Coming in September: A Mauritanian Tale and Palestinian Short Stories
Book publication dates shift, and thus we are supplementing the annual list of forthcoming literature in translation with monthly lists, which we hope are more accurate. If you know of other works forthcoming this month, please add them in the comments or email us at info@arablit.org.
Birds of Nabaa, by Abdalla Uld Mohammedi Bah, tr. Raphael Cohen (Banipal Books)
According to the publisher: “Birds of Nabaa follows the physical and spiritual journeys of its narrator from his beginnings in a remote Mauritanian village, whose flocks lead the community according to their own inscrutable instincts, to life in Madrid, the Gulf states and Guinea, where his work as an embassy accountant takes him. Inspired by the Sahara of his childhood and devoted from an early age to the vagabond life of the pre-Islamic poets, his constant life on the move in search of the inner stillness known only to desert dwellers leads him always to the music, song and poetry so much part of Mauritanian life and the spiritual universe of Sufism around them.”
They Fell Like Stars from the Sky and Other Stories, by Sheikha Helawy, tr. Nancy Roberts
From the publisher: “Penned by the award-winning Palestinian author, Sheikha Helawy, They Fell Like Stars from the Sky and Other Stories is a collection of eighteen illustrated short stories celebrating the courage, resilience, tragedies and triumphs of Bedouin Palestinian women and girls. From a woman whose tattoo arouses the alarm of sexual taboos to the young girls whose curiosities of womanhood spark endearment, and from the tragic outcome of a husband consumed by jealousy of his wife’s teenage love to the ecstatic love of an elderly woman for the game of football, these stories offer mesmerising portraits of life on the margins.”
Read M Lynx Qualey’s review here.