Congratulations to MS Translation and Intepreting (MSTI) student Mariam Moustafa, whose translation of The Letters of Hiragy al-Qot by Abdel Rahman El-Abnudi was published in Asymptote Journal's Translation Tuesday.
"When Nasser commissioned the construction of the Aswan High Dam—a project pivotal to his legacy of modernising Egypt—most of the migrant builders who came from Upper Egypt were farmers who were unfamiliar with industrial machinery and faced hazardous work conditions. This week’s Translation Tuesday features a set of epistolary poems that relate the story of this historic project through the correspondences of a migrant worker Hiragy and his wife Fatma. [...] In Mariam Moustafa’s translation, the emerging language of technological modernity is conjured with sensitivity, and the various registers of labour and longing are given emotional resonance."
Mariam spoke to us about her work on The Letters of Hiragy al-Qot back in February. Read the full interview with Mariam here. Congratulations, Mariam!