Maria Dadouch, "I Want Golden Eyes" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Sep 6, 2025

M. Lynx Qualey, a celebrated writer and translator, dives into the vibrant world of Maria Dadouch's new novel, *I Want Golden Eyes*. The conversation uncovers themes of cultural identity and self-discovery in a futuristic setting. They explore the struggles of translating Arabic literature for young audiences and celebrate the importance of diverse narratives. Qualey also discusses the art of making complex themes accessible to young readers through humor and engaging storytelling, all while highlighting the unique challenges of literary translation.

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ANECDOTE

How The Translator Discovered The Author

M. Lynx Qualey first encountered Maria Dadouch's work through Rania Abdelrahman at book fairs where she dug through stacks for children's books.
She met Maria at fairs multiple times and became excited about translating her varied, funny work.

INSIGHT

Education Beats Fixed Intelligence

I Want Golden Eyes features a two-tiered future society on the Comoros, with an underclass living underground and a genetically privileged elite above.
The novel argues intelligence is not fixed and education can expand a person's capacities and social horizons.

INSIGHT

Humor And Pacing Make Stories Universal

Maria Dadouch's work for young readers stands out because of its humor, strong pacing, and well-rounded characters.
Qualey emphasizes that those qualities help engage young readers while also resonating with adult audiences.

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This interview is with one of the translators, M. Lynx Qualey.

A girl must save herself and her family after discovering her society's secrets in this sci-fi novel in translation.

I Want Golden Eyes (U Texas Press, 2025) is set on the Comoros Islands at the end of this century in a futuristic city called Quartzia, the home of a genetically privileged minority called the Golden Eyes. The rest of the population, the Limiteds, live in a cavity called the Hive beneath the city. Dalia is a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in the Hive but works with her family in Quartzia at Professor Adam’s house, where she cleans, her sister grows organic food in the garden, and her deaf father works as the cook.

Because books are forbidden in the Hive, Dalia secretly borrows math texts from the professor’s library and smuggles them to read in the Hive. When Professor Adam, who is famous for engineering embryos with enhanced genes, discovers Dalia’s crime, he enslaves her for two years in his library. Dalia seeks to flee the city with her family after overhearing the professor being ordered to design genetic traits for the president’s expected baby and realizes that Golden Eyes are not privileged by nature’s selection, as she was led to believe, but by authority and money.

Maria Dadouch is a Syrian novelist, screenwriter, and children’s book author. She is the author of The Planet of Uncertainties, I Want Golden Eyes, The Heart is Behind the Rib, and other books, for which she has won several prestigious prizes.

M. Lynx Qualey is a writer, publisher, editor, translator, and speaker. She is the founder of ArabLit. Her translated works include Wild Poppies, Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands, and the Thunderbird trilogy.

Sawad Hussain  is a translator from Arabic. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing.

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