Download or read book The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction written by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south. Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid.
Download or read book The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction written by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring the work of 79 outstanding writers from all over the Arabic-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south, this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz's literary sons and daughters--From publisher description.
Download or read book The Magic of Turquoise written by خالد، مي and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Nirvana's near-fatal accident at sea simply a case of bad timing, or was it attempted suicide? And what was so important about an unread email that made her jump recklessly into the Mediterranean? As Leila tries to make sense of her aunt's fate, Nirvana embarks on a journey through memories and secrets. Leila guiltily questions her own fears and failures, bearing the blame of a family that curses the day she was born. Lying in a coma, Nirvana's story of choices made and roads not taken paint a colorful picture of her struggle against expectations in 1980s Egypt. The two voices are skillfully woven together to create an intricate narrative about breaking free from family tradition and the dreams that come back to haunt us. From the sunny beaches of Alexandria to the Bavarian Alps, author Mai Khaled explores the subtleties of family relationships and individual choices.
Download or read book Inside the Night written by Ibrāhīm Naṣr Allāh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I could not believe that human beings could forget so easily . . .." Love and life, sex and death, childhood and oppression are Inside the Night. Vivid moments of remembrance, disparate yet interconnected, come together to form the body-torn but not broken-of this novel. Beginning with a scene of departure, the two nameless narrators roam back and forth in time, veering from childhood mischief to a Palestinian refugee camp massacre; from ardent first love to necessary migration to an Arab oil country for employment; from spirited adolescent fantasies to the grim reality of life in an Arab country whose claims to progress are mounted on the bent backs of its people. The narrators' trials, tragedies, and rare but blinding moments of joy are shared with, among others, a mother and a father, an old Jewish woman who married a Palestinian, and an abandoned child living in a hut by himself who dissipates, through his innocence, the enveloping atmosphere of terror. A forest of interwoven tales and strange destinies, Ibrahim Nasrallah's novel carves the history of a people over half a century into fragments that are poetic, multi-sensory, and richly evocative. Inside the Night's self-contained freedom is a refreshing development in the corpus of Palestinian, and human, literature.
Download or read book The Lodging House written by Khayrī Shalabī and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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. This novel takes on epic dimensions as the narrator escorts us on a journey to this underworld.
Download or read book In the Time of Love written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love who can count its varieties, measure its force, uncover the masks it wears, or predict how it binds and divides? In this spare novel, master storyteller Naguib Mahfouz gives us some of his most memorable characters, widely familiar to Egyptians from the film version of the book: Sitt Ain, with her large house, her garden, her cats, and her familiar umbrella, strong and active, mother of the neighborhood; her son Izzat, so different from her, emotional and unsure of his way; and the friends of his childhood, Sayyida, Hamdoun, and Badriya, all their lives entangled and shaped over many years by the encounter of commitment, ambition, treachery, and above all love. This is a story in and of twentieth-century Egypt, which can be read on more than one level. The neighborhood and the motifs may be familiar, but they combine to tell a new and intriguing tale, with an unexpected outcome.
Download or read book Being Abbas el Abd written by Ahmed Alaidy and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009-10-15 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The millennial generation's most celebrated literary achievement." Al-Ahram Weekly "The first glimmer of hope for a true fictional renaissance an instantly rewarding read embraced by an unprecedented range of literary figures" The Daily Star "What is madness?" asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy's jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city's pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency. But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there's Abbas, the narrator's best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, theres the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?
Download or read book The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories written by Nadezda Obradovic and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2002-12-03 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty-four powerful stories that inform, entertain, and illuminate from the best emerging and award-winning African writers working today, including nine new stories that detail struggles with the legacy of colonialism, countries torn apart by civil war, and the growing AIDS epidemic. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book The Loved Ones written by ممدوح، عالية and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friends gather at the bedside of Suhaila, who lies in a coma in a Paris hospital, and tell stories that bring her alive.
Download or read book The Crane written by Halim Barakat and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Crane, the renowned Syro-Lebanese author and sociologist Halim Barakat creates a narrator who looks back wistfully on a childhood in a small village of Syria, with the image of flying cranes and in particular one wounded bird as a continuing symbol of his emotions toward the past and its impact upon his life. The narrator then travels to the United States, and, with his wife, goes through the experiences of American college life in the 1960s. He describes his participation in the political protests during that fraught decade, and goes on to depict his later life in the American capital of Washington DC and its surroundings. The link between narrator and author is clearly a close one, and yet the careful way in which the narrative's sequence is constructed allows the reader to invoke the world of the imagination in interpreting this nostalgic account of a Middle Eastern childhood and its international aftermath.
Download or read book Arabic Short Stories written by and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-12-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects twenty-four short stories by Arabic authors such as Bahaa Taher, Alifa Rifaat, and Edward El-Kharrat, which explore such themes as prostitution, adultery, and arranged marriage.
Download or read book Magic of Turquoise written by Mai Khaled and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-10 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was Nirvanas near-fatal accident at sea simply a case of bad timing, or was it attempted suicide? And what was so important about an unread email that made her jump recklessly into the Mediterranean? As Leila tries to make sense of her aunts fate, Nirvana embarks on a journey through memories and secrets. Leila guiltily questions her own fears and failures, bearing the blame of a family that curses the day she was born. Lying in a coma, Nirvanas story of choices made and roads not taken paint a colorful picture of her struggle against expectations in 1980s Egypt. The two narratives are skillfully woven together to create an intricate story about breaking free from family tradition and the dreams that come back to haunt us. From the sunny beaches of Alexandria to the Bavarian Alps, author Mai Khaled explores the subtleties of family relationships and individual choices.
Download or read book Night Horses The Desert written by Robert Irwin and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Arabic literature is “a joy to read. . . . a journey through eleven centuries of a lost world, with a surprise on almost every page” (Financial Times). Spanning the fifth to the sixteenth centuries, from Afghanistan to Spain, Night & Horses & The Desert includes translated extracts from all the major classics in an invaluable introduction to the subject of classical Arabic literature. Robert Irwin has selected a wide range of poetry and prose in translation, from the most important and typical texts to the very obscure. Alongside the extracts, Irwin’s copious commentary and notes provide an explanatory history of the subject. What were the various genres and to what extent were they constrained by rules? What were the canons of traditional Arabic literary criticism? How were Arabic prose and poetry recited and written down? Irwin explores the literary environments of the desert, salon, mosque, and bookshop and provides brief biographies of the caliphs, princesses, warriors, scribes, dandies, and mystics who created such a rich and diverse literary culture. Night & Horses & The Desert gives western readers a unique taste of the sheer vitality and depth of the medieval Arab past. “Superb . . . . a revelation.” —The Washington Post “[A] treasure-house of a book. . . . Unequaled for scholarship and entertainment.” —The Independent
Download or read book Iraq s Modern Arabic Literature written by Salih J. Altoma and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering 60 years of materials, this bibliography cites translations, studies, and other writings, which represent Iraq's national literature, including recent works of numerous Iraqi writers living in Western exile. The volume serves as a guide to three interrelated data: o Translations that have appeared since 1950, as books or as individual items (poems, short stories, novel extracts, plays, diaries) in print-and non-print publications in Iraq and other Arab and English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. o Relevant studies and other secondary sources including selected reviews and author interviews, which cover Iraqi literature and writers. o The scope of displacement or dispersion of Iraqi writers, artists, and other intellectuals who have been uprooted and are now living in exile in Arab or other Western countries. By drawing attention to a largely overlooked but relevant and extensive literature accessible in English, this first of its kind book will serve as an invaluable guide to students of contemporary Iraq, modern Arabic literature, and other fields such as women's studies, postcolonial studies, third world literature, American-Arab/Muslim Relations, and Diaspora studies.
Download or read book Voices of the Lost written by Hoda Barakat and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, this novel weaves together a series of devastating confessions about life in contemporary Arab society This profound and disturbing novel by acclaimed Lebanese author Hoda Barakat tells the story of characters living on the periphery, battling with poverty, and fighting their own demons. Set in an unnamed, war-torn country, the novel consists of six letters—all intercepted by unintended recipients, all of whom are compelled to write their own letters of confession. An undocumented immigrant writes his former lover. A woman in a hotel writes a man from her past. An escaped torturer recounts his crimes to his mother. A former prostitute writes to her brother. A young queer man recounts to his estranged father his partner’s battle with AIDS. Finally, the mailman leaves his own note. Incisive, troubling and deeply human, this is an urgent story of lives intimately woven together in a society that is tearing itself apart.
Download or read book As Doha Said written by طاهر، بهاء، and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Egypt a new era has dawned, but the dawn has taken an ominous turn. President Gamal Abdel Nasser has just proclaimed the first in a series of nationalization decrees, the stock exchange has shut down, and its parking attendant, Sayyid, is staring at penury. Across the street, the office of the Ministry's Supervisory Board of Administrative Organization is engulfed in an eerie silence, and the narrator, one of the two remaining fulltime occupants of that nearly defunct government office, has fallen desperately in love with the other, Doha-forceful, erudite, and, a complete enigma. The narrator helps Sayyid find a job in the janitorial staff of the Ministry and then watches in amazement as he pursues avenues for career advancement and political participation that would never have been open to him before the Revolution, avenues that the narrator himself has lost interest in. And soon he is thrown much closer together with Doha: a ministerial study grant comes through that enables them to attend an administrative training program in Rome, and there Doha reveals to him other aspects of her mysterious nature, including a spiritual bond to the Egyptian goddess Aset, before suddenly and inexplicably cutting him adrift. As the narrator struggles with rejection, we glimpse some of the ills of the post-revolutionary order: suppression of freedoms, corruption, ideological witch hunts, a disastrous intervention in Yemen. But As Doha Said is less about a revolution's dreams turned sour than about awakening. A sophisticated, richly textured novel, it combines a realistic weft of events and deftly depicted characters that undergo subtle mutations-and, indeed, amputations-with a warp of mythical and historical iconography, a weave that allows the author to explore such themes as apathy and despair, courage and self-sacrifice, ambition and temptation, disillusionment and political faith, and, above all, commitment and betrayal, and to lift them to a universal, almost metaphysical level.
Download or read book A Certain Woman written by Hala El Badry and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this prize-winning novel, Nahid is a woman determined to go on a journey of self discovery and understanding. As we accompany her in her sometimes delirious, sometimes lucid journey, we are given rare glimpses of the inner thoughts and feelings of a woman confronting questions of love and intimacy within and outside of marriage. It is a story of one woman's quest for liberation, not from a repressive society or a male-dominated world that is easy and has been done many times before but from self-imposed taboos that inhibit a woman's ability to find fulfillment and to confront the many imponderables surrounding sexuality, desire, and love. Stuck by conscious choice to keep up the genteel appearances of her middle-class family in a loveless marriage to Mustafa, the forty-something Nahid finds love and sex with novelist and journalist Omar himself trapped in a loveless, but not sexless, marriage to Maggie. Although their love story is at the very heart of the novel, we are given broad glimpses of the larger picture of the world outside through Nahid's work as an archaeologist and Omar's as a journalist. The novel was well received by women readers, critics, and reviewers and by a majority of the male audience, while a vociferous minority of male critics felt scandalized by it, finding it unseemly that such issues should be raised by a woman. Now English readers can judge for themselves.
