ARABIC LITERATURE

Translator: Denys Johnson-Davies

Satirical stories of Syria and the Arab world look at the abuse of power by men over women, the rich over the poor, and the strong over the weak.

Translated by Mai Jayyusi and Christopher Tingley

The year is 1948; the place, Samakh, a small town on Lake Tiberias, north of Jerusalem. People in Samakh are waiting - for what, exactly, they do not yet know. The whistle of the Haifa-Deraa train doesn't sound anymore. Abd al-Karim, the shopkeeper, no longer goes into the city to buy new stock. A Lake Beyond the Wind is a novel about the most catastrophic year in Palestinian history, a time marked by violent clashes between Zionist forces and the volunteers of the Arab Liberation Army. Yakhlif tenderly gathers all the town folk, the soldiers of the beleaguered army, the animals of the natural world into his tale, which makes it all the more powerful a lament for a world that is no more.

Moving between London and Cairo, this is the final volume of Young's trilogy featuring Angeline Gower, and ties together all the loose ends of the complex plot. It is a careful study of the issues surrounding mixed-race relationships and single motherhood placed in the context of an action-packed mystery.

Translator: Denys Johnson-Davies

Drawing on an intimate knowledge of modern Arabic writing, Denys Johnson-Davies brings together a colourful mosaic of life as lived and portrayed by Arabs from Morocco to Iraq.

Collected over twenty years, 113 poems reflect Bedouin attitudes to personal, social and political experiences. Each poem is presented in Arabic script, translated to English, with an introduction describing its setting and context.

Translator: Dinah Manisty

From her prison cell in Cairo, Aziza decides to create a golden chariot to take her and fellow prisoners to heaven, where their dreams can be fulfilled. Aziza's narrative holds together the stories of the other women and their crimes as they yearn for a better life, but cannot realize these dreams.

Beirut: where plastic surgery meets the emotional intensity of Um Kalsoum, Lebanese foodies go on the rampage and a melee of pop cultures chafes at Middle Eastern traditions. In words and pictures, this is an anthology of complex urban experience with the emphasis on quick, reported, observed personal writing and photographs. The view is wide: from fiction to non-fiction and everything in between. A 17-year-long civil war, the 1982 Israeli invasion and the arrival and sudden departure of American marines have combined to create a place undergoing an energetic process of rediscovery and reinvention by its own inhabitants, many of whom are only now returning to their city. In the mix, Zeina B Ghandour ponders the intersecting lines of T. E. Lawrence, Orientalism and a PLO grandmother's revolutionary milk; novelist Hassan Daoud unpeels Beiruti humour and lifestyles; and journalist Fadi Tufayli reveals a makeshift graveyard at the heart of the city's psyche.