Yusuf is an inveterate observer of his native Beirut, that city of whores and city of dames , watching its bustle from a bar stool. But when one of his most promising students shows him several unfinished stories, Yusuf finds his life s drift is about to hit rough water. The first prose work by […]
A blind man searches for his wife in the dark; a missing boy roams the desert; a djinn appears out of a human skull; a sick nomad returns to his home town; a brother and sister arrive in an unfamiliar town at the stroke of midnight… Author Samantha Herron has spent time living with a […]
Outside of time, the legendary queen Sheherazade tells a little girl a story that has happened, and is yet to happen. Dreams of Maryam Tair brings readers to a Casablanca of myth and metaphor, of curses, witches, djinns and demons. But it is also a very present-day Casablanca: a raw, pitiless landscape of crumbling urbanism […]
Captain Murad is busy planning for the Afterlife. He dreams of a grand, sunlit mausoleum on the banks of the Nile. To realize his pharaonic folly, the retired captain kindles an unlikely romance between Hazem, a feckless architect longing for immortality, and Asma, an impoverished single mother who strives for a better life for her […]
If you are unable to protect yourself from a tyrant, how can you protect your family? And how does a proud man live with that knowledge? The Weight of a Mustard Seed is the intimate, startling and gripping account of the slow destruction of a man, his family and his country. General Kamel Sachet was […]
On June 13, 1974, Shagara, a low-level employee at the Alexandria shipyard, is charged with taking workers to cheer for the morcade of Egyptian President Sadat and his guest President Nixon. Instructed to pay each worker half a pound at the end of Nixon’s visit., Shagara pays them half that, spares them the festivities, and […]
A fascinating window into a different culture – and an inspiring and unforgettable universal story of strength and self-reliance – from an extraordinary wise and lyrical new literary voice. Coming of age in the 1950s, seventeen-year-old Noora is unlike other women of the sun-battered mountains at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Though she shares […]
Samia is running away from the Egyptian political police with her husband Muhammad and his comrade Rafiq. The story of their escape from person reflects theri whole society. The owner of the house in which the fugitives shelter cannot be trusted and he becomes the focus of Samia’s fear. Samia’s sense of danger they are […]
Bored housewives, kept in seclusion, smuggling in Harlequin romances. Young men transformed from thugs in jeans and tee-shirts into Islamic militants in beards and flowing white robes. A baker unwittingly caught in a web of intrigue, an imam whose faith is tested by urban corruption, a lonely divorcee accused of prostitution – all take part […]
“This is a tale of women suffering under harsh Islamic rule, but it could be about women anywhere there is cruelty and bullying. This novel is unlike any other I have read, more like a poem or a lamenting ballad, with something hypnotic about it, with its rhythmic, keening language, returning again and again to […]