Mangal Media
We publish articles, personal essays and books by writers who’s perspectives have been pushed to the periphery of English language literature by Eurocentric gatekeeping. We want to communicate our peripheral experiences to each other across colonial borders and decolonise the language with which we talk about ourselves and our communities.
You can visit our website www.mangalmedia.net, where you can subscribe to our mailing list and visit our bookstore. You can also follow us from our social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Additionally, we have a podcast available on iTunes and Spotify where you can tune in to our interviews with our diverse range of writers from the periphery. Mangal Media is also supported entirely by reader donations. If you like our work and would like to see more of it, you can visit our Patreon page and browse our pledge options.
Written by Efe Levent and illustrated by Alaa Alhassoun, Guide to Every City is a guide for a fictional city inhabited by insects. The three different species of insect in Ever City: hopsters, sloggers, and buzzies live segregated lives in their isolated neighbourhoods. The book not only presents a commentary on social divisions within urban life it also satirises orientalism in contemporary travel writing. The fictional author of the guide -Steve McCracker- is a thoroughly unrelatable hipster who genuinely believes that the rest of the world did not exist until he "discovered" it for some overdesigned travel magazine. You will laugh you will cringe, in the words of Steve: you will "never be the same again." ISBN: 9786057034809
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Written by Efe Levent and Illustrated by Alaa Alhassoun, It Happened Here is an illustrated alternative history/dark fantasy story with strong allegoric references to the struggle against tyranny in the Middle Eastern Region. It is set in an alternate history universe in which an organisation called the Global Anthropological Society [GAS] dominates all discourse on social sciences. The book is structured as a 2006 archaeological report by GAS regarding a series of prophetic inscriptions discovered in Alacahöyük over the 20th Century. The mysterious inscriptions recount the transformations of a small village and its residents in the allegorical kingdom of Howling Shadows ruled by a despot simply known as The Mad King. ISBN: 9786057034854
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A Letter Home is a deeply personal medley of emotions about Beirut, loss, and dislocation. Ayman Makarem and Hisham Rifai walk a delicate line between yearning and indignation for the home they have left behind. The beauty of this illustrated short story is its bravery in tackling irreconcilable emotions without falling into rose-tinted nostalgia or crippling cynicism. The ease and harmony with which the words and pictures blend together is a testament to the outstanding creative chemistry between Makarem and Rifai. ISBN: 9786057034847
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From the Dark is the true story of Zymolust Ravenson, a metal musician relentlessly haunted by a despotic political regime whose incompetence is matched by its brutality. In this book, Zymo details a series of arbitrary arrests by various intelligence agencies in Syria between 2005-2011 in dialogue format. It is a dark comedy of tremendous suffering whose haunting intensity and gallows humour is brought to life by Zezeah’s biting artwork. Zymo’s cynical Kafkaesque pen gives a rare historical account of the conditions that led to the Syrian revolution in 2011 and should be regarded as mandatory reading for anyone trying to understand one of the most significant events of our lifetime.
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