Lenos

The Lenos Verlag is a publishing house established in 1970 in Basel. The focal points of the book program include Swiss literature, Arabic literature and current non-fiction books on politics and society. Known Swiss authors of the Lenos Verlag are: Guido Bachmann, Nicolas Bouvier, Blaise Cendrars, Jacques Chessex, Christoph Geiser, Flori Koechlin, Ella Maillart, Alice Rivaz, Hans Saner, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Gerold Späth and Yvette Z'Graggen. Important Arab authors include: Alaa al - Aswany ( The Yacoubian Building ), Muhammad al- Bissati, Emil Habibi, Ghassan Kanafani, Ibrahim al -Koni, Abdalrachman Munif, Emily Nasrallah, Tajjib Salich and Habib Selmi as well as the Sumaya Farhat Naser peace mediator.

History

In the first years of its existence, the focus of the publishing program was on German-language fiction from Switzerland. In addition, selected non-fiction books published on socio-political issues and the Middle East conflict. 1979 a gas explosion devastated the publishing home and destroyed infrastructure and book stock. First literary titles from the Arab world Ghassan Kanafani was in 1983 The land of sad oranges. The series " Arabic Literature in Lenos Verlag" now has over one hundred titles from eleven countries and is the most comprehensive library of modern Arabic Fiction in German linguistic fields, the publisher received the 1993 Literary Prize of the city of Basel.