Finalist for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction“A lyrical, extremely rich narrative of loss, memory, and trauma.” — STARRED review, Kirkus ReviewsAn extraordinary account of survival in Syria’s most notorious military prisons that is written with “brutal clarity — and yet, there is a poetic quality to the telling.” — Frances Itani, award-winning author of Deafening and Remembering the Bo...

The Long Way Back tells the story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh area of Baghdad. Through exquisite layering of the overlapping worlds of the characters, their private conflicts and passions are set against the wider drama of events leading up to the overthrow of prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim and the initial steps to power of the Baath party in Iraq in 1962-63. The skilful building-up of the characters and their worlds within...

Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life a story that can never again be lost in time after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone fired his imagination. This inspiring epic poem awakens two extraordinary lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina, the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at rest beside Hadrian's Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their unique story.Barates' elegy to his beloved wife, who died young at 30, is, however, not abo...

This reader consists of the full Arabic texts of eleven short stories by established Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian and Jordanian writers. The earliest story, written in 1929, is by the Egyptian Mahmud Tahir Lashin; and the most recent, written in 1972, is by the Iraqi writer, Fu'ad Al-Takarli. Each story is supplemented by an introduction, with biographical information about the author, placing him in his literary context; a description of the contents; and a brief analysis of the story itself, ...

Poetry is the quintessence of Arab culture. In this book, one of the foremost Arab poets reinterprets a rich and ancient heritage. He examines the oral tradition of pre-Islamic Arabian poetry, as well as the relationship between Arabic poetry and the Qur'an, and between poetry and thought. Adonis also assesses the challenges of modernism and the impact of western culture on the Arab poetic tradition. Stimulating in their originality, eloquent in their treatment of a wide range of poetry an...

"Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people . . . lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people." — Naomi Shihab Nye"Catherine Cobham's translations sway delicately between mystery and clarity, giving a rendition of the master's voice that should impress both those reading Darwish's work for the first time and those who are already familiar ...

The only fiction collection available in English translation by the Arab world's greatest short-story writer of the twentieth centuryYusuf Idris (1927–91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated as the father of the Arabic short story. He studied and practiced medicine, but his interests were in politics and the support of the nationalist struggle, and in writing—and his writing...

An extraordinary account of survival in Syria’s most notorious military prisons that is written with “brutal clarity — and yet, there is a poetic quality to the telling.” — Frances Itani, award-winning author of Deafening and Remembering the BonesJamal Saeed arrived as a refugee in Canada in 2016. In his native Syria, as a young man, his writing pushed both social and political norms. For this reason, as well as his opposition to the regimes of th...

August Book Sense PickA fading aristocrat and self-proclaimed 'scientist of women.' A purring, voluptuous siren. A young shop-girl enduring the clammy touch of her boss and hating herself for accepting the modest banknotes he tucks into her pocket afterward. An earnest, devout young doorman, feeling the irresistible pull toward fundamentalism. A cynical, secretly gay newspaper editor, helplessly in love with a peasant security guard. A roof-squatting tailor, schemi...

A delightful account of one woman's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman."A most enjoyable book abouut [Muslim women]—simple, dignified, human, colorful, sad and humble as the life they lead." —Muhsin Mahdi, Jewett Professor of Arabic Literature, Harvard Unversity.A wonderful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study that offers a unique insight into a part of the Middd...

The pioneering Iranian poet and filmmaker Forugh Farrokhzad was an iconic figure in her own day and has come to represent the spirit of revolt against patriarchal and cultural norms in 1960s Iran. Four decades after her tragic death at the age of 32, "Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran" brings her ground-breaking work into new focus. During her lifetime Farrokhzad embodied the vexed predicament of the contemporary Iranian woman, at once subjected to long-held traditional practices and ...

Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt—Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street—together in one volume.The masterwork of the Nobel Prize-winning author, the three novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. P...