"Antigone" and "Night Flight"

In an article which the well-known French critic André Rousseaux published on the mission of the "Arab Publications," he wrote that world culture does not fulfill the conditions of its diffusion unless it is carried over into the Arabic language. And in fact this house aims, first of all, at securing contact between Western thought and Arab thought through the translation of masterpieces. It has indeed set about achieving its aims, issuing in an elegant production "Tristan and Iseult," or the romance of the enchanted potion, by Joseph Bédier, rendered into the language of the dad by the born poet Mr. Youssef Ghsoub; after it it has issued the play "Antigone" by the famous writer Jean Anouilh, likewise in Ghsoub's translation, and the novel "Night Flight" by Saint-Exupéry, translated by the man of letters Mr. Jamil Jabr, who some months ago brought out the biography "Mayy in Her Turbulent Life."

The Arab Publications are distinguished — besides the original artistic drawings that adorn them — by a great fidelity to the original text, together with felicity of expression and regard for the spirit of the language. These masterpieces, which had so effective an influence in the West, lose scarcely anything of their value in translation; for the Parisian house, it appears, has sought commercial competition only by way of quality, in matter and in art.