ARABIC LITERATURE

Translated from Arabic by Elliot Colla

One long winter night and the Cairo neighborhood of Kit Kat stands at a crossroads. Poised like herons fishing on the banks of the Nile, the characters of this novel wait and watch as opportunities swim by past their reach. Some gaze on as their local cafe is stolen before their eyes. One studies how the nouveaux riches of the Open Door Policy make their money, while others try their own hand at swindle. Still others read the empty rhetoric of state-run newspapers and wonder what it all means. It is long past midnight; some walk, some sit and smoke, and all are trading stories. A young artist waits by himself for a girl, a drink, or a revolution. All are waiting for what the next day might bring. Set on the eve of the January 1977 'bread riots' against IMF austerity programs and privatization that nearly brought down President Anwar Sadat, 'The Heron' catches Egypt in the mid-stream of its modern history. Since it first appeared in 1984, Ibrahim Asian's 'The Heron' has been a classic of modern Arabic literature. It has been translated into a number of European languages and adapted as the successful film 'Kit Kat'.

Translated from Arabic by Peter Clark and Christopher Tingley

Translator: Denys Johnson-Davies

Translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth

This spellbinding novel narrates the many-layered recollections of a hallucinating man in devastated Beirut. The desolate, almost surreal, urban landscape is enriched by the unfolding of the family sagas of Niqula Mitri and his beloved Shamsa, the Kurdish maid. Mitri reminisces about his Egyptian mother and his father who came back to settle in Beirut after a long stay in Egypt. Both Mitri and his father are textile merchants and see the world through the code of cloth, from the intimacy of linen, velvet, and silk to the most impersonal of synthetics. Shamsa in turn relates her story, the myriad adventures of her parents and grandparents who moved from Iraqi Kurdistan to Beirut. Haunting scenes of pastoral Kurds are juxtaposed against the sedentary decadence of metropolitan residents. Barakat weaves into her sophisticated narrative shreds of scientific discourse about herbal plants and textile crafts; customs and manners of Arabs, Armenians, and Kurds; mythological figures from ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and Arabia; the theosophy of the African Dogons and the medieval Byzantines; and historical accounts of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the silk route to China.

The Last Friend, is a Rashamon-like tale of friendship and betrayal set in 20th century Tangier. Written in Ben Jelloun's inimitable and powerfully direct style, the novel explores the twists and turns of an intense 30-year friendship between two young men struggling to find their identities and sexual fulfillment in Morocco in the late 1950s, a complex and contradictory society both modern and archaic. From their carefree university days through their brutal imprisonment and ultimate release, the two rely on each other for physical and psychological survival, forging bonds not easily broken. Each narrator tells his version of the story, painting a vivid portrait of life lived within and against the moral strictures of North Africa. Set against a backdrop of the repression and disillusionment The Last Friend is a tale of loss of innocence and a nation's coming of age.

In this lyrical, hallucinatory novel set in Morocco, Tahar Ben Jelloun offers an imaginative and radical critique of contemporary Arab social customs and Islamic law. The Sand Child tells the story of a Moroccan father's effort to thwart the consequences of Islam's inheritance laws regarding female offspring. Already the father of seven daughters, Hajji Ahmed determines that his eighth child will be a male. Accordingly, the infant, a girl, is named Mohammed Ahmed and raised as a young man with all the privileges granted exclusively to men in traditional Arab-Islamic societies. As she matures, however, Ahmed's desire to have children marks the beginning of her sexual evolution, and as a woman named Zahra, Ahmed begins to explore her true sexual identity. Drawing on the rich Arabic oral tradition, Ben Jelloun relates the extraordinary events of Ahmed's life through a professional storyteller and the listeners who have gathered in a Marrakesh market square in the 1950s to hear his tale.

Translator: Lulu Norman

Welcome to Paradise tells the fictional stories of a group of individuals forming part of the traffic in illegal immigrants across the Straits of Gibraltar, and of those involved in this shadowy trade.

Translator: Nadia Benabid

It is the 26th day of Ramadan in the year 610, and a handsome man named Muhammad is meditating in a cave on Mount Hira. Fear grips him as he tries to sort out the visions and voices washing over him; and terrified that he is possessed, he leaves the cave to return to Mecca.

Translated from Arabic Peter Theroux

Set in an apartment building in Beirut, this novel evokes the pattern of the ordinary lives of its Muslim and Christian tenants as society disintegrates around them. The domestic events that shape the novel are shadowed by the theme of human survival in the face of brutal civil war.