Lit & Found: Muhammad Aladdin’s ‘Season of Migration to Arkadia’

Egyptian writer Muhammad Aladdin’s short story “Season of Migration to Arkadia” (tr. Humphrey Davies) is available as a free e-book from publisher mikrotext.

It begins:

It was love at first sight.
We can think of no better way to describe what befell Usta Hamzah when he first set eyes on the leather jacket—of that shade dark brown people sometimes refer to as “burnt”— tightly enfolding the body of a customer whom fate (or Usta Hamzah’s good, or bad, luck) had led to his small workshop by the Nile.

Find the e-book at mikrotext’s website and read a 2014 ArabLit interview with Muhammad Aladdin here.