AWEJ. Special Issue on Literature No.2   October, 2014                                      Pp. 3-4 PDF ForewordIt is with great pleasure and honor that I act as a guest editor for the AWEJ’s second Special Issue on Literature. AWEJ has completed its fifth year now, and it is truly heartening to see it gaining both popularity and enhanced quality. It has been, and is being, referenced and indexed in several respectable scholarly databases and search engines, and it is widening its scope to encompass not only linguistics (theoretical as well as applied) and translation, but also literature. It goes without saying that the relationship among language, linguistics, translation and literature is both intricate and inseparable. I hope, therefore, that AWEJ continues the auspicious trend of publishing special issues on literature and translation, in addition to its core interest in language and linguistics. But the widening of scope is also geographic. This “Arab World” journal, as clearly illustrated in this special issue and in others, is reaching out to scholars from not just the Arab region, but also from all corners of the globe. This obviously, among other things, is a testimony to the journal’s international standing, a must in today’s global world.The papers published in this issue have, naturally, been subjected to – and survived – a rigorous process of refereeing and reviewing. This is why they are all, without exception, of solid scholarly quality and they all present up-to-date and engaging issues and tackle them with thoughtfulness and depth. Many of the papers are, in fact, groundbreaking.The papers speak for the themselves, and final judgment on their importance and relevance – in this postmodern, reader-oriented age – rests with the scholars who will be studying them and, hopefully, building on them to produce more thought-provoking research .It is worth noting, in particular, that many of the papers are focusing, totally or in part, on Arab authors. This is both a significant and welcome gesture. First of all, AWEJ is an “Arab World” journal, as prefaced. Secondly, it is incumbent upon professors of English like us who live and teach in the Arab World to present Arab authors to international audiences. They, more than anyone else, are qualified for the job, and Arabic literature is still under-represented at the world scene, not because it is less interesting or engaging than other world literatures (far from it), but because Arab scholars and others interested in the subject have not paid it the attention it merits.It is indeed pleasing in this very context to see two papers written on Mahmoud Darwish, one by our most noted scholar and teacher of generations of students of literature, Mohammad Shaheen. And it is equally pleasing to see two papers dealing with Leila Aboulela. More, much more, can be written on Darwish and Aboulela, and the other important authors in the rest of the excellent papers which appear in this issue.Thanks are due to Professor Khairi Al-Zubaidi and his able AWEJ team who made AWEJ what it is today, to the respected members of the editorial board of this special issue who have kindly agreed to take on the task, and to the anonymous reviewers and referees who took the time to read and reread the manuscripts.I hope that the readers of these engaging papers will enjoy reading and benefiting from them as much as I have.Ahmad Y. MajdoubehGuest EditorKuwaitOctober 2014