frankfurt (Germany), Sharjah (UAE), Morocco, and Algeria, to name a few destinations. The company\u2019s catalog has 2,500 works, most of them by Arab authors, some of them award-winning, and on topics that range from political science to modern history. Like other publishers, not all books are in stock but could be reprinted according to demand.<\/p>\n

The process of publishing Brazilian books, said Bakr, is not simple. It is costly because there are few Portuguese-Arabic translators. Also, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil is different from Portugal\u2019s. He explained in Brazil, there are complexities in words and dialogues, including between Brazilian cities, which makes the process as slow as it is expensive. For this reason, translation support programs are essential to help publishers take books by local writers to other countries.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges, Al Arabi\u2019s ambition remains. Ranya Bakr visited S\u00e3o Paulo last year, and Sherif Bakr was at the Rio de Janeiro Book Biennial in September, where he participated in business rounds and visited the show\u2019s exhibition pavilion. Bakr knows Brazil beyond the stereotypes about the country.<\/p>\n

In addition to hoping for a visit by Raphael Montes, he hopes to soon have more books by Brazilians on the shelves of Arab bookstores and internet marketplaces, as Al Arabi also sells through e-commerce and e-book versions, in addition to having some audiobook projects.<\/p>\n

I went to Rio, and after the discussions and the market I\u2019ve seen, I\u00b4m going now to Frankfurt, and I will definitely add more [books]. However, the process takes time to find the right book, the negotiations, the emails, and the contract, and [after that] start the translation. So it\u00b4s a long process, it\u2019s on its way, and I\u00b4m sure after these visits, there will be more and more Brazilian authors on our list, and more diversified authors as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Contact<\/strong><\/p>\n

Al Arabi Publishing and Distributing
\n60 El Kasr EL Aini St, 11451, Cairo, Egypt.
\nPhone: (+202) 27954529\/ (+202) 27921943
\nFax: (+2) 27947566
\nhttp:\/\/alarabipublishing.com.eg<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by El\u00fasio Brasileiro<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Egypt\u2019s Al Arabi Publishing and Distributing company was established 48 years ago by the current owners\u2019 parents. The two siblings found in Brazilian books a way of bringing to their readers the reality of a society far from their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2317,"featured_media":356788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[421,6808,4143,31017,45994,10587,1824,16173,26760,20360,16202,20365],"class_list":{"0":"post-358926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business-opportunities","8":"tag-egypt","9":"tag-arabe-en-2","10":"tag-arabic","11":"tag-authors","12":"tag-autores","13":"tag-brasileiros-ar-2","14":"tag-brazilian","15":"tag-editora","16":"tag-egito-en-2","17":"tag-leitores","18":"tag-publisher","19":"tag-readers"},"wps_subtitle":"Egypt\u2019s Al Arabi Publishing and Distributing company was established 48 years ago by the current owners\u2019 parents. The two siblings found in Brazilian books a way of bringing to their readers the reality of a society far from their own.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}