ARABIC LITERATURE

Translated by Munir Akash, Caroline Forche with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein

Mahmoud Darwish is a literary rarity: at once critically acclaimed as one of the most important poets in the Arabic language, and beloved as the voice of his people. His lyrics are sung by fieldworkers and schoolchildren. He has assimilated some of the world's oldest literary traditions at the same time that he has struggled to open new possibilities for poetry. This collection spans Darwish's entire career, nearly four decades, revealing a wide range of expression and form.

Translator: Abdullah al-Udhari

Mahmud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Adonis are among the leading poets of the contemporary Arab world. This collection presents 15 translated poems by each poet, with the text of each poem printed on the pages facing the translation.

Translated from French by Betsy Wing

The double-threaded story of a modern, educated Algerian woman existing in a man's society, and, not surprisingly, living a life of contradictions. Djebar, too, tackles cross-cultural issues just by writing in French of an Arab society (the actual act of writing contrasting with the strong oral traditions of the indigenous culture), as a woman who has seen revolution in a now post-colonial country, and as an Algerian living in exile. As the story of one woman's experience in Algeria, it is a private tale, but one embedded in a vast history. A radically singular voice in the world of literature, Assia Djebar's work ultimately reaches beyond the particulars of Algeria to embrace, in stark yet sensuous language, the universal themes of violence, intimacy, ostracism, victimisation, and exile.

Ashraf Saad, the narrator of The Last Migration is originally from Lebanon, migrating with his family to Australia during the Lebanese civil war. Following the breakdown of his marriage he travels to London, and settles in Shepherd Bush. Moving between Australia, London and the Lebanon the novel is a moving account of the interactions between East and West and is also a gentle and tender love story.

Translated from Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies

Novel by acclaimed writer Mohamed El-Bisatie.

The novel is set in Jordan during the British mandate and beyond. At the centre is Maha and her love for her husband, but this love does not survive the oppression and violence in the society, as he is killed by the British and she is harmed by her brother. The novel interweaves several stories and by reflecting on the past, illuminates the present and the possible bleak future of the middle east.

Translated from French by Lucy R. MacNair

Like the autobiographical hero of this, his classic first novel, Mouloud Feraoun grew up in the rugged Kabyle region of French-controlled Algeria, where the prospects for most Muslim Berber men were limited to shepherding or emigrating to France for factory work. While Feraoun escaped such a fate by excelling in the colonial school system - as a student and, later, as a teacher at the Ecole Normale - he remained firmly rooted in Kabyle culture. This dual perspective only enhanced his view, often brutally, of the ravages on his country by poverty, colonial rule, and a world war that descended on Algeria like a great storm. This embattled society, and Feraoun's unique position within it, became the raw material for The Poor Man's Son.

John Heath-Stubbs and Catherine Cobham

A bilingual book of poems written by Hasan Abdallah al-Qurashi. He aims to evoke the beauty of the country to whose past and future he feels bound, condemning the perversion of its values and aspirations.

Translator: E. H. Paxton, Hilary Wayment and Kenneth Cragg

This is a single-volume version of the three-part biography of one of modern Egypt's greatest thinkers and writers. Part one is entitled An Egyptian Childhood, it tells of Taha Hussein's early childhood and education in a small village in Upper Egypt, as he learns not only to come to terms with his blindness but to excel in spite of it. Part two, entitled The Stream of Days: A Student at the Azhar, is a picture of student life in Egypt in the early 1900s. Part three is entitled A Passage To France, it carries on the story to Hussein's final attainment of a doctorate at the Sorbonne, a saga of perseverance in the face of daunting odds.

Translated from Arabic by Anthony Calderbank

This unusual and much lauded novel tells the story of the life of an Egyptian woman - the eponymous Zaat - during the regimes of three Egyptian presidents: Abdel Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. Imbued with an Egyptian sense of humor and deeply rooted in the culture and politics of the modern period, the novel takes a humorous but often black look at the changes that have occurred in Egypt over the past few decades. Zaat's life experiences and relationships are set against economic and social upheavals in a style that is both sophisticated and bawdy, highly ironic and often extremely poignant. Zaat's story is interspersed and illustrated with extracts from newspapers of the day - headlines, articles, captions, death notices, advertisements - reflecting events and incidents contemporary with her life, Beautifully put together with bitter and cutting irony, they tell of corruption, financial scandals, torture, foreign debt, and social problems. The heroine epitomizes the hopes, dreams, and ambitions of simple folk tossed about on the stormy sea of modernization, consumerism, and the ever-present mirage of new wealth. Zaat is a brilliant social commentary that provides keen insights into how Egypt has come to be the way it is today.