‘A Taste of Bitter Tea’, by Mohammed Alnaas
The title here is borrowed from the French edition, Un goût de thé amer, which was translated by Sarah Rolfo, while the Arabic original is titled العراك في جهنم. This satirical novella is set in a Libyan village called Hell and is a retelling of events our narrator claims took place there in the 1990s ...
Alis al-Bustani’s ‘Sa’iba’ and the Arab Nahda
A Victorian gothic novel and an Ottoman-Arabic context – could such a peculiar combination be the ultimate manifestation of early Nahda production? Sa’iba, Alis al-Bustani’s first and only novel, is a product of Arab modernity, born from the introduction of European literature to the Arab intellectual during the renaissance of the nineteenth century, a context very familiar to the author ...
Ansam Abu Sitta’s ‘Behind the Walls’
This short fiction comes from Ansam Abu Sitta's collection Bench of the Reserves ...
The Mouse That Cheated Death
"The Mouse That Cheated Death" is a short story by Qatari writer Huda Al Naemi from her collection "Kaleela and Huda." ...
New Short Fiction: ‘Denial Likes Small Activities’
This story comes from Hussein al-Abri's latest collection, Time Slips Away in the Corner (2026) ...
Classic Short Fiction from Tunisia: ‘Hajj Zayan’
Mostafa Khraïef (1910-1967) was a prominent Tunisian poet, writer, and journalist ...
Short Fiction by Muhammad Khudayyir
A story from the fall of 1983 by the scribe of Basra, Muhammad Khudayyir ...
Stealing Sleep, Reclaiming Tomorrow
In the opening pages of The Sleep Thief by Ibtisam Azem (tr. Sinan Antoon), Palestinian protagonist, Gharib Haifawi, recounts how he was dubbed the "sleep thief" by his interrogators during his imprisonment ...
‘By Candlelight’: Short Fiction by Latifa al-Zayyat
Part of our focus, this Women in Translation Month (#WiTMonth), is on classic Arabic works by women, especially those at the margins of (or neglected entirely by) critical and readerly attention ...
From Zainab Hifni’s ‘I Was Here Yesterday’
'I Was Here Yesterday; is set between Saudi Arabia and the Florida coast and entangles grief and memory, centering on how the narrator grapples with her mother’s death and the truths about her mother’s life—and her own—that she uncovers ...
