‘People have become corrupt everywhere. You can search in vain for Islam, or a devout Muslim. They no longer exist.’ Kafr El Teen is a beautiful, sleepy village on the banks of the Nile. Yet at its heart it is tyrannical and corrupt. The Mayor, Sheikh Hamzawi of the mosque, and the Chief of the […]
This spellbinding novel narrates the many-layered recollections of a hallucinating protagonist in devastated Beirut. The desolate, almost surreal, urban landscape is enriched by the unfolding of family sagas of Niqula Mitri and of his beloved Shamsa, the Kurdish maid. Mitri reminisces about his Egyptians mother and father who came back to settle in Beirut after […]
This novel takes as its subject one of Arab and Islamic history’s most perplexing figures, al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah (“the ruler by order of God”), the Fatimid caliph who ruled Egypt during the tenth century and whose career was a direct reflection of both the tensions within the Islamic dominions as a whole and of the […]
The town has lost its famed falafel king, but the Dadon family have also lost a father and husband. Living with the daily threat of Katyusha missiles from neighbouring Lebanon, and struggling to survive amid the rubble of their lives, Simona and her three children each find their own way of coping with their grief, […]
‘All the men I did get to know, every single man of them, has filled me with but one desire: to lift my hand and bring it smashing down on his face. But because I am a woman I have never had the courage to lift my hand. And because I am a prostitute, I […]
In these two short novels, Bahaa Abdel Meguid displays the impressive range of his narrative imagination. Set in the lower-class Cairo district of Shubra, Saint Theresa tells the story of two young women, Budour and Sawsan, childhood friend who come of age following the 1967 war. Budour marries a humble tailor named Girgis, but begins […]
Interweaving the narratives of three Palestinians and relating their successive uprootings, this novel allows the reader to glimpse the joy and despair of those whose lives are rooted in exile and resistance.
“Qatari Voices” is the first anthology that represents 25 young creative Qatari authors. The anthology reflects concerns and aspirations of the young Qatari generation illustrated in essays and stories. They are intimate glimpses of old reminiscence and longing to the simple past, as well as photos that show concerns of a challenging present and aspirations […]