Keen On

Jordan Elgrably, the Morrocan-French editor of the Markaz Review, wants us to read complex stories about the Middle East and North Africa that our simplistic newspaper headlines mostly ignore. In his new anthology, Stories from the Center of the World, Elgrably includes short stories from writers as diverse as Leila Aboulela, Amany Kamal Eldinn and Hanif Kureishi that reflect the rich mosaic of life in the region. Elgrably’s anthology offers a refreshing alternative to the standard apocalyptic slant of most conversations in Western media about the Middle East and North Africa.Jordan Elgrably is the Editor in Chief of The Markaz Review. For many years he worked in Los Angeles where he was a social entrepreneur, producer & the founding director of the former Levantine Cultural Center (est. 2001), renamed The Markaz, Arts Center for the Greater Middle East. The Markaz closed on May 31, 2020 (as reported in the Los Angeles Times) but returned in September 2020 as The Markaz Review. A former curator of public