Desirée Custers is a writer, researcher, and translator of Arabic literature. Her translations from Arabic to Dutch have appeared in poetry magazines and cultural platforms in Belgium, and in 2019 she translated the novel Brusselse Vrouwen (‘Women of Brussels’) by the Palestinian author Nisma Alaklouk. For her masters’ degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Desiree submitted a thesis on Arabic science fiction with the title Arabic science fiction as vehicle for criticism, in which she focused on the novel Harb al-Kalb al-Thaniyyah (‘Dog War II’, 2018) by Palestinian/Jordanian author Ibrahim Nasrallah. The thesis was short-listed for the Flemish thesis prize in 2019. Desiree writes about Arab sci-fi and literary and cultural topics on her bi-lingual Arabic/English blog, issabramil.com. She also holds an M.A. in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Desirée Custers
