As Hilary Kilpatrick wrote in The Journal of Arabic Literature, “Mahmud Tahir Lashin is one of those Egyptian writers who, pioneers in their own time, never achieved wide popularity and were soon forgotten. Yet his short stories reveal an original and accomplished artistry, and his novel, Hawwa’ bila Adam, is one of the most interesting works of fiction to have been published in Cairo during the 1930’s.”
“Birthday in a Cellar” appears in Amer Al-Masry’s third short-story collection, The Man Who Turned Back (الرجل الذي التفت إلى الوراء), the first book out from the new Gaza Publications.
“Bashir Agha walked the doctor through the winding corridors, guiding him to Mustafa Hassan’s sickbed. The doctor followed, stepping cautiously until they arrived at a dim, dust-coated chamber littered with refuse.”
It’s publication day for Fatima Qandil’s raw, tenderly crafted novel Empty Cages, translated to English by Adam Talib. In this excerpt, we get a glimpse of the narrator’s relationship with her mother.
In this short fiction, “Umm Shihab still believes in superstitions. Not a day goes by without her burning incense, afraid that an old spell might have wandered in and entered her house by mistake, or that someone is blowing under the ashes of envy, trying to ignite a fire within her.”
Sufyan Rajab’s Noah’s Hourglass is no ordinary East-West love affair. The fun, sharply observed novel moves between two voices—the Tunisian Belkacem and the Ukrianian Olga—as they each try to find safe harbor in an unsafe world. An excerpt in James Scanlan’s sharp translation.
This classic short fiction was composed in August 1917 by Muhammed Taymour, a pioneer of modern fiction and theatrical literature in Egypt.
Winner of the 2021 Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, Karim Kattan’s The Palace on the Higher Hill — beautifully translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman and out this month from Foundry Editions — opens when Faysal receives a letter about the death of aunt he can’t remember.
The award-winning “Seven Letters to Umm Kulthum” follows the story of a Palestinian family from a small, remote village in the Upper Galilee: the parents, Mustafa and Hajer, and their sons, Yazn and Nur. Events in the novel begin to unfold and unravel on December 8, 1987, when the first Palestinian intifada begins.
