If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
I wrote Baghdad Central right after translating a great work by Ibrahim al-Koni, who is sort of a master of Arab fiction. In conversations with him I realized that translations have been my MFA program. If I have learned how… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
In the Green Zone in Iraq you have your radio, you have your food, you have your own electricity, your own toilets. Everything is… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
There are certainly times in history where power associates itself closely with fields that we would call the humanities, like rulers surrounding themselves with… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
A high-ranking Syrian official in DC laughed when he heard I was reading Michel Aflaq and writing this book. He said, "Let me tell… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Academic writing you have to get right. Fiction you have to get plausible. And there's a world of difference. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Noir is where the clarity of moral divisions break down, the black and whites turn into grays. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
In translation studies we talk about domestication - translation styles that make something familiar - or estrangement - translation styles that make something radically… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
You always have regime-friendly poets like Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, whose career basically spans the twentieth century. He's an anti-imperialist, friendly with the Communists, and… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Take Ezra Pound's translations of poetry from Chinese. He doesn't really know Chinese, and the very strange results that he comes up with aren't… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Arabs don't do crime fiction. I read crime fiction and I read Arabic literature, and I wish this was a novel I could have… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics. — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
Each discipline has the capacity to be interested in politics, and each would ask different questions of what politics is, what constitutes power, how… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
The more I've reflected on that and asked Iraqi friends, the more I realize that the corruption in Iraq has nothing to do with… — Elliott Colla Copy Share Image
