The book the Frankfurt Book Fair doesn’t want you to read
In 1980, Edward Said approached a New York publisher and suggested that they translate and publish the work of the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. The publisher declined. “When I inquired why,” Said later wrote, “I was told (with no detectable irony) that Arabic was a controversial language.” Eight years later, Mahfouz would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.