Ali al-Muqri

Ali al-Muqri (Arabic: علي المقري) (born in Taiz) is a Yemeni novelist and writer. Two of his novels - Black Taste, Black Odour and The Handsome Jew - have been long-listed for the Arab Booker Prize. He also received a special commendation from the jury of the 2015 French Prize for Arabic Literature, for his novel Ḥurma (Femme interdite), translated into French by Khaled Osman and Ola Mehanna.

Al-Muqri's work has been published in Banipal magazine, The New York Times, and in French newspaper La Libération. In 1997, he became editor-in-chief of Al-Ḥikmah, the journal of the Yemeni Writers Association. He later served as the editor of literary journal Ǧaymān. In 2015, he fled to Paris after receiving death threats for writing sexually charged books.

List of publications

Nāfiḏat lil-ğasad (A Window into the Body) (1987) Tarmīmāt (Restorations) (1999; 2000) Yaḥdat fī al-nasī'ān (It Comes with Forgetfulness) (2003) al-Khamr wa-al-nabīdh fī al-islām (Wine and Nabīd in Islam) (2007) Ṭaʿm aswad…Rā’iḥah sawdā’ (Black Taste, Black Odour) (2008) Al-Yahūdī al-Ḥālī (The Handsome Jew) (2009) - translated into French as Le Beau Juif (2011), and into Italian as Il Bell’Ebreo (2012) Ḥurmah (Woman) (2012) - translated into French as La Femme Interdite (2015), in English as Hurma (2015), and in Italian as Donna proibita (2021) Bukhūr 'Adanī (Adeni Incense) (2014)