Mordechai’s Moustache and his Wife’s Cats, and other stories
by Shukair, Mahmoud
This book is a collection of short stories varying in length from a few pages to a few lines, plus two essays by the author on “Talking about Writing”. Translated by Issa J Boullata, Elizabeth Whitehouse, Elizabeth Winslow and Christina Phillips. “Here is the brilliantly observed clutter and comedy of everyday lives, the lives of ordinary people pushed up against an iron occupation and fighting for survival with all the comic and moving strategems of the human imagination. Shukair’s gift for absurdist satire is never more telling than in the hilarious title story which turns and pulls the leg (or the moustache) of the occupation, in the classic tradition of Palestinian satire.” – Judith Kazantzis.