Meeting Charles Chahwan, the Arab World's Answer to Charles Bukowski
The Lebanese author spoke to us about American literature, the Islamic State and how conservatism has shrunk the Arabic language.
Wearing thick-rimmed glasses, a hoody and a leather jacket, his head framed by a chaotic tumbleweed of hair, Charles Chahwan sat in a family-run cafe in Jounieh, a coastal town just north of Beirut.
On the table, surrounded by a Lebanese mezze, was a decent sized book. Its cover displayed an abstract painting in garish colours of a dishevelled, bearded man in underwear, standing beside a cactus and drinking a bottle of beer. A crudely drawn, upside-down stick-person with tits and a vagina also peered out from the cover's right-hand corner.
The image somewhat resembled Chahwan, perhaps after a particularly heavy night of drinking. However, though it was painted by him, it in fact pays homage to another Charles: Bukowski.
Chahwan, a 50-year-old Lebanese author, best known in his home country for Harb A-Shawari'a (Street Wars) – a collection of short stories profiling the lives of rival gunmen competing for control of Beirut's streets during the country's 1975 - 1990 civil war – is the first person to translate American author Charles Bukowski into Arabic. The book on the table is an Arabic language copy of Bukowski's 1978 novel, Women. Previously, Chahwan has translated works by other 20th century American literary figures, including Raymond Chandler and Paul Auster, as moonlight projects on the side of a career as a journalist and art and literary critic…
(To continue reading please follow the link: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/3b733k/charles-chahwan-lebanese-bukowski-203)