Zakia Allal’s ‘Naked Veins’
This short story, by Algerian author Zakia Allal, is part of our new “In Focus: Algeria” section. By Zakia Allal Translated by Leonie Rau It was creeping toward 8:15 pm, […]
Fiction
New Fiction in Translation: Two Stories by Yasmeen Hanoosh
Yasmeen Hanoosh’s forthcoming short-story collection أطفال الجنة المنكوبة (Children of an Afflicted Paradise) was one of our “30 Reads: A Month of Iraqi Women Writers.” One short story from that […]
Short Fiction: ‘Orchestra,’ from Hisham Bustani’s ‘The Monotonous Chaos of Existence’
“She was seated at the black piano. The music had evaporated from her head, and only crooked melodies stumbled from her fingers.”
Short Fiction: Zuher Karim’s ‘The Awakening of Abdulmonam’
“This is a confusing experience, not intended to be comical in any way, shape, or form.”
Short Story: ‘The Qur’an’ by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
The small village had grown used to hosting a Qur’an reciter from Cairo in the month of Ramadan. His melodious recital enlivened the nights and lent the villagers a proud edge over the people of the surrounding hamlets.
Short Story: ‘God is Love’ by Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
“I have no stake in this story outside of a desire to tell it.”
On Publication Day, A Look Back: Ihsan Abdel Kouddous
Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s I Do Not Sleep appears this month from Hoopoe Fiction, in Jonathan Smolin’s translation.
From the FOLK Issue: ‘Death in Three Portraits’
Bakhit Al-Bashari lay in his sickbed, the same bed he once made with his bare hands from the stalks of palm fronds.
New: An Excerpt of Mohammed Said Hjiouij’s ‘Kafka in Tangier’
“Nevertheless, he knew that his fate would be no different from that of young Samsa: he would die in three months, no more and no less, just before his twenty-seventh birthday.”