OLIVIA SNAIJE /// Keep Your Eye on the Wall

Olivia Snaije and I begin this conversation by discussing her multi-faceted work of journalist, editor and translator. We then converse more specifically about the book she co-edited with Mitchell Albert, Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes (Saqi Books, 2014). This book gathers a series of essays and photographic work curated around the question of the Apartheid Wall in Palestine (see below). We evoke most of its chapters, one by one, and extend the question raised by Malu Halasa about the problematic aestheticization of the Wall to the very exercise of photographing it.

Olivia Snaije is a journalist and editor based in Paris who writes about the Middle East, multiculturalism, translation, literature, and graphic novels. She co-edited with Mitchell Albert the book Keep Your Eye on the Wall, Palestinian Landscapes which was published in English and French in 2013 and translated Lamia Ziadé’s graphic novel Bye Bye Babylon into English from the original French.

WEBSITES:

– https://twitter.com/oliviasnaije
– http://www.saqibooks.co.uk/book/eye-wall-2/

REFERENCE ARTICLE:

– Olivia Snaije, “Arabic and Hebrew: The Politics of Literary Translation” (March 1, 2011)

REFERENCE BOOKS:

– Olivia Snaije and Mitchell Albert (eds), Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes, Saqi Books, 2013.
– Olivia Snaije and Charlotte Puckette, The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, DK, 2007
– Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape, Scribner, 2008.

REFERENCE DOCUMENTS:

– All following images are excerpts from Olivia Snaije and Mitchell Albert (eds), Keep Your Eye on the Wall: Palestinian Landscapes, Saqi Books, 2013:

Photograph by Noel Jabbour:

Photograph by Raed Bawayah:
Photograph by Kai Wiedenhöfer:

Artwork by Raeda Saadeh:

Artwork by Steve Sabella:

Photograph by Rula Halawani: