Short Fiction in Translation: Mohamed Kheir’s ‘Duty Calls’
“Duty Calls” is from Mohamed Kheir’s 2014 short-story collection, Blink. As translator Caroline Benson writes, “Mohamed Kheir is at the forefront of a group of Egyptian writers known for astonishing readers with their ability to capture the poetics of quotidian contemporary life. The strength of Kheir’s writing lies in its creative and imaginative probings of the tensions, layers, and contradictions of gender, emigration, family, politics, and class.”