Anubis
29 January '14
Fantastic mythology becomes universal, specific, and modern in Anubis. The Libyan Tuareg author Ibrahim al-Koni has used Tuareg folklore about Anubis, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, to craft a novel that is both a lyrical evocation of the desert’s beauty and a chilling narrative in which thirst, incest, patricide, animal metamorphosis, and human […]
Hayati, My Life
29 January '14
This novel gives voice to the experiences of three generations of Palestinian women whose lives are torn apart by war, rape, dispossession and poverty. Samya lives in Palestine of the 1920s, Asia experiences the massacre of Deir Assin, and Maryam survives war and diaspora.
Demented Dance, The
29 January '14
Madinah
29 January '14
Conjuring the unpredictability of city life in the Middle East, this compilation of stories reveals the metropolis itself through a vibrant assortment of personalities. From the celebrated author collecting an award in the city that exiled him decades before to the forlorn lover waiting at a rendezvous as government officials raid nearby shops, this anthology […]
Lamp of Umm Hashim and other stories, The
29 January '14
Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and – of course – Nagulb Mahfouz, Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who, midway through the last century, under the influence of Western literature, began to practice genres of creative writing […]
Tales from Dayrut
29 January '14
This collection of fourteen connected stories and a novella, From the Secret History of Numan Abdel Hafez, takes us deep into Upper Egypt and the village of Dayrut al-Sharif. To depict a world renowned for its poverty, ignorance, vendettas, and implacable code of honor, Mohamed Mustagab deploys the black humor and Swiftian sarcasm of the […]
Prairies of Fever
29 January '14
Muhammad Hammad is a young teacher hired, like hundreds of others from all over the Arab world, to teach in a remote part of the Arabian Peninsula. This novel recounts his harrowing struggle to retain any sense of identity in the bleak and alienating places he finds himself in.
I loved you for your voice
29 January '14
This is the story of the Arab world’s greatest and most popular singer, Umm Kalthoum, told through the eyes of the poet Ahmad Rami, who wrote her lyrics and loved her all his life in vain. Spanning over five decades in the history of modern Egypt, this passionate tale of love and longing provides a […]