This work features twelve stories by contemporary masters from Morocco to Iraq. The twelve stories collected here are by leading authors of the short story form in the Middle East today. In addition to works by writers already well-known in the West such as “Idwar al-Kharrat”, “Fuad al-Takarli” and Nobel Prize-winning “Naguib Mahfouz”, key authors […]
So Vast the Prison is the double-threaded story of a modern, educated Algerian woman existing in a man’s society, and, not surprisingly, living a life of contradictions. Djebar, too, tackles cross-cultural issues just by writing in French of an Arab society (the actual act of writing contrasting with the strong oral traditions of the indigenous […]
Thought by many Syrians to be the most influential novel of its time, this first novel of Muhammad Kamil al-Khatib is a riveting examination of Syrian political and social life during the 1980s. With a multi-voiced narration carried, like a river, from one voice to another, al-Khatib paints concise, vivid portraits of a disparate group […]
Mornings in Jenin is a multi-generational story about a Palestinian family. Forcibly removed from the olive-farming village of Ein Hod by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948, the Abulhejos are displaced to live in canvas tents in the Jenin refugee camp. We follow the Abulhejo family as they live through a half century […]
Alia Mamadouh reconstructs the society of Baghdad in the 1940s and 1950s through the eyes of 10-year-old Huda, a precocious tomboy highly perceptive of the complex web of her family’s relationships.
Tariq Ali tells us the story of the aftermath of the fall of Granada by narrating a family sage of those who tried to survive after the collapse of their world. Particularly deft at evoking what life must have been like for those doomed inhabitants, besieged on all sides by intolerant Christendom.
It’s bustling 1960s Beirut, and our young protagonist spends his days in his father and uncle’s bakery, admiring the female customers, observing the many colourful characters, and listening in on fascinating grown-up conversations about everything from jaundice to the occult. The rest of the time he’s off with his friends, learning to smoke and spying […]
In a village in Lebanon, an old man prepares for his final journey. But right to the end he remains defiant – against his age, his failing body and the whims of memory; against the idle life his children try to impose on him; and, against their indifference, cruelty and greed. Fear arises and subsides […]
In a desperate attempt to save his mother and two sisters from famine and disease, a young man leaves his native village in Sudan and sets out alone to seek work in the city. This is the beginning of Hamza’s long journey. Hunger and destitution lead him ever farther from his home: first from Sudan […]