ARABIC LITERATURE

Translator: Catherine Cobham

A collection of four short stories from one of the leading figures of 20th-century Arabic literature. Each tale brings together characters of conflicting classes and interests, from an impoverished youth and a wealthy woman to a torturer and his victim.

Translated from Arabic by Roger Allen and Adnan Haydar

When Palestinian intellectual, Walid Masoud disappears, suspicion arises that he may have gone underground as part of a political movement. Masoud leaves behind a lengthy tape recording which is transcribed by each of his comrades in a series of monologues narrating their own experiences.

Translated from Arabic by Barbara Harlow

Short stories describing the Palestinian experience of the Middle East conflict. Each involves a child, a victim of circumstances, who nevertheless participates in the struggle towards a better future. As in Kanafani's other fiction, these stories explore the need to recover the past by action.

Translated from Arabic by Aida Bamia

In this powerful novel, acclaimed Palestinian author Sahar Khalifeh examines the stark realities in the lives of Palestinian women. Through her protagonist, Zeynab, born to an American mother and a Palestinian father, Khalifeh illuminates the disorienting experience of living between two worlds, and the search for identity that mirrors the Palestinians' own quest for nationhood. Set against the emotionally charged background of the early 1990s - when the Gulf War and the Oslo Accords fundamentally shifted the political landscape - The Inheritance takes as its subject the fate of young Palestinian women who supported their families for decades working elsewhere in the Middle East. In vivid prose, Khalifeh traces the disruption caused by the Gulf War on the life of these women, as Zeynab returns to her homeland and tries to adapt to her new life on the West Bank after years spent in Kuwait. I

Translated from Arabic by Muhayman Jamil

Absent is an affectionate, wry, funny portrait - sometimes darkly so - of the inhabitants of an apartment block in central Baghdad, juxtaposing the days of plenty that Iraq experienced in the 1970s and the tragic state of the country during the period of wars and sanctions. Most of the protagonists are female, highlighting the absence of men in their society as a result of the exceptional conditions it suffers. As sanctions and political unrest intensify, each character must look to their own resources. They barter, bee keep, tell fortunes, collect buttons, and talk. All the characters stumble through in a Dadaesque collage, recounted through an eclectic mix of realistic narrative and surreal hallucinations, while the infrastructure and consequently the social fabric of the community crumble. Transcending its underlying layer of betrayal and mistrust, this is a novel about people's quirks, their enduring emotions, and about survival.

Translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies

In a makeshift hospital in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, Yunis, an aging Palestinian freedom fighter, lies in a coma. His spiritual son, Dr. Khaleel - who has no real medical qualifications - nurses the older man, refusing to admit that his hero may never regain consciousness. In an attempt to revive his patient, Khaleel, like a modern-day Sheherazade, begins telling Yunis the stories of their people's exile in Lebanon: their flight from Galilee in 1948; the violence of the 1950s; the massacre at the Shatila camp in 1982. He evokes deserted peasant villages, the suffering caused by the Lebanese civil war and the refugees' hopes to return home with a subtle mixture of anger and compassion. Khaleel also narrates Yunis' own extraordinary life: his childhood in Palestine and his commitment as a member of the fedayeen; perpetually on the run, fighting and hiding in caves. Interweaving many true-life tales collected throughout Lebanon and its refugee camps over the course of seven years, Elias Khoury has created a monumental and spellbinding saga, putting human faces to a political tragedy which remains at the forefront of the news even today.

A vivid and irreverent collection of short stories set in 1930s and 1940s Baghdad, loosely based on the authors childhood. Heartfelt and moving, the stories focus around the central figure of grandma, the head of the household and the key decision maker.

A non English-speaking Arab is made the butt of cruel jokes in a misunderstanding at a flat which he thinks is a brothel. Thought-provoking farce.

Translated from French by Barbara Bray

In the Koran, there are 99 names for God. Does the 100th exist? Months before the dawn of the apocalyptic 'year of the beast', 1666, Balthasar Embriaco, a Genoese Levantine merchant embarks on a quest to find the answer. He sets out on a journey that will take him across the breadth of the civilised world, making his way to Constantinople and on to Smyrna and Aleppo before embarking for the Isle of Chios and sailing through the Mediterranean, via Genoa and Lisbon, arriving in London shortly before the outbreak of the Great Fire. The purpose of Balthasar's expedition is to search for a copy of the rarest of books. Merely to know this most secret of the names of God will, Balthasar believes, ensure he is saved.

Translated from French

Ossyane, a young Lebanese man and his Jewish wife Clara return to live in Haifa after the Second World War. Just as war breaks out in the new-born state of Israel, Ossayne is forced to go to Beirut. The border with Israel closes behind him and he becomes separated from his wife with tragic consequences.