Public Affairs

AUK’s Vice President for Student Affairs, Dr. Hanan Muzaffar published a translation of the book, The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. A former member of the Ibdaat Alamiya editorial board at the National Council for Culture, Arts and Literature (NCCAL), Dr. Hanan sought to translate the English book to Arabic to further expand readership to Arabic speakers.
  
The book is about the importance of walking, connecting with nature, and about the state of homelessness in the UK. In its autobiographical nature, it is both an invitation to look into one’s life and reassess one’s priorities, and in its attention to the importance of connecting with nature and on physical movement, it is useful for a new generation that is gradually losing touch with nature in their involvement with city life and technology.
 
Describing her experience in translating this book, Dr. Hanan said, “I find pleasure in translation. It opens a new level of engagement with the book where you are no longer just a reader, but also a writer, and even a character in the book. Translation challenges me to learn how to navigate between different cultures, a skill required in any vocation, but especially so in my work with students at a University that prides itself with the diversity of its students. What adds to the pleasure of translating this book, as was the case with the previous book, is the beautiful nature it describes, despite what appears at the beginning as a melancholic tale of extraordinary suffering, providing us with an end result in a beautiful description of the nature of the earth, and also of human nature.”
 
The book is available at the AUK library and in the NCCAL publications website.
  

AUK’s Vice President for Student Affairs, Dr. Hanan Muzaffar