A Conversation About Miral Altahawy’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘Days of the Shining Sun’
" This is a godless world, even though Allah is mentioned all the time. The only possible heroism in the novel is that of survival in face of misery." ...
An Excerpt from Azher Jirjees’s IPAF-shortlisted ‘The Stone of Happiness’
And so it was that—after a lifetime spent as peaceable as a hen—I found myself face to face with a hired killer ...
New Short Fiction: Alhassan Bakri’s ‘Field Marshal Trapped in a Bathroom’
When the field marshal heard the roar coming through the north-facing window of the spacious restroom, he was taken aback ...
An Excerpt from Jan Dost’s ‘A Green Bus Leaving Aleppo’
A Red Crescent flag fluttered from the small ambulance that arrived, parking beside the green bus where Abu Layla sat with the rest of the fighters and civilians and women and men and children. ...
New Fiction in Translation: A Selection from Akram Musallam’s ‘A Girl from Shatila’
These are the opening pages to Akram Musallam’s powerful novella, A Girl from Shatila. In the aftermath of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, we walk through the memories of a survivor, the Mermaid, and follow her journey in Hamburg, Germany recollecting the pieces of her past ...
‘The Last Syrian’: A Novel That ‘Reveals That the Sexual Is At the Heart Of, and Inseparable From, the Political’
"For him, Damascus is like a mirror, a sun between two clouds; there he feels eternal. Every time he visits, he feels like he has found a part of his soul." ...
An Excerpt from Hussein Barghouthi’s ‘The Blue Light’: Introduction to the Psychology of Fog
"It is said that blue is an antidote to sexual excitation—and I was a raging bull then. It is also said that blue calms the nerves—and I was on the edge of madness, bad temper was my inheritance, my father was known for it." ...
Short Fiction: Maqbul al-Alawi’s ‘Phantom of the Sands’
It’s a fact—and I grow more certain of this as time goes by—that no matter how many folks we encounter as time goes by, some of their faces strike a chord deep within us. They somehow burrow into our souls, forever marking the course of our lives ...
New Short Fiction from Sudan: ‘A Bunch of Losers’
By Alhassan Bakri Translated by Nassir al-Sayeid al-Nour We were all naughty and talkative as kids, except Idris: he was extremely quiet. He mastered an incredible range of abilities, including fishing, crafting bird traps, peeling acacia tree bark for swings, and blacksmithing trucks and trains out of empty powdered-milk tins. He could climb trees with the agility of a monkey and run as fast as a bull calf. He could milk stray goats and turn that into instant yogurt by adding solanum. He contrived catapults for shooting sparrows and tamed wild donkeys. He had tons of other skills, too. He tried to teach us, but we were lazy and helpless. We were content to be admirers of his tricks. Photo: ...
New Short Fiction by Salah H. Ahmed: ‘Chicken Stew’
"The truth is, we didn’t taste it, because the tray came back with nothing on it except the bones—even the sauce had vanished. Your father swore he took onlytwo bites while Sheikh al-Raddi finished the rest. May it give him stomach pain." ...
