# Jonathan Wright (translator)

Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and literary translator.

## Biography

Wright was born in Andover, Hampshire, and spent his childhood in Canada, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Germany. He attended Packwood Haugh School from 1966 to 1967 and Shrewsbury School from 1967 to 1971. He studied Arabic, Turkish and Islamic civilisation at St John's College, Oxford. He joined Reuters news agency in 1980 as a correspondent, and has been based in the Middle East for most of the last three decades. He has served as Reuters' Cairo bureau chief, and he has lived and worked throughout the region, including in Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Tunisia and the Arabian Gulf region. From 1997 to 2003, he was based in Washington, DC, covering US foreign policy for Reuters. For two years until the autumn of 2011 Wright was editor of the Arab Media & Society Journal, published by the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo.

## Translations

| Year | Title | Author | Original Title | Notes |
| 2008 | Taxi | Khaled al-Khamissi | taksi ḥawadīt ʾil-mašawīr | His first major work, published by Aflame Books in 2008 republished by Bloomsbury Qatar in 2012 |
| 2009 | The Madman of Freedom Square | Hassan Blasim | majnūn sāḥat ʾal-ḥurriyya | A collection of short stories longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2010 |
| 2011 | On the State of Egypt: What Caused the Revolution | Alaa Al-Aswany | | A collection of political essays |
| 2012 | Judgment Day | Rasha al Ameer | yawm ʾad-dīn | |
| 2012 | Life on Hold | Fahd al-Ateeq | kāʾin muʾajjal | |
| 2012 | Azazeel | Youssef Ziedan | ʿazāzīl | Won the Arabic Booker prize in 2009. Won the 2013 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation |
| 2013 | The Iraqi Christ | Hassan Blasim | ʾal-masīḥ ʾal-ʿirāqī | Won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014 |
| 2013 | Whatever Happened to the Egyptian Revolution? | Galal Amin | māḏā ḥadaṯa laṯ-ṯawra ʾal-miṣriyya? | |
| 2014 | Land of No Rain | Amjad Nasser | ḥaiṯu lā tasquṭ ʾal-ʾamṭār | Commended (runner-up) by the judges of the 2015 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation |
| 2014 | Temple Bar | Bahaa Abdelmegid | khammārat al-maʿbad | |
| 2015 | The Bamboo Stalk | Saud Alsanousi | sāq al-bāmbū | Won the Arabic Booker prize in 2013 Won the 2016 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation |
| 2015 | Sleepwalkers | Sa'd Makkawi | ʾas-sāʾirūn niyāman | Awaiting publication |
| 2016 | The Televangelist | Ibrahim Eissa | mawlānā | |
| 2016 | The Longing of the Dervish | Hammour Ziada | shawq al-darwīsh | Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Prize |
| 2018 | Critique of Religious Discourse | Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd | naqd al-khitāb al-dīnī | |
| 2018 | Frankenstein in Baghdad | Ahmed Saadawi | Frankishtayn fī Baghdād | Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize Won the Arabic Booker prize in 2014 |
| 2019 | Jokes for the Gunmen | Mazen Maarouf | Nukāt lil-Musallahīn | Winner of the Multaqa Prize for Arabic Short Stories Longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize |
| 2019 | The Book of Collateral Damage | Sinan Antoon | Fihris | Won second prize in the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding in 2020 |
| 2020 | The Egyptian Assassin | Ezzedine Choukri Fishere | Abu ʿUmar al-Misrī | |
| 2020 | God 99 | Hassan Blasim | Allāh 99 | Nominated for the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation in 2021 |
| 2021 | Here Is A Body | Basma Abdel Aziz | Huna Badan |
| 2023 | The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody | Ahmed Taibaoui | Ikhifaa' al-Sayyid La Ahad | Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Prize> |

## Kidnapping and escape

On 29 August 1984, while on a reporting assignment for Reuters in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, Wright was detained and held hostage by the Palestinian splinter group led by Abu Nidal in a part of the Lebanon hostage crisis. The group wanted to exchange him for members imprisoned in Britain for shooting the Israeli ambassador, Shlomo Argov, in London in June 1982. Wright spent about one week in a small room in a country house near the town of Barr Elias and was then moved to a large villa near the Chouf mountain town of Bhamdoun, above Beirut. In the early hours of 16 September 1984, Wright escaped from captivity by removing the plank of wood covering a ventilation hole and crawling through the hole, which was about 10 feet above floor level. He reached the hole by dismantling his metal bedstead and using the frame as a ladder. Once outside, he walked along the Beirut-Damascus highway until he reached a checkpoint manned by the mainly Druze Muslim Progressive Socialist Party. The party militia held him incommunicado at Aley police station until 19 September, when party leader Walid Jumblatt told his aides to drive him to the Reuters office in Beirut. Wright has written a detailed account of his kidnapping.