A young man’s dreams for a better future as a student in the Teachers’ Institute are shattered after he assaults one of his instructors for discriminating against him. From then on, he begins his descent into the underworld. Penniless, he seeks refuge in Wikalat ‘Atiya, a historic but now completely run-down caravanserai that has become […]
These fascinating and diverse stories reflect the everyday concerns of Palestinians living under occupation. Writers who were children during the first intifada appear alongside those who remember the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. In this volume, Palestinian women offer compassionate, often critical, insight into their society in times of hardship and turmoil, yet look […]
Children are living in appalling conditions in Lebanon since the outbreak of war in July 2006. This collection of writing and drawings ? from some of the world’s leading authors and artists ? is for them. The contributors include: Etel Adnan, Adonis, Paul Auster, Hoda Barakat, John Berger, Abbas Beydoun, Raymond Briggs, Carmen Callil, John […]
This anthology of Lebanese women fiction writers offers a captivating mix of stories by published authors with established reputations alongside the narratives of younger women whose voices explore new terrain. From the crippling effects of the civil war in past decades, through longing for romantic adventures in a conservative society, to the functioning of families […]
This is a novel of an Egyptian young woman’s coming of age in a time and place of tumult. “Blue Aubergine” tells the story of a young Egyptian woman, born in 1967, growing up in the wake of Egypt’s defeat of that year, and maturing into womanhood against the social and political upheavals Egypt experienced […]
An inventory of the General Security headquarters in central Baghdad reveals an obscure manuscript. Written by a young man in detention, the prose moves from prison life, to adolescent memories, to frightening hallucinations, and what emerges is a portrait of life in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In the tradition of Kafka’s “The Trial” or Orwell’s “1984, […]
In the tradition of magical-realism, author Ibrahim Abdel Megid crafts a tale steeped in symbolism. Writing in a shimmering lyrical style he brings alive the dreams, customs, and everyday concerns of people living in historic obscurity on the fringe of the glitzy, petrodollar kingdoms of the Middle East. The tale begins on a worksite in […]
In a small town in the Nile Delta, where two wars and sweeping political change have dramatically altered the economic, social, and power structures of the small community, lives Houda the deaf and mute butcher’s apprentice. His voicelessness is compensated for by two all-seeing eyes that pierce the most intimate and secret details of the […]
Winner of the 2001 Silver Award for Fiction: Translation from ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year. “‘Who tore down the picture?’ That is the whole story, from A to Z. They wanted to know who tore down the picture.” So opens Rashid Al-Daif’s This Side of Innocence, the story of one man’s run-in with the […]
Learning English focusses on a traumatic event in the narrator’s life, the death of his father. Rashid has a harder time than most might have when that happens because of unusual additional circumstances surrounding it — most notably the way he learns about his father’s death: sitting in a Beirut caf