ALBANIA
ALBANIA
ALBANIA
GENERAL - MIDDLE EAST
[ MIDDLE EAST - Literature - Anthology ]Aslan, Reza (editor). Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes From the Modern Middle East. New York. 2010. Norton. 9780393065855. 657 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - (front) Calligraphy by Mehmed Ozcay, (back) top: Calligraphy by Ismail Zuhdi Effendi; bottom: Calligraphy by Nazif Bey.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Remarkable. a triumph. connects us at the level of our humanity, no matter where we may be from.' - Los Angeles Times. The countries that stretch along the broad horizons of the Middle East - from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Pakistan - boast different cultures, different languages, and different religions. Yet the literary landscape of this dynamic part of the world has been bound together not by borders and nationalities, but by a common experience of Western imperialism. Keenly aware of the collected scars left by a legacy of colonial rule, the acclaimed writer Reza Aslan, with a team of four regional editors and seventy-seven translators, cogently demonstrates with Tablet and Pen how literature can, in fact, be used to form identity and serve as an extraordinary chronicle of the disrupted histories of the region. Acting with Words Without Borders, which fosters international exchange through translation and publication of the world's finest literature, Aslan has purposefully situated this volume in the twentieth century, beyond the familiar confines of the Ottoman past, believing that the writers who have emerged in the last hundred years have not received their full due. This monumental collection, therefore, of nearly two hundred pieces, including short stories, novels, memoirs, essays and works of drama - many of them presented in English for the first time - features translated works from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. Organized chronologically, the volume spans a century of literature - from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, from the great Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis to the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Ismat Chughtai - connected by the extraordinarily rich tradition of resplendent cultures that have been all too often ignored by the Western canon. By shifting America's perception of the Middle Eastern world away from religion and politics, TABLET AND PEN evokes the splendors of a region through the voices of its writers and poets, whose literature tells an urgent and liberating story. With a wealth of contextual information that places the writing within the historical, political, and cultural breadth of the region, TABLET & PEN is transcendent, a book to be devoured as a single sustained narrative, from the first page to the last. Creating a vital bridge between two estranged cultures, ‘this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting, and informing' (Publishers Weekly).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Reza Aslan lives in Los Angeles and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His books include the bestseller NO GOD BUT GOD and HOW TO WIN A COSMIC WAR. He lives in Los Angeles.
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AUSTRIA
AUSTRIA
AUSTRIA
ALBANIA
Bell, Gertrude. A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert. New York. 2015. Penguin Books. 9780143107378. Introduction by Georgina Howell. 320 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - One of the great woman adventurers of the twentieth century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world, and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East. As she wrote in one of her letters, "It's a bore being a woman when you are in Arabia." Forthright and spirited, opinionated and playful, and deeply instructive about the Arab world, this volume brings together Bell's letters, military dispatches, diary entries, and travel writings to offer an intimate look at a woman who shaped nations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge and contacts built up through extensive travels. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials such as High Commissioner for Mesopotamia Percy Cox, giving her great influence. She participated in both the 1919 Paris Peace Conference (briefly) and the 1921 Cairo Conference, which helped decide the territorial boundaries and governments of the post-War Middle East as part of the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Bell believed that the momentum of Arab nationalism was unstoppable, and that the British government should ally with nationalists rather than stand against them. Along with T. E. Lawrence, she advocated for independent Arab states in the Middle East following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and supported the installation of Hashemite monarchies in what is today Jordan and Iraq.
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BELARUS
BELARUS
BELARUS
AUSTRIA
Burton, Richard Francis (translator) and Zipes, Jack (editor). The Arabian Nights: Volume 1: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. New York. 1991. Signet/New American Library. 0451525426. Translated From The Arabic By Sir Richard Francis Burton.Introduction By Jack Zipes. 608 pages. paperback. 2542. Signet Classic original. Translation of ألف ليلة ولة.
DESCRIPTION - Enjoy the timeless tales of Aladdin, Sinbad, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and many more in this first volume of The Arabian Nights. Upon learning of his queen's infidelity, proud King Shahryar has her killed. As revenge on womankind, he decides to wed a different virgin every night, only to have her beheaded at dawn. Such is Shahryar's practice for three terrible years - until he weds Scheherazade, the maiden who will change his life. A breathtaking beauty, Scheherazade is as learned as she is sensuous. Her first night with the king, she uses her imagination, her eloquence, and more than a little cunning to regale him with a tale of genies and wishes, wisely cutting the story short at dawn. The king is so beguiled, he cannot have her murdered without hearing the story's end. From then on, Scheherazade spends nights conjuring stories of flying carpets and fantastical journeys, always stopping with a cliff-hanger - and saving her own life. This edition follows the unexpurgated translation of Richard F. Burton, the renowned Victorian explorer. Intricate and inventive, these stories within stories continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) was a gifted linguist, a daring explorer, a prolific author, and one of the most flamboyant celebrities of his day. Forced to leave Oxford for unruly behavior, he joined the British Army in India, where he gained a remarkable knowledge of Arabic, Hindustani, and Persian, eventually acquiring twenty-nine languages and many dialects. He led the famed expedition to discover the source of the Nile and, disguised as a Muslim, made a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, then forbidden to non-Muslims, and penetrated the sacred city of Harare in uncharted East Africa. Burton translated unexpurgated versions of many famous texts including the Kama Sutra (1883) and Arabian Nights (1885-88), which is perhaps his most celebrated achievement. Daniel Beaumont is an associate professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Rochester and the author of Slave of Desire, a critical study of the Arabian Nights. He is also a teacher and scholar of the blues. Jack Zipes is a professor of German at the University of Minnesota. The author of several books on fairy tales, including Don't Bet on the Prince, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, and Breaking the Magic Spell, he is the editor and translator of The Complete Tales of the Brothers Grimm and the editor of Signet Classics's The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde.
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BELGIUM
BELGIUM
BELGIUM
BELARUS
Burton, Richard Francis (translator) and Zipes, Jack (editor). The Arabian Nights: Volume II: The Marvels and Wonders of the Thousand and One Nights. New York. 2010. Signet/New American Library. 9780451531483. Selected and Introduced by Jack Zipes. Translated by Sir Richard F. Burton. Introduction by John Barth. 448 pages. Library. 3148. Signet Classic reprint. Translation of ألف ليلة ولة This collection of over 40 tales is adapted from the unexpurgated 1886 10-volume translation by Sir Richard F. Burton. Includes line drawings.
DESCRIPTION - Volume two in a collection of tales representing distinctive genres- from fairy tales to erotica-revealing the customs and societies in the medieval Middle East, as told by the mythic Sheherazade.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) was a gifted linguist, a daring explorer, a prolific author, and one of the most flamboyant celebrities of his day. Forced to leave Oxford for unruly behavior, he joined the British Army in India, where he gained a remarkable knowledge of Arabic, Hindustani, and Persian, eventually acquiring twenty-nine languages and many dialects. He led the famed expedition to discover the source of the Nile and, disguised as a Muslim, made a pilgrimage to the city of Mecca, then forbidden to non-Muslims, and penetrated the sacred city of Harare in uncharted East Africa. Burton translated unexpurgated versions of many famous texts including the Kama Sutra (1883) and Arabian Nights (1885-88), which is perhaps his most celebrated achievement. Daniel Beaumont is an associate professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of Rochester and the author of Slave of Desire, a critical study of the Arabian Nights. He is also a teacher and scholar of the blues. Jack Zipes is a professor of German at the University of Minnesota. The author of several books on fairy tales, including Don't Bet on the Prince, Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion, and Breaking the Magic Spell, he is the editor and translator of The Complete Tales of the Brothers Grimm and the editor of Signet Classics's The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde.
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BOSNIA
BOSNIA
BOSNIA
BELGIUM
Cohen-Mor, Dalya (editor and introduction). Cultural Journeys into the Arab World: A Literary Anthology. Albany. 2018. SUNY Press. 9781438471143. 6 x 9. 375 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Cultural Journeys into the Arab World provides a fascinating window into Arab culture and society through the voices of its own writers and poets. Organized thematically, the anthology features more than fifty texts, including poems, essays, stories, novels, memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and life histories, by leading male and female authors from across the Arabic-speaking world. Each theme is explored in several genres, both fiction and nonfiction, and framed by a wealth of contextual information that places the literary texts within the historical, political, cultural, and social background of the region. Spanning a century of Arab creative writing - from the “dean of Arabic letters” Taha Hussein to the Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the celebrated poet Adonis - the anthology offers unforgettable journeys into the rich and dynamic realm of Arab culture. Representing a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and socioeconomic backgrounds, the characters speak of their conditions, aspirations, struggles, and achievements living in complex societies marked by tensions arising from the persistence of older traditions and the impact of modernity. Their myriad voices paint a vivid and intimate portrait of contemporary Arab life in the Middle East, revealing the common humanity of a region of vital significance in world affairs.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dalya Cohen-Mor is a Middle East scholar and an award-winning author. Her books include A Matter of Fate: The Concept of Fate in the Arab World as Reflected in Modern Arabic Literature; Mothers and Daughters in Arab Women’s Literature: The Family Frontier; Fathers and Sons in the Arab Middle East; and Arab Women Writers: An Anthology of Short Stories, also published by SUNY Press.
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BULGARIA
BULGARIA
BULGARIA
BOSNIA
Dawood, N. J. (translator). Thousand and One Nights: A Selection. Baltimore. 1954. Penguin Books. Translated from the Arabic & With An Introduction by N. J. Dawood. 241 pages. paperback. 1001. Translation of ألف ليلة ولة.
DESCRIPTION - Few books in the literature of the world have achieved the popularity and renown of THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. In inventiveness and entertainment value these oriental tales stand supreme among the short stories of all time. This selection includes the group of stories known as the Tale of the Hunchback, the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, and many other tales, which probably the reader read with delight in his childhood. The tales selected have been rendered complete and unexpurgated, in contemporary English, by someone intimately acquainted with Arab traditions and customs. N.J. Dawood was born in Baghdad in 1927. When he left school in 1944 he was awarded a scholarship for foreign studies which brought him at the end of the war to England, where he studied English Literature at the University College of the South-West, Exeter, and subsequently worked for three years on the staff of a London weekly newspaper. His interest in the translator's craft began while he was still at school, when his Arabic renderings of English short stories appeared regularly in Iraqi newspapers and periodicals. For the past few years he has been engaged in research concerning the various dialects in The Arabian Nights, and is at present working on a new translation of The Koran, which will be published in the Penguin Classics.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nessim Joseph Dawood (27 August 1927 - 20 November 2014) was an Iraqi translator, who is best known for his translation of the Quran. Nessim Joseph Dawood was born in Baghdad to a Jewish family. His real surname was Yehuda. The name on his Iraqi ID card consisted of his own given name, plus those of his father and paternal grandfather, “Nessim Yosef [Joseph] David.” He changed "David" to "Dawood" when he applied for a passport. His nom de plume became N.J. Dawood. Bilingual in Arabic and English, he started tutoring schoolmates in English. He came to England as an Iraq state scholar in 1945, and studied English Literature and Classical Arabic at the University of London in the first cohort of students to resume normal university studies after the Second World War. After graduating in 1949, he worked as a journalist and was invited by Sir Allen Lane - the founder of Penguin Books - to translate a selection of Tales from the Thousand and One Nights into English, to mark the publication of Penguin No. 1001 in 1954. This translation achieved a wide readership: an unexpurgated version that reflected the Arabic original - yet was effortlessly readable in contemporary English - appealed to a broad audience. Readings and dramatic adaptations from his translation of the Tales were broadcast on BBC radio. It was reissued in the Penguin Classics and a further selection (Aladdin and Other Tales) was published in 1957, also in the Penguin Classics. Both books were combined into a single volume (Tales from the Thousand and One Nights) in 1973. The founder of the Penguin Classics was Dr. E. V. Rieu, CBE - a classicist and an accomplished Greek and Latin scholar who had translated inter alia the Iliad and the Odyssey. Rieu revolutionized the art of translation, and became a mentor and key influence upon Dawood's approach to the translator's craft. Rieu and Lane proposed a new translation of the Koran, which at that time was largely unknown to British readers. The only previous translations were in an archaic, literal style; the aim was to produce a modern translation that would be accessible to the English-speaking reader. The first edition was published in 1956 as Penguin No. L52. In this edition, Dawood rearranged the chapters (surahs) into more-or-less chronological order, to make them easier to understand, in line with the chronological approach found in the Old and New Testaments. Later revisions of his translation reverted to the traditional sequence of the surahs (arranged in descending order of length). His translation of the Koran is still thought to be the best-selling English language version - it has been reprinted at least 70 times, appearing in several revised editions and formats. For N J Dawood, the Koran was a lifelong “work in progress” - constantly revised and refined in the course of an entire career. Language and use of English change constantly over time: for example, terms such as “Men” and “Mankind” did not have the same gender-specific connotations for the reader of the 1950s that might apply today, so have been censored. Dawood's translation has never been out of print; a new revised edition was published in May 2014. He died on 20 November 2014.
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CROATIA
CROATIA
CROATIA
BULGARIA
Farrin, Raymond. Abundance from the Desert: Classical Arabic Poetry . Syracuse. 2017. Syracuse University Press. 9780815635154. Middle East Literature in Translation. 392 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Abundance from the Desert provides a comprehensive introduction to classical Arabic poetry, one of the richest of poetic traditions. Covering the period roughly of 500 to 1250 c. e. , it features original translations and illuminating discussions of a number of major classical Arabic poems from a variety of genres. The poems are presented chronologically, each situated within a specific historical and literary context. Together, the selected poems suggest the range and depth of classical Arabic poetic expression; read in sequence, they suggest the gradual evolution of a tradition. Moving beyond a mere chronicle, Farrin outlines a new approach to appreciating classical Arabic poetry based on an awareness of concentric symmetry, in which the poem's unity is viewed not as a linear progression but as an elaborate symmetrical plot. In doing so, the author presents these works in a broader, comparative light, revealing connections with other literatures. The reader is invited to examine these classical Arabic works not as isolated phenomena-notwithstanding their uniqueness and their association with a discrete tradition-but rather as part of a great multicultural heritage. This pioneering book marks an important step forward in the study of Arabic poetry. At the same time, it opens the door to this rich tradition for the general reader.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Farrin is assistant professor of Arabic at the American University of Kuwait. His articles have been published in such journals as the Journal of Arabic Literature and the Muslim World.
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CZECH
CZECH
CZECH
CROATIA
Hook, S. H. Middle Eastern Mythology. Baltimore. 1966. Pelican Books. 199 pages. paperback. Cover design by Ole Vedel.
DESCRIPTION - During the last half-century the discoveries of archaeologists in the ancient Near East, now called the Middle East, have created a wide- spread interest in the ways of life and thought of the dwellers in that region, and especially in their myths. For much of Greek, Roman, and even Celtic mythology has its source in the traditions and legends of the ancient Near East. In MIDDLE EASTERN MYTHOLOGY S. H. Hooke, Professor Emeritus in the University of London and Speaker's Lecturer at Oxford, has compiled an absorbing account, based on first-hand sources, of the fascinating mythology of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, Canaanites, and Hebrews. In addition he discusses the nature and function of myth very fully, and devotes a chapter to the important subject of the place of myth in Christianity.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Henry Hooke (January 21, 1874–January 17, 1968) was an English scholar writing on comparative religion. He is known for his translation of the Bible into Basic English. He was born in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. He was educated at St. Mark's school, Windsor and Jesus College, Oxford. From 1913 to 1926 he was Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Toronto, where he was a founder of and contributor to Canadian Forum. In 1930 he was appointed Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament Studies at the University of London. In 1951, Hooke was president of the Society for Old Testament Study.
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DENMARK
DENMARK
DENMARK
CZECH
Johnson-Davies, Denys (editor and translator). Modern Arabic Short Stories. New York. 1967. Oxford University Press. Introduction by A. J. Arberry. 194 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ibrahim Salahi.
DESCRIPTION - 'The present selection draws on con- temporary authors from several Arab countries, especially Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. These stories, cleverly chosen and admirably translated, represent a most interesting phase in the continuing renaissance of Arabic literature. Modern Arab authors are building upon the foundations laboriously laid by their predecessors, who accomplished painfully the several stages of transformation out of simple translation, through close imitation, to originality. 'Denys Johnson-Davies, an excellent Arabic scholar with a wide knowledge of Arab life and ways, has here produced, in very readable translations, the first comprehensive anthology of contemporary Arabic short stories. His choice has been shrewdly varied to accommodate and illustrate many aspects of the Arab outlook and Arab sociology—the tragic, the tragico-comic, the lighthearted, the witty, the fantastic, the profound. Here in these pages Arab men, yes, and what is much more remarkable, Arab women too, have become frankly articulate on their public and private aspirations and experiences. These enjoyable stories throw a sudden flood of light on the Arab scene of today.' from the introduction by Professor Arberry.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Denys Johnson-Davies (1922 - May 22, 2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer. Johnson-Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by Edward Said, translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He was also interested in Islamic studies and was co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He wrote a number of children's books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999. Born in 1922 in Vancouver, Canada of English parentage, Johnson-Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Johnson-Davies studied Oriental languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and lectured on translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", valued at about $300,000. In his latter years he lived between Marrakesh and Cairo. Denys Johnson-Davies died in Egypt on 22 May 2017
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EASTERN EUROPE
EASTERN EUROPE
EASTERN EUROPE
DENMARK
Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham. The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914. Berkeley. 2010. University of California Press. 9780520262010. 296 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism embodies a new approach to the history of radical movements and ideas in the Eastern Mediterranean during the great age of global socialism and anarchy. Ilham Makdisi tellls the story of the anarchist and socialist networks linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria to each other and the world, and challenges the idea that these were led by intellectuals and elite nationalists, but by mobile workers, entertainers and others. This book tells a world history from a perspective that has never been covered, or even guessed at, before.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ilham Khuri-Makdisi is Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at Northeastern University.
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ENGLAND
ENGLAND
ENGLAND
EASTERN EUROPE
Lyons, Malcolm (translator). Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange: A Medieval Arab Fantasy Collection. New York. 2017. Penguin Books. 9780241299951. Introduction by Robert Irwin. 496 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - On the shrouded corpse hung a tablet of green topaz with the inscription: 'I am Shaddad the Great. I conquered a thousand cities; a thousand white elephants were collected for me; I lived for a thousand years and my kingdom covered both east and west, but when death came to me nothing of all that I had gathered was of any avail. You who see me take heed: for Time is not to be trusted.' Dating from at least a millennium ago, these are the earliest known Arabic short stories, surviving in a single, ragged manuscript in a library in Istanbul. Some found their way into The Arabian Nights but most have never been read in English before. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange has monsters, lost princes, jewels beyond price, a princess turned into a gazelle, sword-wielding statues and shocking reversals of fortune.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm C. Lyons (1929 - 2019) is also the translator of the Penguin Classics edition of the complete Arabian Nights. He was Sir Thomas Adams Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University and is a life fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is one of the world's leading experts on classical Arabic literature. Robert Irwin's books include For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies, The Middle East in the Middle Ages, The Arabian Nights: A Companion and (as editor) The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabian Literature. He also introduced and edited the Penguin Classics Arabian Nights.
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ESTONIA
ESTONIA
ESTONIA
ENGLAND
Lyons, Malcolm C. and Lyons, Ursula (translators). Tales from 1,001 Nights: Aladdin, Ali Baba and Other Favourites. New York. 2012. Penguin Books. 9780141191669. Introduction by Ursula Lyons. Penguin Classics Hardcover, A. 528 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Now in paperback: the best-loved tales from the acclaimed new translation This is the essential one-volume edition of The Arabian Nights, abridged from the celebrated new three-volume translation. Included are the timeless and unforgettable stories of Aladdin, Ali Baba and the forty thieves, Sinbad the Sailor, and many others, in a handy companion to the landmark translation described a "the most ambitious and thorough" by The Guardian (London).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm Lyons (co-translator) is a professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and a widely published scholar of classical Arabic literature. Ursula Lyons (co-translator) is an emeritus fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin (editor, introducer) is the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion as well as numerous other studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism.
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EUROPE
EUROPE
EUROPE
ESTONIA
Lyons, Malcolm C. and Lyons, Ursula (translators). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volumes 1-3 Deluxe Boxed Set. New York. 2011. Penguin Books. 9780141198279. Edited and with an introduction by Robert Irwin. 2784 pages. hardcover. Translation of ألف ليلة ولة.
DESCRIPTION - The acclaimed new translation of one of the best-known and most influential classics of world literature-available in a deluxe hardcover boxed set designed by Coralie Bickford Smith. From Ali Baba and the forty thieves to the voyages of Sinbad, the stories of The Arabian Nights are timeless and unforgettable. Published here in their entirety in a splendid three-volume hardcover set, this critically acclaimed edition brings these classic tales to life for modern readers. It also includes new translations from the eighteenth-century French of the so-called "orphan stories," for which no original Arabic text remains.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm Lyons (co-translator) is a professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and a widely published scholar of classical Arabic literature. Ursula Lyons (co-translator) is an emeritus fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin (editor, introducer) is the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion as well as numerous other studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism.
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FAROE ISLANDS
FAROE ISLANDS
FAROE ISLANDS
EUROPE
Lyons. Malcolm C. with Ursula Lyons (translators). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1. New York. 2010. Penguin Books. 9780140449389. Introduction by Ursula Lyons. 982 pages. paperback. Cover: Flying over Istanbul and the Galata Tower on the Magic Carpet, 19th-century miniature from The Tale, of The Thousand and One Nights, in the University Library, Istanbul (photogaph The Art Archive,' Gianni Doak Orti).
DESCRIPTION - When the beautiful Shahrazad gives herself to the bloody-handed King Shahriyar, she is not expected to survive beyond dawn. But using all her wit and guile, she begins a sequence of stories that will last 1001 nights: stories of 'ifrits and money-changers, princes and slave girls, fishermen and queens, and magical gardens of paradise. This volume also includes the well-known tale of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'. Along with this landmark new translation, Robert Irwin's introduction discusses the many cultures The Arabian Nights has drawn on and the elaborate structure of the story-within-a-story that defines the collection, as well as the importance to the Nights of locked doors, sex and the recurring themes of money, merchants and debts. This edition also contains suggestions for further reading, a glossary, maps and a chronology.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm Lyons (co-translator) is a professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and a widely published scholar of classical Arabic literature. Ursula Lyons (co-translator) is an emeritus fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin (editor, introducer) is the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion as well as numerous other studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism.
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FINLAND
FINLAND
FINLAND
FAROE ISLANDS
Lyons. Malcolm C. with Ursula Lyons (translators). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 2. New York. 2010. Penguin Books. 9780140449396. Introduction by Ursula Lyons. 878 pages. paperback. Cover: Aladdin Transported by the Genie, 19th-century miniature from The Tales of The Thousand and One Nights, in the University Library, Istanbul (photogaph © The Art Archive/Gianni Dagli Orti).
DESCRIPTION - When the beautiful Shahrazad gives herself to the bloody-handed King Shahriyar, she is not expected to survive,- beyond, dawn. But using all her wit and guile, she begins a sequence of stories that will last 1001 nights: stories of jinns and blind men, warriors and princesses, viziers and magical palaces, and wonderful talking birds. This volume also includes the well-known tales of Sindbad the Sailor. Along with this landmark new translation, Robert Irwin's introduction examines the history and provenance of the Nights, the different uses of the works - from ethnographic source to storytelling celebration - and the varied translations through the years. This edition also contains a glossary and maps.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm Lyons (co-translator) is a professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and a widely published scholar of classical Arabic literature. Ursula Lyons (co-translator) is an emeritus fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin (editor, introducer) is the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion as well as numerous other studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism.
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FRANCE
FRANCE
FRANCE
FINLAND
Lyons. Malcolm C. with Ursula Lyons (translators). The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 3. New York. 2010. Penguin Books. 9780140449402. Introduction by Ursula Lyons. 855 pages. paperback. Cover. The Genie Appearing from the Lamp 19th-century miniature from The Tales of The Thousand and One Nights, the University Library, Istanbul.
DESCRIPTION - When the beautiful Shahrazad gives herself to the bloody-handed King Shahriyar, she is not expected to survive beyond dawn. But using all her wit and guile, she begins a sequence of stories that will last 1001 nights: stories of caliphs and merchants, sultans and dancing girls, robbers and enchanted rings, and fantastical fountains of Youth. This volume also includes the well-known tale of 'Aladdin and the Magic Lamp'. Along with this landmark new translation, Robert Irwin's introduction examines the influence of the Nights on writers through the centuries, in works as diverse as The Canterbury Tales and Jane Eyre, and reflects upon the 'improvements' many of these writers made to the stories. This edition also contains a glossary and maps.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Malcolm Lyons (co-translator) is a professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and a widely published scholar of classical Arabic literature. Ursula Lyons (co-translator) is an emeritus fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, specializes in modern Arabic literature. Robert Irwin (editor, introducer) is the author of The Arabian Nights: A Companion as well as numerous other studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism.
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GERMANY
GERMANY
GERMANY
FRANCE
Magidow, Melanie (editor). The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman: The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma. New York. 2021. Penguin Books. 9780143134268. Translated and with an Introduction by Melanie Magidow. 208 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Published in English for the first time, and the only Arabic epic named for a woman, The Tale of Princess Fatima recounts the thrilling adventures of a legendary medieval warrior universally known throughout the Middle East and long overdue to join world literature's pantheon of female heroes. A fearsome, sword-slinging heroine who defeated countless men in stealth attacks on horseback, Dhat al-Himma, or Princess Fatima, was secretly given away at birth because she wasn't male, only to triumph as the most formidable warrior of her time. Known alternately as "she-wolf," "woman of high resolve," and "calamity of the soul," she lives on in this rousing narrative of female empowerment, in which she leads armies of more than seventy thousand men in clashes between rival tribes and between Muslims and Christians; reconciles with her father after taking him prisoner; and fends off her infatuated cousin, who challenges her to a battle for the right to marry her. Though her cousin suffers an ignominious defeat, he impregnates Fatima against her will and, when she gives birth to a Black son, disowns his own son, who also grows up to be a great warrior, eventually avenging his mother's honor. The epic culminates in a showdown between Fatima and another formidable warrior woman, and earns Fatima a place alongside the likes of Circe, Mulan, Wonder Woman, Katniss Everdeen and other powerful women.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Melanie Magidow (editor/translator) is an independent scholar and professional translator with a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of Texas at Austin. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Fulbright Commission. She lives in Rhode Island.
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GREECE
GREECE
GREECE
GERMANY
Marchi, Lisa. The Funambulists: Women Poets of the Arab Diaspora. Syracuse. 2021. Syracuse University Press. 9780815637523. 256 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The Funambulists brings together the diverse poetry collections of six contemporary Arab diasporic women poets. Spanning multiple languages and regions, this volume illuminates the distinct artistic voice of each poet, yet also highlights the aesthetic and political relevance that unites their work. Marchi explores the work of Naomi Shihab Nye, a celebrated American poet of Palestinian descent; Iman Mersal, an Egyptian poet living in Edmonton, Canada, who writes in Arabic; Nadine Ltaif, a Lebanese poet who lives in Quebec and has adopted French as her language; Maram al-Massri, a Syrian poet writing in Arabic and living in France; Suheir Hammad, an American poet of Palestinian origin; and Mina Boulhanna, a Moroccan poet living in Italy and writing in Italian. Despite their varying geographical and political backgrounds, these poets find common ground in themes of injustice, spirituality, gender, race, and class. Drawing upon the concept of tension, Marchi examines both the breaking points and the creative energies that traverse the poetic works of these writers. These celebrated funambulists use their art of balance and flexibility bolstered by their courage and transgression to walk a tightrope stretched out across cultures, faiths, and nations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Lisa Marchi teaches in the Department of Humanities at the University of Trento in Italy. Her research focuses on Arab diasporic literature.
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GREENLAND
GREENLAND
GREENLAND
GREECE
Mathers, Edward Powys (translator). Thousand and One Nights, 4 Volumes. New York. 1972. St Martin's Press. Rendered into English from the literal French translation of Dr. J. C. Mardrus by Powys Mathers. hardcover. Translation of ألف ليلة ولة.
DESCRIPTION - One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Greek, Indian, Jewish, Persian and Turkish folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hezār Afsān, which in turn relied partly on Indian elements. What is common throughout all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer. Some of the stories commonly associated with The Nights, in particular "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", were not part of The Nights in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators. Madrus' translation into French appeared in 1899 and was the first European rendering which faithfully reflected the original work. Mather's translation is considered the best rendered into English.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Powys Mathers (28 August 1892 - 3 February 1939) was an English translator and poet, and also a pioneer of compiling advanced cryptic crosswords. Powys Mathers was born in Forest Hill, London, the son of a newspaper proprietor. He was educated at Loretto and Trinity College, Oxford. He is well known as the translator of J. C. Mardrus's French version of One Thousand Nights and One Night. His English version of Mardrus appeared in 1923, and is known as Mardrus/Mathers. He is known also for the translations The Garden of Bright Waters: One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems (1920); and of the Kashmiri poet Bilhana in Bilhana: Black Marigolds (1919), a free interpretation in the tradition of Edward FitzGerald. These are not scholarly works, and are in some cases based on intermediate versions in European languages. Some of his translations were set to music by Aaron Copland. He was also a composer of cryptic crosswords for The Observer under the pseudonym "Torquemada" from 1926 until his death. Under this pseudonym, he reviewed detective stories from 1934 to 1939.
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HUNGARY
HUNGARY
HUNGARY
GREENLAND
Salt, Jeremy. The Last Ottoman Wars: The Human Cost, 1877-1923. Salt Lake City. 2019. University of Utah Press. 9781607817048. 6 x 9. 6 maps. 432 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - During the last half century of its existence, the Ottoman Empire and the lands around its borders were places of constant political turmoil and unceasing military action. The enormous costs of war were paid not only by politicians and soldiers, but by the Ottoman civilian population as well. This book examines the hardships that ordinary people, Muslim and Christian alike, endured during decades of warfare. Jeremy Salt brings to the surface previously ignored facts that disrupt the conventional narrative of an ethno-religious division between Muslim perpetrators and Christian victims of violence. Salt shows instead that all major ethno-religious groups were guilty of violent acts. The result is a more balanced picture of European involvement in the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans, The effects of these events are felt to the present day. This extraordinary story centers not on military campaigns but on ordinary civilians whose lives were disrupted and in many cases destroyed by events over which they had no control. Disease, malnutrition, massacre and inter-communal fighting killed millions of people during the First World War alone. Until now this epic saga of human suffering has remained a story largely untold.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jeremy Salt retired in 2015 as an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University, Ankara. He is the author of several books.
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ICELAND
ICELAND
ICELAND
HUNGARY
Salt, Jeremy. Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands. Berkeley. 2008. University of California Press. 9780520255517. 1 map. 484 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Written for those who want to know more about the Middle East than the mainstream media is willing or able to tell, this book begins by examining a question that has been asked by numerous commentators since September 11, 2001: ‘Why do they hate us?' Jeremy Salt offers the background essential for understanding the Middle East today by chronicling the long and bloody history of Western intervention in Arab lands. In lucid detail, he examines the major events that have shaped the region - ranging from the French in Algeria and the British in Egypt in the nineteenth century to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and to the continuing war in Iraq. Linking all of these together, Salt paints a damning picture of a sustained campaign by Western powers to dominate the Middle East by whatever means necessary. Throughout, he emphasizes the human cost of the policies put in place to preserve ‘Western interests' or in the name of bringing civilization, democracy, or freedom to the region. Making use of extensive research in U.S. and British archives that reveals what politicians were deciding behind closed doors, and why, this is a book that will change the way we see the Middle East.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jeremy Salt teaches in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Ankara and is author of Imperialism, Evangelism, and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896.
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IRELAND
IRELAND
IRELAND
ICELAND
Usama Ibn Munqidh. The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades. New York. 2008. Penguin Books. 9780140455137. Edited, translated and with an introduction by Paul M. Cobb. 339 pages. paperback. Cover - Illumination from the Maquamat manuscript, painted by al-Wasiti in Baghdad in 1247.
DESCRIPTION - This book contains the autobiographical works of Usama ibn Munqidh, a twelfth-century Arab aristocrat. Full of detail, wit and melancholy, Usama's narrative anecdotes illustrate the inscrutability of God's will in life, as well as providing a memorable record of Islam's long encounter with the Crusaders, known to Usama only as the Franks. This edition focuses on The Book of Contemplation, but also uses extracts from THE BOOK OF THE STAFF and KERNELS OF REFINEMENT to produce a complete and human portrayal of Islamic perspectives on day-to-day existence, warfare, and the curious European invaders. Paul M. Cobb's accessible translation is accompanied by an introduction that places Usama's writings in their historical and literary context, explains the poetry of his language and examines the divisions between Islamic sects at the time. This edition also contains maps, a chronology of the author's life, a family tree, suggested further reading and a glossary.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Usama ibn Munqidh (1095-1188) was born in northern Syria. In the last decades of his life he concentrated on writing, collecting his scattered poems into a much-praised Diwan, but specialising in topical anthologies of poetry and prose like The Book of the Staff or Kernels of Refinement. Usama's last patron was the mighty sultan Saladin, to whom he intended his most famous work, the Book of Contemplation. He died in Damascus in 1188.
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ITALY
ITALY
ITALY
IRELAND
AFGHANISTAN
[ AFGHANISTAN - Poetry ]Hussaini, Hajar. Disbound: Poems. Iowa City. 2022. University of Iowa Press. 9781609388676. Kuhl House Poets. 89 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Hajar Hussaini's poems in Disbound scrutinize the social, political, and historical traces inherited from one's language. The traces she finds - the flow of international commodities implied in a plosive consonant, an image of the world's nations convening to reject the full stop - retrieve a personal history between countries (Afghanistan and the United States) and languages (Persian and English) that has been constantly disrupted and distorted by war, governments, and media. ADVANCE PRAISE: Hajar Hussaini's debut collection is radical in the fullest sense of the word: deeply rooted, innovative, truth-telling. Fiercely attentive to the complex bonds and disbindings of personhood, family, and nation, these poems also delight in art's capacity to make a world - a parallel site of desire and belonging - without turning away from the realities of all that is coming apart around it. This is work of lasting imaginative power.” - Elizabeth Willis, author, Alive: New and Selected Poems. “In Disbound, Hussaini builds an enduring monument out of war's remnants. The poet unflinchingly takes up the exile's task of taking inventory. Past and present, inner and outer, loss and longing meet on the page to trace a personal history against a nation's history of unrelenting war. In language that is at once precise and haunting, Hussaini creates exquisite order out of disorder.” - Fowzia Karimi, author, Above Us the Milky Way. “Hajar Hussaini's Disbound is a penetrating collection of poems that quietly magnify, with cerebral discernment, the left-behind world of home in Kabul and Kandahar, as war and the quotidian continue. Poems awaken memory to a careful present tense of pith description. Violence and what is heart-kept are distilled in both deftly turning lyrics and deeply experimental fragments that build necessary cataloging. We are engrossed in her innovative language: how it shakes us with its brilliance and guides us into the reality of these arresting poems.” - Prageeta Sharma, author, Grief Sequence. “Disbound begins with what has fallen apart amid war and migration, shaping its poetics into a powerful interrogation of what persists, what brings shame, what we refuse to look at, what's left behind, and what never comes back. What is most striking about this brilliant first book is how it develops a vocabulary and syntax of the many types of violences produced by the failures of conquest and empire. Here the poet cannibalizes the ‘ideology from which I've come' and spits it out as a bubbling narrative of death, displacement, and survival.” - Daniel Borzutzky, author, Lake Michigan.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hajar Hussaini is an Afghan poet and literary translator. Her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Margins, and Pamenar Press. Hussaini lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
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ITALY-SICILY
ITALY-SICILY
ITALY-SICILY
ITALY
ARMENIA
[ ARMENIA - Folklore ]Kudian, Mischa. Three Apples Fell From Heaven: A Collection of Armenian Folk and Fairy Tales. London. 1969. Rupert Hart-Davis. 0246639601. Illustrated by Ann Tout. 128 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Three apples fell from Heaven. these are the words with which most Armenian folk and fairy tales end. Armenian folk lore has been handed down by word of mouth for many generations, but it is only within the last century that any systematic attempt has been made to record and preserve it. This collection of tales was made after a study of many hundreds, published at different times, in various Armenian dialects. The Armenians have had a turbulent history of over four thousand years. In spite of being invaded by Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Tartars, Turks and Russians, the ancient race of Armenians has miraculously survived. These eighteen delightful tales are living proof that the ancient Armenian folk lore has survived as well."
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mischa Kudian was a well-known British-Armenian translator of Armenian prose and poetry, as well as a writer, painter, and dentist.
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LATVIA
LATVIA
LATVIA
ITALY-SICILY
Kuzmich, Naira. In Everything I See Your Hand: Stories. New Orleans. 2022. University of New Orleans Press. 9781608012374. 250 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - What's the difference between leaving the motherland in order to pursue grander desires—a promised better life in the U.S.—and leaving the literal mother or family line? When does the journey toward self-possession become something closer to self-exile? Living daily in the tension between assimilation and disillusionment, the Armenian-American protagonists of In Everything I See Your Hand struggle with the belief that their futures are already decided, futures that they can only escape through death or departure—if they can escape them at all. Before her death at age 29, Naira Kuzmich finished this collection. In their empathy, savvy, and ardently wrought language, these stories are gifts that seduce, devastate, and shine.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Naira Kuzmich was born in Armenia and raised in the Los Angeles enclave of Little Armenia. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in West Branch, Blackbird, Ecotone, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She passed away in 2019 from lung cancer at the age of 29.
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LITHUANIA
LITHUANIA
LITHUANIA
LATVIA
IRAN
[ IRAN - PERSIA - Poetry ]al-Hallaj, Husayn ibn Mansur. Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr. Evanston. 2018. Northwestern University Press. 9780810137356. Translated from the Arabic by Carl W. Ernst. 6 × 9 INCHES. 216 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Inaugural Winner of the Global Humanities Translation Prize. Hallaj is the first authoritative translation of the Arabic poetry of Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, an early Sufi mystic. Despite his execution in Baghdad in 922 and the subsequent suppression of his work, Hallaj left an enduring literary and spiritual legacy that continues to inspire readers around the world. In Hallaj, Carl W. Ernst offers a definitive collection of 117 of Hallaj’s poems expertly translated for contemporary readers interested in Middle Eastern and Sufi poetry and spirituality. Ernst’s fresh and direct translations reveal Hallaj’s wide range of themes and genres, from courtly love poems to metaphysical reflections on union with God. In a fascinating introduction, Ernst traces Hallaj’s dramatic story within classical Islamic civilization and early Arabic Sufi poetry. Setting himself apart by revealing Sufi secrets to the world, Hallaj was both celebrated and condemned for declaring: “I am the Truth. ” Expressing lyrics and ideas still heard in popular songs, the works of Hallaj remain vital and fresh even a thousand years after their composition. They reveal him as a master of spiritual poetry centuries before Rumi, who regarded Hallaj as a model. This unique collection makes it possible to appreciate the poems on their own, as part of the tragic legend of Hallaj, and as a formidable legacy of Middle Eastern culture. “‘Before Rumi there was Hallaj. ’ Carl Ernst makes this astute observation in his Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr, to date the most thorough study in English of the verse of al-Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj, a seminal figure of Islamic mysticism. Ernst provides a rigorous introduction to Hallaj’s writings, followed by carefully crafted translations based on his insightful readings of more than a hundred poems ascribed to this early Sufi poet. ” —Th. Emil Homerin, author of Principles of Sufism.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - HUSAYN IBN MANSUR AL-HALLAJ was born in the ninth century and became a major writer and thinker of the Sufi movement. CARL W. ERNST is William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and codirector of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. He is the author of How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations and many other scholarly works.
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MACEDONIA
MACEDONIA
MACEDONIA
LITHUANIA
Attar, Farid Ud-Din. The Conference of the Birds. New York. 1984. Penguin Books. 0140444343. Translated from the Persian and with an introduction by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis. 234 pages. paperback. The cover shows 'The Concourse of the Birds' from a manuscript of The Conference of the Birds, painted by Habib Allah. Translation of منطق الطیر [Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr].
DESCRIPTION - Attar's great mystical poem opens when all the birds of the world gather together to begin the search for an ideal king. What follows is a marvellous allegorical rendering of Sufism - the secretive and paradoxical form of Islamic mysticism. Like THE CANTERBURY TALES, THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS consists of a group of stories bound together by a pilgrimage. The Way of the sufi is expounded here in tales that are often riddling and sometimes obscure, but full of incident and suspense, laced with quick character sketches and witty vignettes of everyday life in twelfth-century Persia. Above all, though, the poem puts into words themes of love and the search for divine unity, and in conveying these Attar 'has transformed belief into poetry, much in the same way that Milton or Dante did'.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abū Ḥamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (c. 1145 - c. 1221) and ʿAṭṭār ('the perfumer'), was a Persian Muslim poet, theoretician of Sufism, and hagiographer from Nishapur who had an immense and lasting influence on Persian poetry and Sufism.
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MALTA
MALTA
MALTA
MACEDONIA
Behbahani, Simin. A Cup of Sin: Selected Poems . Syracuse. 2023. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611622. Edited and translated from the Persian by Farzaneh Milani and Kaveh Safa. With introductory essays by the poet and an afterword by Kaveh Safeh. Series: Middle East Literature in Translation. 212 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Simin Behbahani's collection contains some of the most formative work of twentieth-century Persian literature. Written over almost a half-century, much of her poetry reflects the traumatic experiences that have shaped Iranian history: revolution and war. Behbahani balances artful inquiry and shocking realism in both her language and imagery to probe the depths of political, cultural, and moral oppression. In the traditional verse of the ghazal, she improvises with meter to echo and provide new interpretations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Simin Behbahani (1927-2014) was a celebrated poet, lyricist, and activist. She received the Simon de Beauvoir Prize for Women's Freedom in 2009 and was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Farzaneh Milani is professor of Persian literature and studies in women and gender at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Veils and Words: The Emerging Voice of Iranian Women Writers and Words, Not Swords: Iranian Women Writers and the Freedom of Movement. Kaveh Safa has taught courses in anthropology and Persian at the Universities of Virginia and Chicago.
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MONTENEGRO
MONTENEGRO
MONTENEGRO
MALTA
Daneshvar, Simin. Island of Bewilderment: A Novel of Modern Iran. Syracuse. 2022. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611479. Translated from the Persian by Patricia J. Higgins and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi. Series: Middle East Literature in Translation. 6 x 9. appendix, glossary, bibliography. 352 pages. paperback. Translation of جزیره سرگردا.
DESCRIPTION - Twenty-six-year-old college graduate, artist, and employee of the Ministry of Art and Culture, Hasti Nourian aspires to be a “new woman” - independent-minded, strong-willed, and in control of her own destiny. A destiny that includes Morad, an idealistic young architect and artist with whom Hasti is deeply in love. Morad is a sharp critic of Iran's Westernized bourgeois class, the one that Hasti's mother relishes. After Hasti's father died, her mother married a wealthy businessman and moved to an exclusive neighborhood in northern Tehran. Socializing with a mixed group of Americans, English-speaking Iranians, and British expats, her mother's life revolves around gym visits, hairdressers, and party planning. When her mother persuades Hasti to join her at the spa, she introduces her to Salim, an eligible young man from a wealthy family whose British education and proper comportment, as well as his economic status make him an ideal suitor for Hasti in her mother's eyes. Against her better judgment, Hasti finds herself attracted to Salim and tempted by her mother's comfortable lifestyle. As the novel unfolds, Hasti is torn between her first love and the radical politics of her university friends, and love for her mother and the freedom econmic security can bring. Set in Tehran in the mid-1970s, just a few years before the 1977–79 revolution, Daneshvar's unforgettable novel depicts the tumultuous social, cultural, and economic changes of the day through the intimate story of a young woman's struggle to find her identity. “Island of Bewilderment is a welcome addition to the repertoire of modern Iranian literature now available in English.” - Franklin Lewis, University of Chicago. “Regarded by critics and readers as the most distinguished grand lady of Persian fiction, Simin Daneshvar, as Wallace Stegner observed, belongs not merely to Iran, but to the world.” - M. R. Ghanoonparvar, professor emeritus of Persian and comparative literature, University of Texas at Austin.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Simin Daneshvar (1921–2012) was an Iranian author, translator, and professor of art history at Tehran University. She is the author of Savushun: A Novel about Modern Iran, widely considered the first modern Persian-language novel written by a woman. Patricia J. Higgins is University Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Anthropology at SUNY Plattsburg. She is co-translator of Hafez in Love: A Novel. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is instructional Professor of Persian at the University of Chicago. She is the author of several books and co-translator of Hafez in Love: A Novel.
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NETHERLANDS
NETHERLANDS
NETHERLANDS
MONTENEGRO
Ferdowsi, Abolqasem. Rostam: Tales of Love and War from the Shahnameh. New York. 2009. Penguin Books. 9780143105893. Translated and with an introduction by Dick Davis. 292 pages. paperback. Cover art - The Art Archive.
DESCRIPTION - The selected adventures of Persia's Hercules, from Iran's great national epic. No understanding of world mythology is complete without acquaintance with Rostam, Iran's most celebrated mythological hero. According to the Shahnameh (the tenth-century Book of Kings), this titan, magnificent in strength and courage, bestrode Persia for 500 years. While he often served fickle kings - undergoing many trials of combat, cunning, and endurance - he was never their servant and owed allegiance only to his nation's greater good. Anyone interested in folklore, world literature, or Iranian culture will find Rostam both a rousing and illuminating read.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abolqasem Ferdowsi was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus in 940. His great epic, Shahnameh, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan. Ferdowsi died around 1020 in poverty.
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NORWAY
NORWAY
NORWAY
NETHERLANDS
Ferdowsi, Abolqasem. Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. New York. 2016. Penguin Books. 9780143108320. Translated by Dick Davis. Foreword by Azar Nafisi. 1040 pages. paperback. Translation of شاهنامه [Šāhnāme].
DESCRIPTION - The definitive translation by Dick Davis of the great national epic of Iran-now newly revised and expanded to be the most complete English-language edition A Penguin Classic Dick Davis-"our pre-eminent translator from the Persian" (The Washington Post)-has revised and expanded his acclaimed translation of Ferdowsi's masterpiece, adding more than 100 pages of newly translated text. Davis's elegant combination of prose and verse allows the poetry of the Shahnameh to sing its own tales directly, interspersed sparingly with clearly marked explanations to ease along modern readers. Originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan in the tenth century, the Shahnameh is among the greatest works of world literature. This prodigious narrative tells the story of pre-Islamic Persia, from the mythical creation of the world and the dawn of Persian civilization through the seventh-century Arab conquest. The stories of the Shahnameh are deeply embedded in Persian culture and beyond, as attested by their appearance in such works as The Kite Runner and the love poems of Rumi and Hafez.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abolqasem Ferdowsi was born in Khorasan in a village near Tus in 940. His great epic, Shahnameh, was originally composed for the Samanid princes of Khorasan. Ferdowsi died around 1020 in poverty. Dick Davis (translator) is professor emeritus of Persian at Ohio State University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His translations from Persian include Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz and Vis and Ramin. Azar Nafisi (foreword) is the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, Things I’ve Been Silent About,and The Republic of Imagination. She lives in Washington, D.C.
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POLAND
POLAND
POLAND
NORWAY
Gorgani, Fakhraddin. Vis and Ramin. New York. 2009. Penguin Books. 9780143105626. Introduction by Dick Davis. 519 pages. paperback. Cover illustration - Jen Wang: (left detail) Illuminated pages of a Koran manuscript, Il-Khanid Mameluke School (vellum) by Islamic School (14th century). Translation of ويس و رامين.
DESCRIPTION - A classic Persian tale of war and forbidden love in the eleventh century. Believed by scholars to be the inspiration for TRISTAN AND ISOLDE, VIS AND RAMIN was written between 1050 and 1055 and is considered the first epic Persian romance. At the heart of the story is Vis, daughter of the queen of Mah and promised to Mobad, King of Marv. Against a background of court intrigue, broken promises, and open conflict, Vis finds herself escorted to her future husband by his brother, Ramin-an impetuous prince who cannot help falling in love with his charge and jeopardizing the fate of two realms. VIS AND RAMIN, a masterpiece of psychological perceptiveness, is an epic with timeless appeal.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fakhraddin Gorgani was an eleventh-century Persian poet. Though little is known about his life, Gorgani's name implies that he may have been from the town of Gorgani, east of the Caspian Sea. DICK DAVIS is the foremost scholar-translator of Persian literature at work today. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a professor of Persian at Ohio State University.
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PORTUGAL
PORTUGAL
PORTUGAL
POLAND
Hafez / Khatun, Jahan Malek / Zakani, Obayd-e. Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz. New York. 2013. Penguin Books. 9780143107286. Translated and with an introduction by Dick Davis. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. 368 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Acclaimed translator Dick Davis breathes new life into the timeless works of three masters of 14th-century Persian literature Together, Hafez, a giant of world literature; Jahan Malek Khatun, an eloquent princess; and Obayd-e Zakani, a dissolute satirist, represent one of the most remarkable literary flowerings of any era. All three lived in the famed city of Shiraz, a provincial capital of south-central Iran, and all three drew support from arts-loving rulers during a time better known for its violence than its creative brilliance. Here Dick Davis, an award-winning poet widely considered "our finest translator of Persian poetry" (The Times Literary Supplement), presents a diverse selection of some of the best poems by these world-renowned authors and shows us the spiritual and secular aspects of love, in varieties embracing every aspect of the human heart. "Davis [is] widely acknowledged as the leading translator of Persian literature in our time. .Faces of Love has made the Persian originals into real and moving English poems." -Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Persian lyric poet Hafiz (born Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī) grew up in Shiraz. Very little is known about his life, but it is thought that he may have memorized the Qur’an after hearing his father recite passages. He became a poet at the court of Abu Ishak and also taught at a religious college. As the author of numerous ghazals expressing love, spirituality, and protest, he is one of the most celebrated of the Persian poets and and his influence can be felt to this day. Jahan Malek Khatun was an Injuid poet and princess. She wrote under pen name Jahān and was a contemporary of the poet Hafez. Her birthdate is not known, but her parents were married in 1324, so she must have been born after that date. Her father was Jalāl al-Dīn Masūʿdshāh and her mother was a daughter of Ghiyas al-Din Hamadani. It was usual for Injuid noble women to receive a good education, and Jahan's was exceptionally good because she was an only child, so the attention usually given to sons was given to her instead. Her step-mother was a Chupanid princess, Sultānbakht - daughter of Dimashq Khwaja, who married Masūʿdshāh in Baghdad in 1342. After her father's marriage she too was married to Amin al-Din Jahrumi between 1343 and 1347, who was a companion of the Injuid ruler, and nephew of Shaikh Jamāl al-Dīn Abu Ishāq. Masūʿdshāh was deposed in 1339 by allies of Shams al-Dīn Muhammad and Chupanid Pir Hosayn. Masūʿdshāh fled to Luristan where he was finally killed while bathing by Yagi Basti's men in 1342. Jahan Malek was brought up and guarded by her uncle Abu Ishāq, who finally fell from power in 1353 when Mubariz al-Din Muhammad captured Shiraz and executed Ishaq in 1357. After the downfall of her family, Jahan remained at court where it is likely that she played an active role, following in the footsteps of her close female relatives. Khwajeh Nizam al-Din Ubayd Allah al-Zakani (d. 1370), better known as Ubayd Zakani was a Persian poet of the Mongol era, regarded as one of the best satirists in Persian literature. His most famous work is Mush-o Gorbeh ("Mouse and Cat"), a political satire which attacks religious hypocrisy. Although a highly popular figure in his own time, Ubayd's work received little attention from modern scholars until recently, due to provocative and bawdy texts in the majority of his works. His style of satire has been compared to the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire. Dick Davis is a translator, a poet, and a scholar of Persian literature who has published more than twenty books. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Ohio State University. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. is the foremost English-speaking scholar of medieval Persian poetry now working in the West. He read English at Cambridge, lived in Iran for eight years (where he met and married his Iranian wife Afkham Darbandi), then completed a PhD in Medieval Persian Literature at the University of Manchester. He has resided for extended periods in both Greece and Italy (his translations include works from Italian), and has taught at both the University of California and at Ohio State University, where he was for nine years Professor of Persian and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages, retiring from that position in 2012. In all, he has published more than twenty books, including the award-winning poetry collections Seeing the World and Belonging. His translations include Ferdowsi's Shahnameh: the Persian Book of Kings and Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds. The Times Literary Supplement has called him 'our finest translator of Persian poetry'.
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ROMANIA
ROMANIA
ROMANIA
PORTUGAL
Hafiz and Bidney, Martin. Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance: A Dialogue with the Persian Poet Hafiz. Albany. 2014. SUNY Press. 9781438447889. Translated by Martin Bidney. 230 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - A selection of poems by one of Islam's greatest poetic voices. 'In his poetry, Hafiz has inscribed undeniable truth indelibly. Hafiz has no peer!' -- Goethe Poems of Wine and Tavern Romance includes 103 pioneering poems by the medieval Persian poet and Sufi monk Muhammad Shemseddin Hafiz (ca. 1320-1389). With the rich complexity of a character in Shakespeare, Hafiz celebrates his pleasures and longed-for lovers in a context of Qur'anic narrative allusion, allowing his poems to hint at stages in a spiritual quest. First translated into German in 1814, by Joseph von Hammer, Hafiz's poetry initiated a revolution in the mind of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Hafiz became, for Goethe, a Muslim mentor. Hafiz's love poems are mainly directed to the men he met in taverns, but Hammer often changed the gender of the addressees to placate contemporary opinion in Germany. Hammer rendered Hafiz's poetry in a variety of newly invented verse forms as well as traditional ones carried over from ancient Greece and Rome, which he felt would make them more acceptable to readers acquainted with such themes in Greek and Latin verse. Though always faithful to Hammer's pioneering poetic forms, Martin Bidney's new translations restore the genders as they appeared in the original Persian. In his poetic 'replies' to Hafiz, Bidney clarifies the implications of Hafiz's Qur'anic allusions and Islamic legendary references, and he also elucidates parallels between medieval Persian and various Western cultures by introducing newly translated relevant passages from such works as Carmina Burana, Ovid's Amores, and Horace's Odes. Hammer's translation of Hafiz was already a pioneering West-East synthesis when it inspired Goethe to try to top it in his own experimental West-East Divan (translated by Bidney in 2010), and Bidney's translation of Hafiz's groundbreaking, varied, verbally colorful, and melodious poetry will delight the general reader and fascinate the scholar. '. [a] fascinating and appealing book. ' -- CHOICE
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī, known by his pen name Hafez and as "Hafiz", was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy". Martin Bidney is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of West-East Divan: The Poems, with 'Notes and Essays': Goethe's Intercultural Dialogues and East-West Poetry: A Western Poet Responds to Islamic Tradition in Sonnets, Hymns, and Songs.
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RUSSIA
RUSSIA
RUSSIA
ROMANIA
Hedayat, Sadegh. The Blind Owl. New York. 1957. Grove Press. Translated by D. P. Costello. 130 pages. hardcover. Translation of بوف کو.
DESCRIPTION - THE BLIND OWL (1937) is Sadegh Hedayat's most enduring work of prose and a major literary work of 20th century Iran. Written in Persian, it tells the story of an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish nightmares that ‘the presence of death annihilates all that is imaginary. We are the offspring of death and death delivers us from the tantalizing, fraudulent attractions of life; it is death that beckons us from the depths of life. If at times we come to a halt, we do so to hear the call of death. throughout our lives, the finger of death points at us.' The narrator addresses his murderous confessions to the shadow on his wall resembling an owl. His confessions do not follow a linear progression of events and often repeat and layer themselves thematically, thus lending to the open-ended nature of interpretation of the story. Iraj Bashiri, one of the two English translators of THE BLIND OWL, comments about the atmosphere of Hedayat's works: ‘The translation and the analysis of the works of Sadeq Hedayat occupied me for over ten years. That was some twenty years ago. It is wonderful that time heals what Times bring us. Otherwise, life itself would become the burden Hedayat speaks about. Hedayat's is a dark world when you are in it. It haunts you for some time after you leave it. Eventually, however, it leaves you alone, if you leave it alone.' THE BLIND OWL was written during the oppressive latter years of Reza Shah's rule (1925-1941). It was originally published in a limited edition in Bombay, during Hedayat's year-long stay there in 1937, stamped with ‘Not for sale or publication in Iran.' It first appeared in Tehran in 1941 (as a serial in the daily Iran), after Reza Shah's abdication, and had an immediate and forceful effect. THE BLIND OWL was translated into English by D.P. Costello (1957), by Henry D. G. Law, and by Iraj Bashiri (1974), assisted by Bob Loblaw. ‘This most unusual and beautifully written short novel is the work of the Persian disciple of Sartre, an astonishing tale which conveys the movements of an insane mind. The whole cyclical world of madness, compulsion and obsession is not described but created. the power of the novel comes from the extraordinary variations, the repeated but seemingly different aspects of the narrator's compulsion.' - William Kay Archer.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sadeq (or Sadegh) Hedayat ( February 17, 1903, Tehran - 4 April 1951, Paris, France) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories. He was born to an aristocratic family and was educated at Collège Saint-Louis (French catholic school) and Dar ol-Fonoon (1914–1916) in Tehran. In 1925, he was among a select few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially pursued dentistry before giving this up for engineering. After four years in France and Belgium, where he befriended Sartre, who was to remain a lifelong friend, Hedayat returned to Iran where he held various jobs for short periods, before returning to Paris. Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Guy de Maupassant, Anton Chekhov, Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka intrigued him the most. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values. In his later years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran's decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, especially by his peers, Hedayat's last published work, THE MESSAGE OF KAFKA, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression. Hedayat's most enduring work is the short novel THE BLIND OWL of 1937. It has been called ‘one of the most important literary works in the Persian language' (S. A. Qudsi). He committed suicide by gassing himself in his kitchen and is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
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SCOTLAND
SCOTLAND
SCOTLAND
RUSSIA
Irani, Manuchehr. King of the Benighted. Washington DC. 1990. Mage Publishers. 0934211264. Translated from the Persian by Abbas Milani. 99 pages. hardcover. Translation of Shāh-i siyāh pūshān.
DESCRIPTION - KING OF THE BENIGHTED was mailed out of Iran page by page. It is both a firsthand account of the hard realities of life under the Islamic Republic and a literary masterpiece by one of Iran's best contemporary writers. The author has creatively combined modern techniques of fiction with the rich tradition of Persian poetry to tell a timeless tale. The novella invites the reader to join the flow of the artist's imagination and to share moments in the life of a contemporary Iranian poet, including his imprisonment and incredible encounter with a young prisoner called Sarmad. Should you want to know why Iran has become a nation of mourners, you might follow the poet where he has gone. KING OF THE BENIGHTED epitomizes a new emerging spirit in contemporary Persian literature and shows that despite Iran's isolation today, its literature is very much part of the spirit sweeping the world. Included in this volume is an English prose rendition of the central metaphor of the novella, the 12th century poet Nizami's ‘The Black Dome.' An insightful introduction by Nasrin Rahimieh and a perceptive afterword by the translator reflect on the state of post-revolutionary Persian literature.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Manuchehr Irani is a pen name used by many writers living in Iran and publishing their work abroad.
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SERBIA
SERBIA
SERBIA
SCOTLAND
Kapuscinski, Ryszard. Shah of Shahs. San Diego. 1985. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 015181483x. Translated from the Polish by William R. Grand & Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand. 192 pages. hardcover. Translation of Szachinszach.
DESCRIPTION - In Shah of Shahs Kapuscinski brings a mythographer's perspective and a novelist's virtuosity to bear on the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran, one of the most infamous of the United States' client-dictators, who resolved to transform his country into 'a second America in a generation,' only to be toppled virtually overnight. From his vantage point at the break-up of the old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution. Translated from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ryszard Kapuscinski, Poland's most celebrated foreign correspondent, was born in 1932 in Piñsk (in what is now Belarus) and spent four decades reporting on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He is also the author of IMPERIUM, ANOTHER DAY OF LIFE, and THE SOCCER WAR. His books have been translated into twenty-eight languages. Kapuscinski died in 2007.
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SLOVAKIA
SLOVAKIA
SLOVAKIA
SERBIA
Khayaam, Omar. The Original Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam. New York. 1968. Doubleday. Translated by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah. 86 pages. hardcover. Translation of رباعی.
DESCRIPTION - Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". FitzGerald's work at first was unsuccessful, but was popularised by Whitley Stokes from 1861 onward, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1872 FitzGerald had a third edition printed which increased interest in the work in America. By the 1880s, the book was extremely well known throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent of the formation of numerous "Omar Khayyam Clubs" and a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat". FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions, and it has inspired similar translation efforts both in English and in many other languages.This 1967 translation of the Rubáiyat by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, created a scandal when published. The authors claimed it was based on a twelfth-century manuscript located in Afghanistan, where it was allegedly utilized as a Sufi teaching document. But the manuscript was never produced, and British experts in Persian literature were easily able to prove that the translation was in fact based on Edward Heron Allen's analysis of possible sources for FitzGerald's work.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīsābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire, and lived during the period of the Seljuk dynasty, around the time of the First Crusade. Robert Graves was born on July 24, 1895, in Wimbledon, near London. His father, Alfred Perceval Graves, was a Gaelic scholar and minor Irish poet. His mother, Amalie von Ranke Graves, was a relation of Leopold von Ranke, one of the founding fathers of modern historical studies. One of ten children, Robert was greatly influenced by his mother's puritanical beliefs and his father's love of Celtic poetry and myth. As a young man, he was more interested in boxing and mountain climbing than studying, although poetry later sustained him through a turbulent adolescence. In 1913 Graves won a scholarship to continue his studies at St. John's College, Oxford, but in August 1914 he enlisted as a junior officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He fought in the Battle of Loos and was injured in the Somme offensive in 1916. While convalescing, he published his first collection of poetry, OVER THE BRAZIER. By 1917, though still an active serviceman, Graves had published three volumes. In 1918, he spent a year in the trenches, where he was again severely wounded. In January 1918, at the age of twenty-two, he married eighteen-year-old Nancy Nicholson, with whom he was to have four children. Traumatized by the war, he went to Oxford with his wife and took a position at St. John's College. Graves's early volumes of poetry, like those of his contemporaries, deal with natural beauty and bucolic pleasures, and with the consequences of the First World War. OVER THE BRAZIER and FAIRIES AND FUSILIERS earned for Graves the reputation as an accomplished war poet. After meeting the American poet and theorist Laura Riding in 1926, Graves's poetry underwent a significant transformation. Douglas Day has written that the ‘influence of Laura Riding is quite possibly the most important single element in [Graves's] poetic career: she persuaded him to curb his digressiveness and his rambling philosophizing and to concentrate instead on terse, ironic poems written on personal themes.' In 1927, Graves and his first wife separated permanently, and in 1929 he published GOODBYE TO ALL THAT, an autobiography that announced his psychological accommodation with the residual horror of his war experiences. Shortly afterward, he departed to Majorca with Laura Riding. In addition to completing many books of verse while in Majorca, Graves also wrote several volumes of criticism, some in collaboration with Riding. The couple cofounded Seizin Press in 1928 and Epilogue, a semiannual magazine, in 1935. During that period, he evolved his theory of poetry as spiritually cathartic to both the poet and the reader. Although Graves claimed that he wrote novels only to earn money, it was through these that he attained status as a major writer in 1934, with the publication of the historical novel I, CLAUDIUS, and its sequel, CLAUDIUS THE GOD AND HIS WIFE MESSALINA. (During the 1970's, the BBC adapted the novels into an internationally popular television series.) At the onset of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Graves and Riding fled Majorca, eventually settling in America. In 1939, Laura Riding left Graves for the writer Schuyler Jackson; one year later Graves began a relationship with Beryl Hodge that was to last until his death. It was in the 1940s, after his break with Riding, that Graves formulated his personal mythology of the White Goddess. Inspired by late nineteenth-century studies of matriarchal societies and goddess cults, this mythology was to pervade all of his later work. After World War II, Graves returned to Majorca, where he lived with Hodge and continued to write. By the 1950's, Graves had won an enormous international reputation as a poet, novelist, literary scholar, and translator. In 1962, W. H. Auden went as far as to assert that Graves was England's ‘greatest living poet.' In 1968 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. During his lifetime he published more than 140 books, including fifty-five collections of poetry (he reworked his COLLECTED POEMS repeatedly during his career), fifteen novels, ten translations, and forty works of nonfiction, autobiography, and literary essays. From 1961 to 1966, Graves returned to England to serve as a professor of poetry at Oxford. In the 1970s his productivity fell off; and the last decade of his life was lost in silence and senility. Robert Graves died in Majorca in 1985, at the age of ninety.
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SLOVENIA
SLOVENIA
SLOVENIA
SLOVAKIA
Khayyam, Omar. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. New York. 2010. Oxford University Press. 9780199580507. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Edward Fitzgerald. Edited by Daniel Karlin. 167 pages. paperback. Translation of رباعی.
DESCRIPTION - In 1859, Edward FitzGerald translated into English the short, epigrammatic poems (or 'rubaiyat') of medieval Persian poet Omar Khayyam. If not a true translation--his Omar seems to have read Shakespeare and the King James Bible--the poem nevertheless conveyed some of the most beautiful and haunting images in English poetry, and some of the sharpest-edged. By the end of the century, it was one of the best-known poems in the English language, admired by Swinburne and Ruskin. Daniel Karlin's richly annotated edition focuses on the poem as a work of Victorian literary art, doing justice to the scope and complexity of FitzGerald's lyrical meditation on 'human death and fate. ' Karlin provides a fascinating critical introduction which documents the poem's treatment of its Persian sources, along with its multiple affiliations with English and Classical literature and to the Bible. A selection of contemporary reviews offers an insight into the poem's early reception, including the first attack on its status as a translation.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Omar Khayyám; born Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy and music. Born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran also known as Persia, at a young age he moved to Samarkand and obtained his education there. Afterwards he moved to Bukhara and became established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070), which includes a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He contributed to a calendar reform. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Al-Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. He taught the philosophy of Avicenna for decades in Nishapur, where Khayyám was born and buried. His mausoleum there remains a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year. Outside Iran and Persian-speaking countries, Khayyám has had an impact on literature and societies through the translation of his works and popularization by other scholars. The greatest such impact was in English-speaking countries; the English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him. The most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83), who made Khayyám the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation and adaptations of Khayyám's rather small number of quatrains in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyám died in 1131 and is buried in the Khayyám Garden in Nishapur. The reconstruction of the tombs of Persian icons like Hafez, Saadi, Attar, Poor sina and others were built by Reza Shah and in 1963, the Mausoleum of Omar Khayyám was reconstructed on the site by Hooshang Seyhoun. Daniel Karlin is Professor of English at the University of Sheffield. His books include Proust's English and Browning's Hatreds.
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SPAIN
SPAIN
SPAIN
SLOVENIA
Khayyam, Omar. The Ruba'iyat of Omar Khayyam. New York. 1981. Penguin Books. 9780140443844. Translated by Peter Avery and John Heath-Stubbs. 128 pages. paperback. Translation of رباعی.
DESCRIPTION - Philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, Khayyam as a poet possesses a singular originality. His poetry is richly charged with evocative power and offers a view of life characteristic of his stormy times, with striking relevance to the present day.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Omar Khayyám; born Ghiyāth ad-Dīn Abu'l-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Khayyām Nīshāpūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131), was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy and music. Born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran also known as Persia, at a young age he moved to Samarkand and obtained his education there. Afterwards he moved to Bukhara and became established as one of the major mathematicians and astronomers of the medieval period. He is the author of one of the most important treatises on algebra written before modern times, the Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra (1070), which includes a geometric method for solving cubic equations by intersecting a hyperbola with a circle. He contributed to a calendar reform. His significance as a philosopher and teacher, and his few remaining philosophical works, have not received the same attention as his scientific and poetic writings. Al-Zamakhshari referred to him as “the philosopher of the world”. He taught the philosophy of Avicenna for decades in Nishapur, where Khayyám was born and buried. His mausoleum there remains a masterpiece of Iranian architecture visited by many people every year. Outside Iran and Persian-speaking countries, Khayyám has had an impact on literature and societies through the translation of his works and popularization by other scholars. The greatest such impact was in English-speaking countries; the English scholar Thomas Hyde (1636–1703) was the first non-Persian to study him. The most influential of all was Edward FitzGerald (1809–83), who made Khayyám the most famous poet of the East in the West through his celebrated translation and adaptations of Khayyám's rather small number of quatrains in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyám died in 1131 and is buried in the Khayyám Garden in Nishapur. The reconstruction of the tombs of Persian icons like Hafez, Saadi, Attar, Poor sina and others were built by Reza Shah and in 1963, the Mausoleum of Omar Khayyám was reconstructed on the site by Hooshang Seyhoun. Daniel Karlin is Professor of English at the University of Sheffield. His books include Proust's English and Browning's Hatreds.
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SWEDEN
SWEDEN
SWEDEN
SPAIN
Khorsandi, Hadi. The Ayatollah and I. Columbia. 1987. Readers International. 0930523369. Translated by Ehssan Javan. 160 pages. hardcover. These pieces appeared in Persian in the journal Asghar Agha, published in London by the author, between 1979 and 1983.
DESCRIPTION - Hadi Khorsandi is Iran's best-known comic writer. His humorous essays and flawless parodies of officialdom skewer the mullahs governing Iran today, just as he skewered the Shah's people before the 1979 revolution. He now lives in exile in England. This is the only book where English-language readers can enjoy the wit that Iranian readers have appreciated for years. This collection of Khorsandi's writing highlights a genial and inventive spirit that will be instantly attractive to readers everywhere. Happily, his children carry on the family tradition in his son in journalism and his daughter as a top-ranking comedienne on TV, radio and in standup, mixing irreverent laughter with a sharp political edge.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hadi Khorsandi (born 22 July 1943) is a contemporary Iranian poet and satirist. Since 1979, he has been the editor and writer of the Persian-language satirical journal Asghar Agha. He is particularly renowned for his examination of Persian socio-political issues, particularly his open criticism of all forms of dictatorship and religious fundamentalism. He has lived in exile in London since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, following criticism of the new regime. He was the subject of death threats during the 1980s. Khorsandi was the recipient of the Hellman-Hammett Award in 1995. In 2009 he signed an open letter of apology posted to Iranian.com, along with 266 other Iranian academics, writers, artists and journalists, about the persecution of Bahá'ís. He is the father of the British comedian Shappi Khorsandi and British-based journalist, Peyvand Khorsandi.
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SWITZERLAND
SWITZERLAND
SWITZERLAND
SWEDEN
Lakhnavi, Ghalib and Bilgrami, Abdullah. The Adventures of Amir Hamza. New York. 2007. Modern Library. 9780679643548. A Complete & Unabridged Translation by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. Introduction by Hamid Dabashi. 949 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Gabrielle Bordwin. Jacket painting: ‘Amar Ayyar Slays a Dragon with Naphtha,’ attributed to Dasavanta and Tara (c. 1567-72). Translation of حمزه نامه / Hamzanama.
DESCRIPTION - In the tradition of such beloved classics as THE ARABIAN NIGHTS and the Persian SHAHNAMEH, here is the first unabridged English translation of a major Indo-Persian epic, THE ADVENTURES OF AMIR HAMZA (Dastan-e Amir Hamza) - a panoramic tale of magic and passion, and a classic hero's odyssey that has captivated much of the world. This Islamic saga dates back hundreds of years, perhaps to as early as the seventh century, when oral narratives of the deeds of the prophet Muhammad's uncle Amir Hamza spread through Arabia, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent, expanding into a marvelous chronicle of warriors, kings, tricksters, fairies, courtesans, and magical creatures. The definitive one-volume Urdu text by Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami appeared toward the end of the nineteenth century, but English translations of this text have always been censored and abridged - until now. In Musharraf Ali Farooqi's faithful rendition, THE ADVENTURES OF AMIR HAMZA is captured with all its colorful action, ribaldry, and fantastic elements intact. Here is the spellbinding story of Amir Hamza, the adventurer who loves Mehr-Nigar, the daughter of the Persian emperor, Naushervan. Traveling to exotic lands in the service of his emperor, Amir Hamza defeats many enemies, loves many women, and converts hundreds of infidels to the True Faith of Islam before finding his way back to his first love. Guided by a Merlin-like clairvoyant called Buzurjmehr, protected by legendary prophets, and accompanied by his loyal friend, the ingenious trickster Amar Ayyar, Amir Hamza rides his devoted winged demon-steed, Ashqar, into combat against a marvelous array of opponents, from the deadly demon, Sufaid Dev, to his own rebellious sons. Appreciated as the seminal Islamic epic or enjoyed as a sweeping tale as rich and inventive as Homer's epic sagas, THE ADVENTURES OF AMIR HAMZA is an extraordinary creation and a true literary treasure.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - GHALIB LAKHNAVI was a writer and poet who worked in India in the nineteenth century. His only known work is the one-volume Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1855). ABDULLAH BILGRAMI taught Arabic in Kanpur, India. His only known work is his enlargement of Ghalib Lakhnavi's Dastan-e Amir Hamza (1871). MUSHARRAF ALI FAROOQI is an author and translator. He has translated works by the contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed and is currently working on the Urdu Project (www.urduproject.com), an online resource for the study of Urdu language and literature. HAMID DABASHI is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a prolific author and editor.
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UKRAINE
UKRAINE
UKRAINE
SWITZERLAND
Meskoob, Shahrokh. In the Alley of the Friend: On the Poetry of Hafez. Syracuse. 2018. Syracuse University Press. 9780815636175. 6 x 9. Series: Middle East Literature in Translation. Notes, appendix. 320 pages. paperback. Translation of در کوی دوست.
DESCRIPTION - “One of those rare books that gives profound insight into a very different culture. ”—Geoffrey Squires, translator of Hafez: Translations and Interpretations of the Ghazals. The celebrated and beloved fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafez continues to play an essential role in the lives of Iranians today. For centuries, scholars have studied his work, exploring both his life and his deeply moving poetry of love, spirituality, and protest. Yet, Shahrokh Meskoob is one of the first scholars to take an innovative approach to Hafez’s poetry. Meskoob goes beyond a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of Hafez’s poetry in the Divan to access the interior thoughts of the poet and summon his spirit in the process of understanding Hafez’s mysticism.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shahrokh Meskoob (1924–2005) was a translator, writer, scholar, and one of the most influential public intellectuals in Iran. He published translations of Sophocles’s Antigone and Oedipus Rex, and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. M. R. Ghanoonparvar is professor emeritus of Persian and comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin.
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WALES
WALES
WALES
UKRAINE
Milani, Farzaneh. Veils and Words: The Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers . Syracuse. 1992. Syracuse University Press. 9780815602668. Contemporary Issues in the Middle East Series. 295 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - This is the first book in any language about the writing of women in Iran. For centuries any sense that there could be a literary tradition among women was suppressed. Since the middle of the 19th century, however, a number a of pioneering women have defied the traditional order to produce poetry and novels of the highest quality; but many of them have paid for their courage with accusations of immorality, promiscuity, heresy and even lunacy.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-American scholar and author. Milani teaches Persian literature and Women’s Studies at the University of Virginia. Milani is Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures.
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YUGOSLAVIA
YUGOSLAVIA
YUGOSLAVIA
WALES
Modarressi, Taghi. The Book of Absent People. Garden City. 1986. Doubleday. 0385230427. 206 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A novel of Iran, the first book in English by the late husband of novelist Anne Tyler.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dr. Taghi Modarressi was a child psychiatrist who was the husband of novelist Anne Tyler and an accomplished fiction writer in his own right. He was the founder of the Center for Infant Study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a pioneer in exploring the psychological makeup of infants. Dr. Modarressi was born in Tehran, Iran, the son of a lawyer, and grew up in a family of writers and educators. He earned a medical degree in Iran, where he started writing.
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YUGOSLAVIA
Modarressi, Taghi. The Pilgrim's Rules of Etiquette. New York. 1989. Doubleday. 0385238797. 279 pages. hardcover. Jacket Photograph by Alex Gotfryd Jacket. Jacket Typography by Casey Koh.
DESCRIPTION - In THE PILGRIM'S RULES OF ETIQUETTE, Modarressi has woven an even more beguiling enchantment. Although the novel is not overtly political, post-Revolutionary Iran is a prevailing character that both shapes and defines the story. Hadi Besharat is an inquisitive pilgrim stumbling down life's road, a five-foot-four-inch scholar in a bowler hat. He has taught and lectured around the world, yet is tied to his homeland by the deepest roots of passion and history. But while he has been pondering the existence of heavenly angels and whether the soul is superior to the body, his country has undergone seismic changes. Withdrawing into his books and studies, Hadi Besharat constructs a fragile world, impervious ever to the reality under his own roof. His wife longs to escape from the stifling life he has imposed upon her. His only son lives in America and has no appreciation of his father's concerns. Still, Hadi Besharat's ivory tower is undisturbed until his prize student is killed in the Iran-Iraq War. Then the alien new order intrudes with a violent force that shatters his fondest illusions and threatens his marriage, his family, even the intellectual life he cherishes. Poignant and arresting, THE PILGRIM'S RULES OF ETIQUETTE is a provocative story of crisis and faith, change and continuity.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dr. Taghi Modarressi was a child psychiatrist who was the husband of novelist Anne Tyler and an accomplished fiction writer in his own right. He was the founder of the Center for Infant Study at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a pioneer in exploring the psychological makeup of infants. Dr. Modarressi was born in Tehran, Iran, the son of a lawyer, and grew up in a family of writers and educators. He earned a medical degree in Iran, where he started writing.
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Nafisi, Azar. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York. 2003. Random House. 0375504907. 347 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - We all have dreams-things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true.' 'For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading-Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita-their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran.' Nafisi's account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi's class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of 'the Great Satan,' she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Azar Nafisi is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. She won a fellowship from Oxford and taught English literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University and Allameh Tabatabai University in Iran. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil and left Iran for America in 1997. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The New Republic, has appeared on countless radio and television programs, and is the author of ANTI-TERRA: A CRITICAL STUDY OF VLADIMIR NABOKOV'S NOVELS. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
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Nahai, Gina B. Moonlight On the Avenue of Faith. New York. 1999. Harcourt Brace. 0151003882. 376 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - One star-studded night, five-year-old Lili witnesses her mother, Roxanna the Angel, sprout wings and vanish into the sky, undisturbed by the rules of gravity. Roxanna leaves no farewell, no word of explanation, no trace of her existence. Lili's subsequent search for her mother-spurred by the tireless efforts of her aunt Miriam the Moon-is at the heart of this mesmerizing epic tale that follows Roxanna, born as a bad-luck child in the harsh Jewish ghetto of Tehran, through the opulent world of Iran's aristocracy, to the whorehouses of Turkey and beyond, to present-day Los Angeles. At stake are Roxanna's hopes for happiness, for escaping the bonds of Old World tradition and finding forgiveness for that most egregious of sins-desire. Weaving together strands of Persian and Jewish culture, Gina Nahai brings to life a courageous circle of women rooted in their homeland but reshaping their lives in America, the land of chances and choices.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gina B. Nahai is the author of Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, Sunday's Silence and Caspian Rain. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is a Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
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Nahai, Gina Barkhordar. Cry of the Peacock. New York. 1991. Crown. 0517574799. 341 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Against the backdrop of 200 years of war and revolution is woven this last untold story of Jewish history--a richly textured and masterful saga of four generations of Iranian Jews and the previously unchronicled history of the startling transformation of ancient Persia into Shiite Iran.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gina B. Nahai is the author of Cry of the Peacock, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith, Sunday's Silence and Caspian Rain. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She is a Lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.
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Pezeshkzad, Iraj. Hafez in Love: A Novel. Syracuse. 2020. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611288. Middle East Literature in Translation Series. Translated by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and Patricia J. Higgins. 226 pages. paperback. Translation of حافظ ناشنیده پند: برگی چند از دفتر خاطرات محمد گلندا.
DESCRIPTION - Shams al-Din Mohammad Hafez is in love. He is in love with a girl, with a city, and with Persian poetry. Despite his enmity with the new and dangerous city leader, the jealousy of his fellow court poets, and the competition for his beloved, Iran's favorite poet remains unbothered. When his wit and charm are not enough to keep him safe in Shiraz, his friends conspire to keep him out of trouble. But their schemes are unsuccessful. Nothing will chase Hafez from this city of wine and roses. In Pezeshkzad's fictional account, Hafez's life in fourteenth-century Shiraz is a mix of peril and humor. Set in a city that is at once beautiful and cutthroat, the novel includes a cast of historical figures to illuminate this elusive poet of the Persian literary tradition. Shabani-Jadidi and Higgins's translation brings the beloved poetry of Hafez alive for an English audience and reacquaints readers with the comic wit and original storytelling of Pezeshkzad.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Iraj Pezeshkzad was born in Tehran in 1928 and educated in Iran and then France, where he received his law degree. He is a retired diplomat, journalist, and writer. He is the author of several plays, short stories, and novels, including My Uncle Napoleon. Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi is senior lecturer of Persian language and linguistics at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Patricia J. Higgins is a University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Emerita at the State University of New York Plattsburgh.
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Rachlin, Nahid. Married To a Stranger. New York. 1983. Dutton. 0525241957. 220 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A woman's struggle for self-realization in contemporary Iran, a novel with "the clarity and spare sensuousness of Persian poetry or miniature painting."—Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. When Minou Hakini marries a man of her own choosing—an intellectual and a radical—and moves to Abadan, a thriving oil town near the Iraqi border, she imagines her life will be adventurous and liberating. Before long, however, she becomes aware of her husband's suspicious liaisons and dangerous activities. Her struggle to forge her own identity as a woman in contemporary Iran is charged with passion, anger and finally a need to escape.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nahid Rachlin (born 1950) is an Iranian-American novelist and short story writer. She has been called "perhaps the most published Iranian author in the United States".
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Rachlin, Nahid. Veils: Short Stories. San Francisco. 1992. City Lights Books. 0872862674. 131 pages. paperback. Cover: Big Fish Books.
DESCRIPTION - The ten stories in Veils take place in present-day Iran or in the United States where Iranian immigrants face alien ways. Teheran's ancient Ghanat Abad Avenue, with its labyrinth of narrow streets and alleys, loosely links the stories into a single narrative: some residents leave as soon as they can, others can live nowhere else. The men and women in these spare and sensuous narratives who are caught in the confusing whirl of changing cultures sometimes meet with failure but more often transcend difficult circumstances to gain deeper self-knowledge.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nahid Rachlin (6 June 1939 – 30 April 2025) was an Iranian-American novelist and short story writer. She has been called "perhaps the most published Iranian author in the United States". Nahid Rachlin was born 6 June 1939, in Abadan, Iran, the eighth of ten children (2 of whom had died before her birth) to Manoochehr and Mohtaram Bozorgmehri. Brought up by her mother's older from when she was not yet one until she was nine years old when her father who had been a circuit judge resigned and started a private practice. She then lived with her parents, who were emotionally distant, under the shadow of restrictive gender expectations. Her closest family relationship was with an older sister, Pari. Pari underwent arranged marriage to a physically abusive older man, and then lost access to her son after she sued for divorce. Pari remarried, but suffered episodes of mental breakdown for which she was institutionalised, and died young after a home accident. Rachlin emigrated to the United States when she was 17, gaining a BA at Lindenwood College. In 1964, she married Howard Rachlin, a psychology professor, and in 1969 became a naturalized US citizen. They had a daughter named Leila. In the early 1970s she pursued graduate study in creative writing, writing short stories for a class with Richard Humphries at Columbia University, and for a class with Donald Barthelme at City College of New York. These stories won her the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. In 1976 Rachlin returned to Iran for the first time in twelve years, drawing on the experience for her debut novel Foreigner. Rachlin died from a stroke at a hospital in Manhattan, New York, on 30 April 2025, at the age of 85.
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Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book Five. New York. 2022. Oxford University Press. 9780192857071. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi. 400 pages. paperback. Translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Volume V.
DESCRIPTION - This is the first ever translation of the entirety of Book Five of Rumi's magnum opus, The Masnavi, into English. Prior to this verse translation in heroic couplets, translations were either of selected passages or in lineated prose with passages deemed too salacious rendered into Latin, as was the convention in Britain of the early twentieth century. This fifth book of Rumi's The Masnavi is well-known to contain much sexually explicit content within teaching stories about the path of annihilation of the self in a total and uncompromising way.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States, among Muslims. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, may be considered one of the purest literary glories of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali. Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. Born in Afghanistan, he was a 2014-15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow and a 2020-21 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi's translation of The Masnavi: Book One (OUP, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (OUP, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001).
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Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book Six. New York. 2025. Oxford University Press. 9780192874283. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi. 320 pages. paperback. Translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Volume V!.
DESCRIPTION - Rumi is the greatest mystic poet to have written in Persian, and The Masnavi is his masterpiece. Divided into six books and consisting of some 26,000 verses, the poem was designed to convey teachings about divine love and unity to the disciples of the Sufi order that he founded, best known today as the Whirling Dervishes. Like the earlier books, Book Six interweaves amusing stories with homilies and lyrical flights. The longest of all the six volumes at nearly 5,000 verses, its themes focus on self-annihilation in God and the oneness experienced at the end of the Sufi path by the realized mystic. Rumi is believed to have completed it shortly before his death on 17 December 1273. This is the first ever verse translation into English of the entirety of Book Six of Rumi's Masnavi. It follows the original by presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States, among Muslims. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, may be considered one of the purest literary glories of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali. Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. Born in Afghanistan, he was a 2014-15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow and a 2020-21 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi's translation of The Masnavi: Book One (OUP, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (OUP, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001).
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Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One. New York. 2008. Oxford University Press. 9780199552313. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi. 304 pages. paperback. Translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Volume I.
DESCRIPTION - Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called 'the Koran in Persian. ' The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better known as the whirling dervishes. In order to convey his message of divine love and unity he threaded together entertaining stories and penetrating homilies. Drawing from folk tales as well as sacred history, Rumi's poem is often funny as well as spiritually profound. Jawid Mojaddedi's sparkling new verse translation of Book One is consistent with the aims of the original work in presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States, among Muslims. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, may be considered one of the purest literary glories of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali. Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. Born in Afghanistan, he was a 2014-15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow and a 2020-21 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi's translation of The Masnavi: Book One (OUP, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (OUP, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001).
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Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book Three. New York. 2014. Oxford University Press. 9780199652037. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi. 352 pages. paperback. Translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Volume III.
DESCRIPTION - Rumi is the greatest mystic poet to have written in Persian, and the Masnavi is his masterpiece. Divided into six books and consisting of some 26,000 verses, the poem was designed to convey a message of divine love and unity to the disciples of Rumi's Sufi order, known today as the Whirling Dervishes. Like the earlier books, Book Three interweaves amusing stories with homilies to instruct pupils in the understanding of God's meaning. It has a special focus on epistemology, illustrated with narratives that involve the consumption of food. The first ever verse translation of Book Three of the Masnavi, It follows the original by presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets. 'Our soul each moment struggles hard with death - Think of your faith as though it's your last breath. Your life is like a purse, and night and day Are counters of gold coins you've put away'
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States, among Muslims. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, may be considered one of the purest literary glories of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali. Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. Born in Afghanistan, he was a 2014-15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow and a 2020-21 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi's translation of The Masnavi: Book One (OUP, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (OUP, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001).
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Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book Two. New York. 2008. Oxford University Press. 9780199549917. Oxford World's Classics. Translated by Jawid Mojaddedi. 304 pages. paperback. Translation of The Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, Volume II.
DESCRIPTION - The most influential Sufi poem ever written, the six books of the Masnavi are often called 'the Qur'an in Persian. ' Book Two is concerned with the challenges facing the seeker of Sufi enlightenment. In particular it focuses on the struggle against the self, and how to choose the right companions in order to progress along the mystical path. By interweaving amusing stories and profound homilies, Rumi instructs his readers in a style that still speaks directly to them. Here, Jawid Mojaddedi has translated the text into accessible rhyming couplets, as he did for Oxford's award-winning edition of Book One. This edition--the first ever verse translation of Book Two, and the first translation of any kind for over eighty years--is the closest English speakers can come to understanding the true beauty of this classic work.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet" and the "best selling poet" in the United States, among Muslims. Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek, in his verse. His Mathnawī, composed in Konya, may be considered one of the purest literary glories of the Persian language. His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia. His poetry has influenced Persian literature, but also Turkish, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Pashto, and Bengali. Jawid Mojaddedi is Professor of Religion at Rutgers University. Born in Afghanistan, he was a 2014-15 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellow and a 2020-21 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow. Dr Mojaddedi's translation of The Masnavi: Book One (OUP, 2004) was awarded the Lois Roth Prize by the American Institute of Iranian Studies. His previous books include Beyond Dogma: Rumi's Teachings on Friendship with God and Early Sufi Theories (OUP, 2012) and The Biographical Tradition in Sufism (2001).
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Rumi, Mevlana Jalaluddin. Spiritual Verses. New York. 2007. Penguin Books. 9780140447910. Introduction by Alan Williams. 464 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The spiritual masterpiece of the Persian Sufi tradition in a brilliant new translation The longest single-authored "mystical" poem ever written, the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi, or "spiritual couplets," is the masterpiece of the Persian Sufi tradition. Its author, Jalaloddin Rumi, was a poet and mystic of the highest attainment, but he was first and foremost a spiritual teacher, and his Masnavi is a ladder to the spiritual world, leading the reader to the ultimate goal of the Sufi path-union with God. Alan Williams's translation into blank verse beautifully conveys the poetry of the original Persian couplets, while his introduction discusses how the modern reader might approach Rumi's writing.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (or simply Rumi, 30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi faqih (jurist), Maturidi theologian (mutakallim), and Sufi mystic born during the Khwarazmian Empire. Rumi's works are written in his mother tongue, Persian. He occasionally used the Arabic language and single Turkish and Greek words in his verse. His Masnavi (Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. Rumi's influence has transcended national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Afghans, Tajiks, Turks, Kurds, Greeks, Central Asian Muslims, as well as Muslims of the Indian subcontinent have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries. His poetry influenced not only Persian literature, but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Pashto, Kurdish, Urdu, and Bengali languages. Rumi's works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world. His poems have subsequently been translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet", is very popular in Turkey, Azerbaijan and South Asia, and has become the "best selling poet" in the United States.
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Sa'edi, Gholam-Hossein. Dandil: Stories From Iranian Life. New York. 1981. Random House. 0394505115. 223 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bob Silverman. Translation of دندیل.
DESCRIPTION - This collection of Gholam-Hossein Sa'edi's stories opens a new vista into the understanding of Iranian life. A dissident writer who fled the Shah's rule, Sa'edi's fiction partakes of and reflects the customs, the religion and the way of life in Iran. The title story, ‘Dandil,' is about the pecuniary aspirations of the people in a poverty-stricken town, as they expose the charm and beauty of a young girl to an American soldier. In the second tale, ‘The Game Is Over,' an Iranian Tom Sawyer fakes his own death as revenge against his drunken, cruel father, but falls to the very death he staged a few days earlier. ‘The Rubbish Heap' tells of the harsh practice of selling blood to earn a few pennies. ‘Keykãvus, Baldy and Me' is based on the disparity between the mentalities of a small, backward town official and three documentary filmmakers from the city. Each story is filled with human irony and political metaphor. Sa'edi shows us an Iran never in the news - an Iran of ordinary people with hopes, fears and sorrows. In this compelling collection, Sa'edi bridges a profound cultural gap to bring us a work of scope, sensitivity and importance.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - GHOLAM-HOSSEIN SA'EDI was born in Tabriz in 1935. While studying for a medical degree, he became involved in political activities that later caused him to be imprisoned by the Shah. After being tortured, he was released and allowed to come to the United States. Sa'edi has published over thirty works - including plays and short stories - and is now living in Iran.
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Satrapi, Marjane. Embroideries. New York. 2005. Pantheon. 0375423052. Translated from the French by Anjali Singh. 100 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Marjane Satrapi. Jacket design by Jean-Christophe Menu. Translation of Broderies.
DESCRIPTION - From the best-selling author of PERSEPOLIS comes this gloriously entertaining and enlightening look into the sex lives of Iranian women. EMBROIDERIES gathers together Marjane's tough-talking grandmother, stoic mother, glamorous and eccentric aunt and their friends and neighbors for an afternoon of tea drinking and talking. Naturally, the subject turns to love, sex and the vagaries of men. As the afternoon progresses, these vibrant women share their secrets, their regrets and their often outrageous stories about, among other things, how to fake one's virginity, how to escape an arranged marriage, how to enjoy the miracles of plastic surgery and how to delight in being a mistress. By turns revealing and hilarious, these are stories about the lengths to which some women will go to find a man, keep a man or, most importantly, keep up appearances. Full of surprises, this introduction to the private lives of some fascinating women, whose life stories and lovers and will strike us as at once deeply familiar and profoundly different from our own, is sure to bring smiles of recognition to the faces of women everywhere–and to teach us all a thing or two.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Marjane Satrapi was born November 22, 1969 in Rasht, Iran, and currently lives in Paris. She has written several children's books and her commentary and comics appear in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times and The New Yorker. She is also the author of the internationally best-selling and award-winning comic book autobiography in two parts, PERSEPOLIS and PERSEPOLIS 2.
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Vafi, Fariba. My Bird. Syracuse. 2019. Syracuse University Press. 9780815651413. Translated by Mahnaz Kousha and Nasrin Jewell. Afterword by Farzaneh Milani. Middle East Literature In Translation. 160 pages. paperback. Translation of پرندهی من.
DESCRIPTION - In this powerful story of life, love, and the demands of marriage and motherhood, Fariba Vafi gives readers a portrait of one woman's struggle to adapt to the complexity of life in modern Iran. The narrator, a housewife and young mother living in a low-income neighborhood in Tehran, dwells upon her husband Amir's desire to immigrate to Canada. His peripatetic lifestyle underscores her own sense of inertia. When he finally slips away, the young woman is forced to raise the children alone and care for her ailing mother. Vafi's brilliant minimalist style showcases the narrator's reticence and passivity. Brief chapters and spare prose provide the ideal architecture for the character's densely packed unexpressed emotions to unfold on the page. Haunted by the childhood memory of her father's death in the basement of her house while her mother ignored his entreaties for help, the narrator believes she relinquished her responsibility and failed to challenge her mother. As a single parent and head of household, she must confront her paralyzing guilt and establish her independence
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fariba Vafi is one of the most acclaimed and best-selling contemporary Iranian writers. She is the author of numerous novels and short story collections including Royaye Tabat and Razi dar Kucheha. Mahnaz Kousha is professor of sociology at Macalester College. She is the author of Voices from Iran: The Changing Lives of Iranian Women, published by Syracuse University Press. Nasrin Jewell is professor of economics at the College of St. Catherine.
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IRAQ
[ IRAQ - Autobiography ]Al Hamdani, Salah. Baghdad, Mon Amour: Selected Writings of Salah Al Hamdani. Evanston. 2008. Northwestern University Press. 9781931896443. Translated by Sonia Alland. 202 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Baghdad, Mon Amour is a memoir by Salah Al Hamdani centered on his imprisonment under Saddam Hussein, his subsequent exile in France for more than thirty years, and his emotional return to Baghdad and seeing his family again after all those years with feelings of tremendous joy but also guilt for having ‘abandoned’ them. The beauty of Al Hamdani’s prose and poetry is skillfully captured in Sonia Alland’s translation.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Salah Al Hamdani, poet and French actor from Iraq, was born in 1951 in Baghdad. He has lived in exile in France for the last thirty years. He started writing as a political prisoner in Iraq around the age of twenty. He is also the author of numerous works in both Arabic and French. Sonia Alland lives in both New York City, where she is a longtime public school volunteer, and southern France. She has been translating the works of the French writer Marie Bronsard and has also participated in her husband’s anthropological research in both France and Catalonia, Spain.
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Alani, Feurat. The Flavors of Iraq: Impressions of My Vanished Homeland. University Park. 2024. Graphic Mundi/Penn State University Press. 9781637790670. Translated by Kendra Boileau. Illustrated by Léonard Cohen. Foreword by Ross Caputi. 184 pages. paperback. Translation of Le Parfum d'Irak.
DESCRIPTION - Originally published in French in 2018 and winner of the Prix Albert Londres, this unique graphic novel provides a glimpse of the devastating changes inflicted on Iraq as told through 1000 tweets and poignant illustrations. During the summer of 2016, distraught and disappointed by how Iraq is described in the media, French-Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani posted over 1000 tweets in which he told the world about his Iraq. Feurat grew up in Paris, but spent many childhood summers in an Iraq that he watched fall apart under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. As an adult, he reports from an Iraq under American occupation, and discovers the sounds and silences of war. The Flavors of Iraq is an intimate and discerning look at a battered country from first a child’s, then a young man’s perspective. Together with Léonard Cohen’s superb illustrations, the result is a poetic and powerful story of a different Iraq.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in France to Iraqi parents, Feurat Alani is a French-Iraqi journalist and author. He was a news correspondent in Baghdad from 2003 to 2008 for I Télé, Ouest France, La Croix, and Le Point. In 2008, Alani returned to Paris to work on the television newsmagazine L'Effet papillon. He is the cofounder of the production companies Baozi Prod and In Sight Films. Alani collaborates regularly with the newspaper Le Monde diplomatique, the website Orient XXI, the magazine Géo, and as a reporter and producer with Art, France 24, and Canal+. His award-winning graphic novel Le Parfum d'Irak was published in 2018 and later as a web series. Léonard Cohen is a French animator based in Oakland, California. He earned his master's degree in animation at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris in 2009. His film Plato was selected in many festivals and won multiple awards. Cohen designed the TV series Le Chiffroscope, which ran weekly for three seasons (2012-15) on L'Effet papillon.
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al-Baghdadi, al-Khatib. Selections from The Art of Party Crashing in Medieval Iraq. Syracuse. 2019. Syracuse University Press. 9780815636687. Translated from the Arabic by Emily Selove. 10 black and white illustrations, notes, bibliography. 200 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The Art of Party-Crashing, is a book that represents a sharp departure from the religious scholarship for which al-Khatib al-Baghdadi is known. Compiled in the eleventh century, this collection of irreverent and playful anecdotes celebrates eating, drinking, and general merriment. Ribald jokes, flirtations, and wry observations of misbehaving Muslims acquaint readers with everyday life in medieval Iraq in a way that is both entertaining and edifying. Selove's translation, accompanied by her whimsical drawings, introduces the delights and surprises of medieval Arabic humor to a new audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Al-Khatib al-Baghadidi (1002-1071) was a Muslim preacher and scholar of the hadith. Al-Khatib is most well-known for Tarikh Baghdad (The History of Baghdad), which describes thousands of Baghdadi scholars. Like most of his writing, Tarikh Baghdad was intended as an aid for students of the hadith. Emily Selove is a lecturer of Medieval Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Exeter. She lives in Exeter, UK.
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Ali, Bachtyar. The Last Pomegranate Tree. Brooklyn. 2023. Archipelago Books. 9781953861405. Translated by Kareem Abdulrahman. 321 pages. paperback. Translation of دواھەمین ھەناری دونیا.
DESCRIPTION - An extraordinary chronicle of war and an occult story of love between a father and his son from one of Iraq's most celebrated contemporary writers "Whenever he told lies, the birds would fly away. It had been that way since he was a child. Whenever he told a lie, something strange would happen." So begins Bachtyar Ali's The Last Pomegranate, a phantasmagoric warren of fact, fabrication, and mystical allegory, set in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's rule and Iraq's Kurdish conflict. Muzafar-i Subhdam, a peshmerga fighter, has spent the last twenty-one years imprisoned in a desert yearning for his son, Saryas, who was only a few days old when Muzafar was captured. Upon his release, Muzafar begins a frantic search, only to learn that Saryas was one of three identical boys who became enmeshed in each other's lives as war mutilated the region. An inlet to the recesses of a terrifying historical moment, and a philosophical journey of formidable depths, The Last Pomegranate interrogates the origins and reverberations of atrocity. It also probes, with a graceful intelligence, unforgettable acts of mercy.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bachtyar Ali is one of the most prominent contemporary authors and poets from Iraqi Kurdistan. He has written over 40 books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, including 12 novels, and has been widely translated, a renown very few authors writing in the Kurdish language enjoy. In 2017, he was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize, joining past recipients such as Milan Kundera, Margaret Atwood and Javier Marías. He is the first author writing in a non-European language to do so. In 2009, Ali received the first HARDI Literature Prize, part of the largest cultural festival in the Kurdish part of Iraq. In 2014, he was also awarded the newly established Sherko Bekas Literature Prize. Kareem Abdulrahman is a translator who has also worked as a Kurdish media and political analyst for the BBC. His translation of Bakhtiyar Ali's I Stared at the Night of the City was the first Kurdish novel to be translated into English. He lives in London.
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Al-Khalil, Samir. Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq. Berkeley. 1989. University of California Press. 0520064429. 300 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - In 1968 a coup d'etat brought into power an extraordinary regime in Iraq, one that stood apart from other regimes in the Middle East. Between 1968 and 1980, this new regime, headed by the Arab Ba'th Socialist party, used ruthless repression and relentless organization to transform the way Iraqis think and react to political questions. In just twelve years, a party of a few thousand people grew to include nearly ten percent of the Iraqi population. This book describes the experience of Ba'thism from 1968 to 1980 and analyzes the kind of politjcal authority it engendered, culminating in the personality cult around Saddam Hussain. Fear, the author argues, is at the heart of Ba'thi politics and has become the cement for a genuine authority, however bizarre. Examining Iraqi history in a search for clues to understanding contemporary political affairs, the author illustrates how the quality of Ba'thi pan-Arabism as an ideology, the centrality of the first experience of pan-Arabjsm in Iraq, and the inter- action between the Ba'th and communist parties in Iraq from 1958 to 1968 were crucial in shaping the current regime. Saddam Hussain's decision to launch all-out war against Iran in September 1980 marked the end of the first phase of this reshaping of modern Iraqi politics. The Iraq-Iran war is a momentous event in its own right, but for Iraq, the author argues, the war diverts dissent against the Ba'thi regime by focusing attention on the specter of an enemy beyond Iraq's borders, thus masking a hidden potential for even greater violence inside Iraq.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kanan Makiya (Samir al-Khalil, born 1949) is an Iraqi-American academic and professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He gained international attention with Republic of Fear (1989), which became a best-selling book after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and with Cruelty and Silence (1991), a critique of the Arab intelligentsia. In 2003, Makiya lobbied the U.S. government to invade Iraq and oust Hussein. Makiya was born in Baghdad and left Iraq to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later working for his father's architectural firm, Makiya & Associates which had branch offices in London and across the Middle East. As a former exile, he was a prominent member of the Iraqi opposition, a "close friend" of Ahmed Chalabi, and an influential proponent of the Iraq War (2003–2011) effort. He subsequently admitted that effort "went wrong".
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Antoon, Sinan. I'jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody. San Francisco. 2007. City Lights Books. 9780872864573. 97 pages. paperback. Translation of إعجام.
DESCRIPTION - Sinan Antoon's I'jaam is included in an article about contemporary Arabic novels in the current issue of the New Yorker. Hear an interview with Sinan Antoon on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show | PRI's "The World" | Democracy Now! An inventory of the General Security headquarters in central Baghdad reveals an obscure manuscript. Written by a young man in detention, the prose moves from prison life, to adolescent memories, to frightening hallucinations, and what emerges is a portrait of life in Saddam's Iraq. In the tradition of Kafka's The Trial, or Orwell's 1984, I'jaam offers an insight into life under an oppressive political regime and how that oppression works. This is a stunning debut by a major young Iraqi writer-in-exile. Praise for I'jaam: "He evokes a Baghdad heavy with Orwellian overtones. often he strikes the right chord, to haunting effect." - The Village Voice ". a fictional memoir - of a student/poet in solitary detention for having ridiculed Saddam Hussein. The student's dreams, memories and fantasies are eerily beautiful - he enters a reality far preferable to the one he has lived in for most of his life." - Los Angeles Times "I'jaam denotes the practice of adding dots to letters of the Arabic alphabet to alter phonetic value. If dots are omitted, words can become ambiguous or inappropriate for their contexts. The young man who wrote the manuscript whose transcription is this chilling short novel omitted dots, and so a song about the "great Leader" concludes with a phrase that translates one letter differently from "tucks us into bed. The prisoner intersperses terse reports of his ordeal among memories of a literary rebellion, friendship and love." - Booklist "In less than a hundred pages, Antoon provides a moving portrait of life in Saddam's Iraq. When asked in a 2005 interview if he categorizes himself as an exile or a refugee, Antoon replied, 'Categories. .are ill-suited for encompassing the complexities of our world. They are akin to lines on shores that are incessantly erased by the ebb and flow of reality.'"- Poets and Writers Magazine "This book arrives at a crucial moment in our history as the decision is being made whether to expand or terminate the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Allowing for some past perspective, the narrative attempts to shed light on the terrorized life of certain Iraqi citizens under Saddam Hussein's rule. " - Library Journal "A manuscript found in Baghdad's Directorate of General Security recalls life under Saddam Hussein's regime. Antoon's frenetic tone is very effective, and Furat's unraveling feels heartbreakingly familiar." - Kirkus Reviews "Sinan Antoon writes with an assurance of voice, a clear redefinition of form and narrative, and compelling and beautiful language. Iraqi in origin, but global in its scope, this book is deeply human." - Chris Abani, author of The Virgin of Flames and GraceLand "Sinan Antoon's I'Jaam is a stunning work, as it brings to the present a world of terror we know about, we have previously read about, but which usually seems remote, unreal. It takes a great talent to make it so specific, so Iraqi in this case, and so personal. This author shows the particular sadistic humor that goes with cruelty, a "cultural" slant that makes us identify it with the places where it happens. Evil becomes thus both general, universal, and particular. The nightmare gains familiarity, reality." - Etel Adnan, author of Sitt Marie Rose and In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country "Sinan Antoon's novel traces, across time, space and faces, how the life of a young generation under a barbaric regime becomes an existential minefield. Life is no more what it is. Everything is a trace of itself. Even daily language is cluttered with debris from the mines of hell. Incessantly targeted in a nightmarish atmosphere, the individual can only save him/herself with the stubbornness of an animal." - Saadi Youssef, author of Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems "In this beautiful and brilliant novel, Sinan Antoon expresses the voice of those whose voices were robbed by oppression, stressing the fact that literature can at times be the only framework to protect human experiences from falling into oblivion. I`jaam is an honest and exciting window onto Iraq, written with both love and bitter sarcasm, hope and despair. It does not only illuminate reality in Iraq prior to the American invasion, but also the human experience in its insistence on resisting oppression and injustice." - Elias Khoury, author of Gate of the Sun "Brief, bitter and bracing, I'jaam displays all the dangerous prismatic grace and light of shattered glass. Nuanced and direct, Antoon's razor-sharp voice rises out of the prisons and mass graves of Iraq during the era when Saddam Hussein enjoyed U.S. government support and no one heard these voices silenced in their tens and hundreds of thousands. The hopeful tenderness of this voice goes on speaking now, and we can be grateful that a new translation allows us, finally, to hear it. In this time of endless war, it tells (again) a story we needed so many lives ago." - Sesshu Foster, author of Atomik Aztex Sinan Antoon (Baghdad, 1967) has published in leading international journals and has co-directed, "About Baghdad," an acclaimed documentary about Iraq under U.S. occupation. In June 2007, Harbor Mountain Press will be publishing a book of poetry by Sinan, Baghdad Blues. Read more at www.sinaan.com.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sinan Antoon was born in Baghdad, Iraq. After the 1991 Gulf War, he left Iraq and settled in the US where he studied Arabic Literature at Georgetown and Harvard. His poems and essays (Arabic and English) have been published in leading journals and newspapers in the Arab world, as well as The Nation, al-Ahram Weekly and Middle East Report.
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Antoon, Sinan. The Baghdad Eucharist. Cairo/New York. 2017. American University in Cairo Press/Hoopoe. 9789774168208. Translated by Maia Tabet. 130 pages. paperback. Translation of يا مريم.
DESCRIPTION - An intimate and remarkably human novel of modern Iraq by an acclaimed Arab-American author, shortlisted for the Arabic Booker. Displaced by the sectarian violence in the city, Maha and her husband are taken in by a distant cousin, Youssef. As the growing turmoil around them seeps into their household, a rare argument breaks out between the elderly Youssef and his young guest. Born into sanctions and war, Maha knows nothing of Iraq's good years that Youssef holds dear. Set over a single day, The Baghdad Eucharist is an intimate story of love, memory, and anguish in one Christian family.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sinan Antoon is an award-winning poet, novelist, and translator. He was born in Iraq, and moved to the US in 1991 after the Gulf War. He received his PhD from Harvard University and is currently associate professor of Arabic literature at New York University. He is a co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya. Maia Tabet is a literary translator, journalist, and editor, who has translated prominent authors such as Elias Khoury. She was born in Beirut and is currently based in Baltimore in the US.
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Campbell, Charles G. (editor and translator). Folktales from Iraq. Philadelphia. 2005. University of Pennsylvania Press. 9780812219135. Pine Street Books. Illustrated by John Buckland Wright. 256 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Who would not shudder when entering the skeleton-lined cave of the queen of the dead? How would a young man and his sister escape from the prison of a treacherous sultan? How would a poor farmer gain the hand of the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest sheik? These and thirteen more tales are spun in this stunning collection of sixteen traditional stories from the Shia tribes of southern Iraq. Gathered in the late 1940s and deftly translated to capture the elegance of the originals, these tales are full of action, adventure, love, and humor and are sure to delight anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of the Scheherezade. Appearing here for the first time in paperback, the stories in Folktales from Iraq, each accompanied by specially commissioned engravings, allow the reader to travel to a distant, imaginary land swirling with great fortunes, terrifying predicaments, and quick-witted heroes.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles G. Campbell (1912-53) was a scholar of Near Eastern history and religion. He is author of From Town and Tribe and Told in the Market Place. John Buckland Wright (1897-1954) was a noted engraver who illustrated more than fifty books.
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Hussein, Hadiya. Waiting for the Past: A Novel. Syracuse. 2022. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611516. Translated from the Arabic by Barbara Romaine. Series: Middle East Literature in Translation. 5 x 8. 208 pages. paperback. Translation of Mā sayaʼtī.
DESCRIPTION - On her journey, Narjis receives shelter from a Kurdish family who welcome her into their home and meets Umm Hani, an older woman who is searching for her long-lost son. Together they form a bond, and Narjis comes to understand the depth of loss and grief of those around her. At the same time, she is introduced to the warm hospitality of the Kurds, settling into their everyday lives and embracing their customs. Barbara Romaine's translation skillfully renders this complex, layered story, giving readers a stark yet beautiful portrait of contemporary Iraq. “Hadiya Hussein is one of Iraq's most skilled writers. Her awareness of narrative techniques makes the story not only believable but also deepens our involvement in its historical and cultural settings.” - Shakir Mustafa, Northeastern University. Hadiya Hussein's poignant 2017 novel plunges readers into a haunting and powerful story of resilience. Set at the end of Saddam Hussein's brutal reign, the novel follows Narjis, a young Iraqi woman, on her quest to discover what has become of the man she loves. Yusef, suspected by the regime of being a dissident, has disappeared - presumably either imprisoned or executed.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hadiya Hussein is an award-winning Iraqi writer. She has published several short story collections and novels, including the 2012 novel Beyond Love. Barbara Romaine is an academic and literary translator. She has translated several novels, including A Cloudy Day on the Western Shore.
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Iskander, Ghareeb. Gilgamesh’s Snake and Other Poems: Bilingual Edition . Syracuse. 2016. Syracuse University Press. 9780815610717. Translated from the Arabic by John Glenday and Ghareeb Iskander. Middle East Literature in Translation. Winner of the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award 2015. 112 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian literature. According to legend, Gilgamesh built the city walls of Uruk, modern-day Iraq, to protect his people from external threats. Although the epic records events from more than four thousand years ago, those events echo many of the social and cultural concerns of Iraq today. In this luminous bilingual collection of poems, Ghareeb Iskander offers a personal response to the epic. Iskander's modern-day Gilgamesh is a nameless Iraqi citizen who witnessed the fall of the dictatorship, who exists in a constant state of threat, and who dreams, not about eternity, but simply about life. While Gilgamesh was searching for the elixir of life, Iskander's hero is searching for consolation.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ghareeb Iskander is an Iraqi poet living in London. He has published numerous collections of poems, including A Chariot of Illusion. His critical work includes Semiotic Trends in the Critique of Arab Poetry. John Glenday is an award-winning Scottish poet and translator. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Grain and Undark.
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Kattan, Naim. Farewell, Babylon. New York. 1980. Taplinger. 0800825985. Translated from the French by Shelia Fischman. 192 pages. hardcover. Cover: Ivy Strick. Translation of Adieu, Babylone.
DESCRIPTION - A captivating description of a boy's precarious yet exuberantly optimistic journey through adolescence - a journey that recalls in part A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN. In what is something between a memoir and a novel, the author explores his boyhood in as an Iraqi Jew in his native Baghdad. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Naïm Kattan, (born August 26, 1928) is a Canadian novelist, essayist and critic of Iraqi Jewish origin. Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Kattan spent the first years of his life growing up in Jewish Baghdad. He studied at the University of Baghdad from 1945 until 1947 and at the Sorbonne from 1947 until 1951. He emigrated to Montreal in 1954. He is the author of more than 30 books, translated into several languages. Those years of his life are explored throughout his novel Farewell, Babylon. First published in French as Adieu, Babylone in 1975, his novel was translated by Sheila Fischman and published in English in 2005. The early years of Kattan's life were complicated. Kattan recalls in Farewell, Babylon the experiences of growing up in a community torn between Jewish and Arab nationalisms, the horrors of the 1941 farhoud, and anti-Semitism, but also Jewish successes in the cosmopolitan Arab city. In 1947, Kattan was awarded a scholarship from the government of France, and left Iraq to study literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. After taking an unplanned trip to New York City in 1952, Kattan planned to move to Montreal, Quebec, because of its status as a French speaking metropolis. He arrived in Montreal in 1954. In partnership with the Canadian Jewish Congress, Naim Kattan founded Le Cercle Juif, a publication dedicated to building cultural ties between Jewish and French Canada in the 1950, which was the first non-Catholic French-language periodical published in Montreal. Kattan went on to write a literary column in Le Devoir, and for close to 25 years he headed the writing and publishing division of the Canada Council for the Arts Writing and Publication program. Kattan was also an Associate professor in the Department of Literary Studies at the UniversitE du QuEbec à MontrEal.
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Khedairi, Betool. A Sky So Close. New York. 2001. Pantheon Books. 0375420967. 1st Novel. Translated from the Arabic by Dr. Muhayman Jamil. 245 pages. paperback. Cover: Mark Wright/Lisa Hamilton. Translation of كم بدت السماء قريبة.
DESCRIPTION - A rare look at contemporary Iraq from the inside out - a stunning re-creation of the surreality of life during wartime and the story of a young women coming to terms with two seemingly unbridgeable cultures from which she has been formed, English and Iraqi.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Betool Khedairi (born 27 November 1965 in Baghdad, Iraq) is a novelist born to an Iraqi father and Scottish mother. She is most known for her debut novel, A Sky So Close which has been published in numerous languages such as Arabic, English, Italian, French and Dutch. The novel was first published in Lebanon in 1999 and is often used as the subject of literary critique studies in various international universities. She received a BA in French literature in 1988 from the University of Mustansiriya in Baghdad, and then she used to divide her time between Iraq, Jordan and the United Kingdom while working in her family's business; in the food industry. She lived in Iraq until she was 24 and now resides in Amman, Jordan.
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Michael, Sami. Victoria. London. 1995. Macmillan. 0333643968. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 343 pages. paperback. Jacket photograph by Jo Agis. Translation of ויקטוריה [Ṿiḳṭoryah].
DESCRIPTION - This vast, rich family saga is set in the crowded courtyards of Jewish Baghdad before World War I. Sami Michael portrays a family exploding with power struggles and intrigue, seductions and betrayals, witches and hunchbacks, ghouls and spirits of flesh and blood. At the centre is Victoria, a woman of character who stands head and shoulders above the courtyard's tumult and dissipation. Victoria is the daughter of the head of the tribe, enslaved to the needs of her family as are all the women of the courtyard. She has been in love with her cousin Rafael since childhood and her story, told from the distance of an old-age home in Israel, is the story of their lifelong relationship, fraught with lies and humiliation, hope and heartache, and stubborn, enduring love. Sami Michael was born in Baghdad and came to Israel in 1948. He began to write at an early age, first in Arabic and later in Hebrew. He now lives in Haifa. He has published five novels for adults and four books for younger readers. Dalya Bilu was born in South Africa in 1936 and moved to Jerusalem in 1957. She began translating Hebrew literature into English twenty-five years ago and has compiled an extensive body of work. In 1992 she was joint-winner of the American National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and also received the translation prize of the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sami Michael August 15, 926 – April 1, 2024) was an Iraqi-Israeli author, having migrated from Iraq to Israel at the age of 23. From 2001, Michael was the President of The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). Michael was among the first in Israel to call for the creation of an independent Palestinian state to exist alongside the state of Israel. In his novels, Michael writes about the aspirations and struggles of both Jews and Arabs. This new approach in modern Hebrew literature was controversial and has been widely discussed in academia and in the media. Michael was awarded the EMET Prize in 2007. Michael defined himself not as a Zionist, but as an Israeli in order to make room for the inclusion of all citizens in Israel. Dalya Bilu was born in South Africa in 1936 and moved to Jerusalem in 1957. She began translating Hebrew literature into English twenty-five years ago and has compiled an extensive body of work. In 1992 she was joint-winner of the American National Jewish Book Award for Fiction and also received the translation prize of the Israeli Ministry of Education and Culture. .
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Middle East Watch. Human Rights in Iraq. New Haven. 1990. Yale University Press. 0300049595. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - The government of Iraq is one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in power today, denying its citizens virtually all basic rights and ruthlessly suppressing even the smallest gestures of dissent. This book, which documents the violations of human rights in Iraq, is a report from Middle East Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch, which monitors violations of human rights around the world, It is the first in an important new series of books to be published jointly by Human Rights Watch and Yale University Press. This timely book discusses the Situation in Iraq since the Booth Socialist Party came to power in 1968. Written in a chillingly dispassionate style, it describes how the Booth regime subjects Iraqi citizens to forced relocation and deportation, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, ‘disappearance,' and summary political execution. Middle East Watch reveals the methods used by the Iraqi government to impose its rule: a monolithic party organization, a pervasive system of informants, and secret police agencies that are empowered to arrest, detain without trial, torture, and kill. The book also examines the government's treatment of Iraq's Kurdish minority, relating that after using chemical weapons to crush a Kurdish insurgency in 1987 and 1988, the government is now engaged in a forced relocation program of such proportions that it threatens Kurdish ethnic identity and cultural survival. Middle East Watch documents the extraordinary measures taken by the Iraqi government to prevent word of its abysmal human rights record from spreading to the international community. Iraqi citizens who speak out on human rights are severely punished, and even Iraqi emigres fear violence at the hands of Iraq's overseas security operatives. For several years no international human rights organization has been allowed into Iraq to investigate reports of abuses. Nevertheless, Middle East Watch has mounted an investigation by interviewing scores of Emigres, diplomats, journalists, and scholars and by gaining access to extensive written documentation, including Iraqi government texts.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY -
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Mustafa, Shakir (editor). Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology. Syracuse. 2018. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611028. 6 x 9. 232 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The first anthology of its kind in the West, Contemporary Iraqi Fiction gathers work from sixteen Iraqi writers, all translated from Arabic into English. Shedding a bright light on the rich diversity Iraqi experience, Shakir Mustafa has included selections by Iraqi women, Iraqi Jews now living in Israel, and Christians and Muslims living both in Iraq and abroad. While each voice is distinct, they are united in writing about a homeland that has suffered under repression, censorship, war, and occupation. Many of the selections mirror these grim realities, forcing the writers to open up new narrative terrains and experiment with traditional forms. Muhammad Khodayyir's surrealist portraits of his home city, Basra, in an excerpt from Basriyyatha and the magical realism of Mayselun Hadi's "Calendars" both offer powerful expressions of the absurdity of everyday life. Themes range from childhood and family to war, political oppression, and interfaith relationships. Mustafa provides biographical sketches for the writers and an enlightening introduction, chronicling the evolution of Iraqi literature. CONTENTS: Muhammad Khodayyir / Yusuf’s Tales; The Turtle Grandmother; Friday Bounties - Lutfiy ya al-Dulaimi / Hayaat’s Garden; Shahrazad and Her Narrators; Lighter Than Angels - Mahdi Isa al-Saqr / Waiting; The Returnee; Breaking Away; Morning Exercises; A Dreamer in Dark Times - Mayselun Hadi / Her Realm of the Real; Calendars; Outage - Abdul Rahman Majeed al-Rubaie / The Tattoo; A Man and a Woman - Samira Al-Mana / The Soul; That Thing We Call Age; A Dormant Alphabet; Sexual Complacency - Abdul Sattar Nasir / Good-bye, Hippopotamus; Jalil al-Qaisi / Zulaikha - Samir Naqqash / Tantal - Salima Salih / Those Boys - Samuel Shimon / The Street Vendor and the Movies - Mahmoud Saeed / Bitter Morning; A Figure in Repose - Nasrat Mardan / Bar of Sweet Dreams; Sufi Blessings - Ibtisam Abdullah / The Nursery; The Other in the Mirror - Ibrahim Ahmed / The Arctic Refugee - Shmuel Moreh /A Belly Dancer from Baghdad.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shakir Mustafa is assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Boston University. He coedited A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage and Seventeenth-Century English Poetry: An Introductory Course.
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Naqqash, Samir. Tenants and Cobwebs. Syracuse. 2018. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611080. Translated from the Arabic by Sadok Masliyah. 6 x 9. Series: Middle East Literature in Translation. Glossary. 384 pages. paperback. Translation of فراعراقية.
DESCRIPTION - Samir Naqqash's stirring novel Tenants and Cobwebs nostalgically commemorates the lost culture of an ancient Iraqi Jewish minority living amidst a majority Muslim population in 1940s Baghdad. The plot unfolds during a time of great turmoil: the rise of Iraqi nationalism and anti-Jewish sentiment fueled by Nazi propaganda; the Farûd, a bloody pogrom carried out against Jewish residents of Baghdad in 1941; and the founding of Israel in 1948. These pivotal events profoundly affected Muslim-Jewish relationships, forever changing the nature of the Jewish experience in Iraq and eventually leading to a mass exodus of Iraqi Jews to Israel in 1951. Tenants and Cobwebs deftly narrates the lives of Jewish characters who refuse to leave Baghdad despite these tumultuous times as well as those who are compelled to leave but nonetheless cling to the life they know. While the Jewish residents appear to live peacefully and harmoniously in the same Baghdad apartment complex as their Muslim neighbors, Naqqash gives voice to their conflicting thoughts and feelings, revealing the deepening tensions between the two groups. His innovative use of Baghdadi Jewish and Muslim dialects captures the complex and nuanced emotions of his characters. Masliyah's skillful translation gives English-language readers access to one of the most imaginative and ambitious Middle Eastern authors of the twentieth century. “A rare work of fiction in terms of language, history, and contemporary politics of pluralistic cultures. Written in Arabic by a speaker of Hebrew, among other languages, chronicling a period of utmost significance for the region, and demonstrating the will to coexist under harsh circumstances, the work is a valuable source of knowledge and entertainment.” - Shakir Mustafa, editor of Contemporary Iraqi Fiction.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samir Naqqash (1938–2004) was a Jewish Iraqi novelist, short-story writer, and playwright who emigrated from Iraq at the age of thirteen. Naqqash wrote in Arabic despite living most of his life in Israel. In 2004, he received the Israeli Prime Ministerial Award for Arabic Fiction. Sadok Masliyah was assistant professor of Arabic and Hebrew at several American universities and the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He has published studies on Arabic literature, Iraqi folklore, and spoken dialects, including his most recent book, The Formation of Quadrilateral Verbs in Iraqi Dialects.
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Zangana, Haifa. Packaged Lives: Ten Stories and a Novella. Syracuse. 2021. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611370. Middle East Literature In Translation. Translated by Wen-chin Ouyang. 168 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The carefully crafted, subtle, and humorous stories in Packaged Lives show Zangana at her best as a fiction writer. She portrays her subjects keenly, sensitively, and lovingly but without compromise. Iraqis living in exile come to life in her narratives as men and women who are caught between two worlds. They cannot return to their homeland and are forced to wait for news of Iraq from afar. At the same time, they are unable to fully adjust to life in Britain and make a new home for themselves. The question "What is home?" is at the heart of each story in this collection. Her protagonists, who are stuck in ready-made lives, or "packaged lives," struggle to set themselves free from a web of relationships in which they are entangled. Art, poetry, and nature provide lines of escape. The relief may be fleeting, but the peace of mind and serenity are reached through the moment of epiphany at the end of each story, a much-needed balm.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Haifa Zangana is an Iraqi Kurdish writer and activist. She is the author of Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London, City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance, Dreaming of Baghdad, and Party for Thaera: Palestinian Women Writing Life, among others. Wen-chin Ouyang is professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is the author of Poetics of Love in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition, and Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition. She has been working towards Arabic-Chinese comparative literary and cultural studies, including Silk Road studies.
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ISRAEL
[ ISRAEL - Literature - Anthology ]Alcalay, Ammiel (editor). Keys To the Garden: New Israeli Writing. San Francisco. 1996. City Lights Books. 0872863085. Paperback Original. 372 pages. paperback. Cover: Jack Jano.
DESCRIPTION - This first anthology of twentieth-century Israeli literature to feature the work of writers who were born in--or whose families originated from--the Levant, Turkey, Iran, India, and Arab worlds represents twenty-four authors whose concerns with cultural identity, race, class, gender, and political allegiances place their work alongside today's emerging rediscovered and reinvented Arab, African, Indian, African-American, and Caribbean traditions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ammiel Alcalay (born 1956) is an American poet, scholar, critic, translator, and prose stylist. Born and raised in Boston, he is a first-generation American, son of Sephardic Jews from Serbia. His work often examines how poetry and politics affect the way we see ourselves and the way Americans think about the Middle East, with attention to methods of cultural recovery in the United States, the Middle East and Europe.
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Amichai, Yehuda. Great Tranquillity: Questions and Answers. New York. 1983. Harper & Row. 0060151889. 96 pages. hardcover. Translation of: Shalṿah gedolah.
DESCRIPTION - The international reputation of Yehuda Amichai, one of Israel's leading authors, continues to grow, and this new collection of his poems is certain to add to his stature and popularity in America. Great Tranquility is Amichai's most powerful collection since Amen (1977). Many of the poems derive from the experience and awareness of a man in middle life---Israeli soldier, veteran, citizen, husband, father, Jew---his consciousness seasoned by the complex feelings of the long view of life and deepened by the political, military and moral crises that have beset his country. This is poetry that presents the "still, sad music of humanity" with a modern Jewish tone and a spare but intimate idiom.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehuda Amichai (3 May 1924 - 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s. (The Times, London, Oct. 2000). He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 - Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
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Amichai, Yehuda. Not of This Time, Not of This Place. New York. 1968. Harper & Row. 344 pages. hardcover. Translation of Lo me-ʻakhshaṿ, lo mi-kan.
DESCRIPTION - Not of This Time, Not of This Place is a highly autobiographical novel centered on the character Joel, who grapples with the choice between returning to his native Germany and remaining in Jerusalem after World War II. Jerusalem captivates Joel with its vibrant and exotic environment, where he works as a young archaeologist and is tempted by the prospect of a new romantic relationship, despite being married. Conversely, the ruins of Germany offer him little motivation to go back, yet he feels a moral obligation to confront the Nazis responsible for his childhood friend's death.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehuda Amichai (3 May 1924 - 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s. (The Times, London, Oct. 2000). He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 - Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
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Amichai, Yehuda. Selected Poems. Middlesex. 1971. Penguin Books. 0140421416. Penguin Modern European Poets series. Translated by Assia Gutmann and Harold Schimmel with the collaboration of Ted Hughes. With an introduction by Michael Hamburger. 96 pages. paperback. Cover design by Sylvia Clench, photo by Thomas Simmons.
DESCRIPTION - Yehuda Amichai is one of Israel's leading post-war writers, and his response to the land and its people reflects the feelings of many of his contemporaries. Yet, although he has lived there since the age of thirteen and has been actively involved in Arab-Israeli conflict, he has retained a European, individual sensibility. The freshness of his perception and the intimacy of his recollections come through vividly in these English translations of his poems.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehuda Amichai (3 May 1924 - 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s. (The Times, London, Oct. 2000). He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 - Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
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Amichai, Yehuda. Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai. New York. 1986. Harper & Row. 0060154101. Translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell. 173 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) was Israel's most popular poet, as well as a literary figure of international reputation. In this collection, renowned translators Chana Bloch and Stephen Mitchell have selected Amichai's most beloved poems, including forty poems from his later work. A new foreword by C.K. Williams, written especially for this edition, addresses Amichai's enduring legacy and sets his poetry in the context of the new millennium.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehuda Amichai (3 May 1924 - 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s. (The Times, London, Oct. 2000). He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 - Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
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Amichai, Yehuda. The World Is a Room and Other Stories. Philadelphia. 1984. Jewish Publication Society Of America. 0827602340. Translated from the Hebrew by Elinor Grumet. Hillel Halkin, Ada Hameirit-Sarell, Jules Harlow, & Yosef Schachter. 199 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden. Translation of selections from: Ba-ruaḥ ha-noraʼah ha-zot.
DESCRIPTION - This collection presents the best short fiction by one of Israel's leading poets, Yehuda Amichai. In stories that weave through the inner chambers of life, like a breeze passing through the open windows of a room; in prose that bristles with the visceral, Amichai plunges deep into the chasms of sensitivity that mark the human landscape of Israel. From the room - the proscribed boundaries of our abilities to feel, to think, to understand, to know - that is our lives, Amichai's characters look out onto a world of life and death, both real and imagined; a world of loving, lost love, and lovelessness; of logic and fate that are true, then truer, then immolative in their truth. The stories of Yehuda Amichai are reflective, often confessional, and redolent of poetic illumination. Hailed for his prose no less than for his poetry, Amichai's stories brilliantly expose the conflicts of Israeli life and the struggle for humanity in a strife-torn setting. Indeed, the bizarre nature of human existence in the Middle East - where ballet takes place side by side with tank movements - provides a broad canvas on which the artist can delve into the universal reality of the human condition. CONTENTS: Preface / by Elinor Grumet -- Battle for the hill -- The world is a room -- The Bar Mitzvah party -- Terrible spring -- Nina of Ashkelon -- Dicky's death -- The orgy -- Love in reverse -- The snow -- The times my father died.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - YEHUDA AMICHAI was born in 1924 in Wurzburg, Germany and emigrated to Palestine in 1936. He served in the British Army in World War II and afterward in the Palmach (commando unit of Haganah underground). He also saw active service in the Israeli War of Independence and in the Sinai Campaign. He was educated at Hebrew University, where he received a BA. He has a wife and three children - two sons and a daughter. In 1982 he received the Israel Prize for Poetry. Amichai's books in English include Not of This Time, Not of This Place; Amen; Time; Love Poems; and Great Tranquillity Questions and Answers. Stories in this volume: BATTLE FOR THE HILL; THE WORLD IS A ROOM; THE BAR MITZVAH PARTY; TERRIBLE SPRING; NINA OF ASHKELON; DICKY'S DEATH; THE ORGY; LOVE IN REVERSE; THE SNOW; THE TIMES MY FATHER DIED. .
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Amichai, Yehuda. Time. New York. 1979. Harper & Row. 0060100885. 88 pages. hardcover. Translation of: ha-Zeman.
DESCRIPTION - These eighty poems were translated by Yehuda Amichai from the original Hebrew. He did this with the aid of his great friend Ted Hughes. It is not surprising then that the poems are clean and clear, that their language has a crispness which does not confuse or confound the reader. The volume contains much of the usual Amichai meditative poetry. He thinks about War and Death, about Love about fidelity and infidelity, about Jerusalem Holy and Unholy, united and divided. As always irony and complexity are in his lines, and it is possible to take them with whatever wistfulness, sadness and at times delight one can. Amichai is a great modern Hebrew poet. This work provides real evidence of what his major themes and concerns are.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehuda Amichai (3 May 1924 - 22 September 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel's greatest modern poet. He was also one of the first to write in colloquial Hebrew. Yehuda Amichai [was] for generations the most prominent poet in Israel, and one of the leading figures in world poetry since the mid-1960s. (The Times, London, Oct. 2000). He was awarded the 1957 Shlonsky Prize, the 1969 Brenner Prize, 1976 Bialik Prize, and 1982 Israel Prize. He also won international poetry prizes: 1994 - Malraux Prize: International Book Fair (France), 1995 - Macedonia`s Golden Wreath Award: International Poetry Festival, and more.
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Appelfeld, Aharon. The Immortal Bartfuss. New York. 1988. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 155584152x. Translated from the Hebrew by Jeffrey M. Green. 137 pages. hardcover. Translation of בארטפוס בן אלמוות.
DESCRIPTION - A concentration camp survivor living in modern Israel, Bartfuss struggles to cope with his terrifying recollections of the past, a hopeless marriage, and emotional upheaval and uncertainty
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aharon Appelfeld (born February 16, 1932) is an Israeli novelist. Aharon Appelfeld was born in the town of Zhadova or Sadhora, now part of Czernowitz, Bucovina, Romania, now Ukraine. In 1941, when he was eight years old, the Romanian army invaded his hometown and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a Nazi concentration camp in Romanian/Axis-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After World War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list. The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld has never been able to write about it. In Israel, Appelfeld made up for his lack of formal schooling and learned Hebrew, the language in which he began to write. His first literary efforts were short stories, but gradually he progressed to novels. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Today, Appelfeld lives in Mevaseret Zion and teaches literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. In 2007, Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 was adapted for the stage and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem. Appelfeld is one of Israel's foremost living Hebrew-language authors, despite the fact that he did not learn the language until he was a teenager. His mother tongue is German, but he also speaks Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, English and Italian. With his subject matter revolving around the Holocaust and the sufferings of the Jews in Europe, he could not bring himself to write in German. He chose Hebrew as his literary vehicle for its succinctness and biblical imagery. Appelfeld purchased his first Hebrew book at the age of 25: King of Flesh and Blood by Moshe Shamir. In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, he said he agonized over it, because it was written in Mishnaic Hebrew and he had to look up every word in the dictionary. In an interview in the Boston Review, Appelfeld explained his choice of Hebrew: ‘I'm lucky that I'm writing in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very precise language, you have to be very precise–no over-saying. This is because of your Bible tradition. In the Bible tradition you have very small sentences, very concise and autonomic. Every sentence, in itself, has to have its own meaning.' Many Holocaust survivors have written an autobiographical account of their survival, but Appelfeld does not offer a realistic depiction of the events. He writes short stories that can be interpreted in a metaphoric way. Instead of his personal experience, he sometimes evokes the Holocaust without even relating to it directly. His style is clear and precise, but also very modernistic. Appelfeld resides in Israel but writes little about life there. Most of his work focuses on Jewish life in Europe before, during and after World War II. As an orphan from a young age, the search for a mother figure is central to his work. During the Holocaust he was separated from his father, and only met him again 20 years later. Silence, muteness and stuttering are motifs that run through much of Appelfeld's work. Disability becomes a source of strength and power. Philip Roth described Appelfeld as ‘a displaced writer of displaced fiction, who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own.'
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Appelfeld, Aharon. To the Land of the Cattails. New York. 1986. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 1555840078. Translated by Jeffrey M. Green. 148 pages. hardcover. Translation of אל ארץ הגומא.
DESCRIPTION -
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aharon Appelfeld (born February 16, 1932) is an Israeli novelist. Aharon Appelfeld was born in the town of Zhadova or Sadhora, now part of Czernowitz, Bucovina, Romania, now Ukraine. In 1941, when he was eight years old, the Romanian army invaded his hometown and his mother was murdered. Appelfeld was deported with his father to a Nazi concentration camp in Romanian/Axis-controlled Transnistria. He escaped and hid for three years before joining the Soviet army as a cook. After World War II, Appelfeld spent several months in a displaced persons camp in Italy before immigrating to Palestine in 1946, two years before Israel's independence. He was reunited with his father after finding his name on a Jewish Agency list. The father had been sent to a ma'abara (refugee camp) in Be'er Tuvia. The reunion was so emotional that Appelfeld has never been able to write about it. In Israel, Appelfeld made up for his lack of formal schooling and learned Hebrew, the language in which he began to write. His first literary efforts were short stories, but gradually he progressed to novels. He completed his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Today, Appelfeld lives in Mevaseret Zion and teaches literature at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. In 2007, Appelfeld's Badenheim 1939 was adapted for the stage and performed at the Gerard Behar Center in Jerusalem. Appelfeld is one of Israel's foremost living Hebrew-language authors, despite the fact that he did not learn the language until he was a teenager. His mother tongue is German, but he also speaks Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, English and Italian. With his subject matter revolving around the Holocaust and the sufferings of the Jews in Europe, he could not bring himself to write in German. He chose Hebrew as his literary vehicle for its succinctness and biblical imagery. Appelfeld purchased his first Hebrew book at the age of 25: King of Flesh and Blood by Moshe Shamir. In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, he said he agonized over it, because it was written in Mishnaic Hebrew and he had to look up every word in the dictionary. In an interview in the Boston Review, Appelfeld explained his choice of Hebrew: ‘I'm lucky that I'm writing in Hebrew. Hebrew is a very precise language, you have to be very precise–no over-saying. This is because of your Bible tradition. In the Bible tradition you have very small sentences, very concise and autonomic. Every sentence, in itself, has to have its own meaning.' Many Holocaust survivors have written an autobiographical account of their survival, but Appelfeld does not offer a realistic depiction of the events. He writes short stories that can be interpreted in a metaphoric way. Instead of his personal experience, he sometimes evokes the Holocaust without even relating to it directly. His style is clear and precise, but also very modernistic. Appelfeld resides in Israel but writes little about life there. Most of his work focuses on Jewish life in Europe before, during and after World War II. As an orphan from a young age, the search for a mother figure is central to his work. During the Holocaust he was separated from his father, and only met him again 20 years later. Silence, muteness and stuttering are motifs that run through much of Appelfeld's work. Disability becomes a source of strength and power. Philip Roth described Appelfeld as ‘a displaced writer of displaced fiction, who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own.'
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Ben-Ner, Yitzhak. The Man From There. New York. 1970. Sabra. 0876310307. Translated by Dorothea Shefer. 181 pages. hardcover. Translation of האיש משם.
DESCRIPTION - A young soldier from Tel Aviv serving in the British army is homeward bound on a train from Cairo when he hears that Israel has declared statehood and that his fellow soldiers are defending it. But he is still in Egypt, and when the train is halted, the soldier is trapped in a small Egyptian border town. A fellow passenger, Michel Saraj, an Egyptian doctor, protects and hides him in his fiancée’s house. From that moment the story takes a haunting turn. The relations between the family and its uninvited guest are ambiguous: why does the family remain silent towards the soldier, yet refuses to allow him to leave? Why does the young doctor, at first eager to talk with the soldier, suddenly turn hostile? As news of the Egyptian army’s defeats reaches the town, the tension surrounding “the man from there” increases, until a surprising reversal when Dahina protects the soldier from Saraj’s violence.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yitzhak Ben-Ner was born in Kfar Yehoshua, Israel, in 1937 and studied literature and drama at Tel Aviv University. Ben-Ner is a writer, screenwriter, playwright, journalist and film critic. He also edits and hosts radio and TV programs. He began publishing stories as a young boy, and his first book for adults was published in 1967. Several of his books and stories have been adapted for the screen and stage; his play Ta'atuon received First Prize at the Theatroneto Festival (1990) and was performed at the Royal National Theater, London, in 1998. Ben-Ner has been awarded the prestigious Agnon-Jerusalem Prize (1981), the Bernstein Prize (1981), the Ramat Gan Prize for Literature (1983), the Prime Minister's Prize (2006) and the ACUM Prize for Lifetime Achievement (2008).
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Chalfi, Raquel. Reality Crumbs: Selected Poems. Albany. 2015. SUNY Press. 9781438457420. Translated by Tsipi Keller. Afterword by Dan Miron. 252 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - First book-length collection of the work of the celebrated Israeli poet. Reality Crumbs is the first book-length collection in English of the work of the celebrated Israeli poet, playwright, and filmmaker Raquel Chalfi. Versatile and unpredictable, Chalfi's often visionary and dramatic poetry has been acclaimed for its independence and daring by leading Israeli critics. In the words of poet and critic Eli Hirsch, her work is a 'thrilling combination of simplicity and chaos, clarity and mystery. ' Ever present in Chalfi's poetry is the need to touch, to feel the tangible and sensuous, as well as a desire to break all boundaries and smash so-called conventional wisdoms, be they social, cultural, or linguistic. Her poems are often anxious, restless, inquisitive, nearly physical in their constant search for, and chasing after, that one element that will help them get a step closer to grasping the mystery at their center. And if she takes on the persona of a wild biker or a witch, it is not merely to travel freely in the land of fancy and so taste another's life, but, more importantly, to measure the extent of her empathy. 'Raquel Chalfi's poems are filled with sharp intelligence, but also passion, gusto, and surprise. You never know where these poems are going, but they are carrying a fully lived life of pleasure and pain with them--and often they will sneak up on you and make you laugh. Or else make you want to dance. ' -- Alicia Ostriker 'This is very wise poetry, insightful, often reminiscent of Wislawa Szymborska--in its lucidity, its intellectualism, its new humanism. The range of its subject matter and the consistency of its philosophy are unique and highly impressive. ' -- Ariel Hirschfeld 'Raquel Chalfi electrifies words that are very familiar to us, and makes us see, for the first time, what we have seen many times without seeing. She's a lyrical poet, subtle and precise, whose work radiates warmth, life, and wisdom. ' -- Amos Oz 'Chalfi's poetry is complex, it cannot be defined or labeled as belonging to any particular literary trend--a multifaceted poetry, linguistically rich and daring. ' -- Haaretz 'Chalfi is an important poet. There is independence and risk-taking in her work, and she has broken through several literary fences. You can feel the earth shaking under your feet. Her poetry is unique and remarkable. No one writes like her. ' -- Gabriel Moked 'Chalfi tries to seize nothingness, to peel off the layers of spiritual existence. She spreads her broad poetic wings over all this with great momentum and unimaginable gentleness. ' -- Dimui
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raquel Chalfi is the author of many volumes of poetry, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages. She has received numerous literary awards, including the Prime Minister's Prize, the Ashman Prize, the Bialik Prize for Poetry, and the Brenner Prize for Poetry. She is also a playwright and filmmaker, and has taught film at Tel Aviv University. She lives and works in Tel Aviv. The author of nine books, Tsipi Keller is a novelist and translator. Her previous translations include Poets on the Edge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hebrew Poetry (also published by SUNY Press) and Maya Bejerano's The Hymns of Job and Other Poems. She lives and works in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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Ehrlich, David. Café Shira. Syracuse. 2021. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611424. Translated by Michael Swirsky. 248 pages. paperback. Translation of Ḳafeh Shirah.
DESCRIPTION - New to Jerusalem and to adulthood, Rutha serves Cafe Shira's devoted customers with a quiet compassion and a sensitive gaze, collecting their stories and absorbing them at her peril. Avigdor, the melancholy and somewhat weary cafe owner, philosophizes about love as he attends to the needs of his patrons while ignoring his own. Christian, a young religious pilgrim, has come to Jerusalem to find God but stumbles upon a much different revelation. These characters form the heart of this wry, often poignant novel narrated through a series of vignettes. They are joined by a colorful cast of characters who frequent the literary cafe - long-married couples, young lovers, an eccentric poet, and a traumatized veteran - all finding refuge and occasionally wisdom among their motley urban community. Closely based on Ehrlich's own experiences over the twenty-five years he devoted to running a cafe that became an important Jerusalem cultural venue and landmark, Cafe Shira is a work of disarming tenderness and bittersweet love.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Ehrlich (1959–2020) was the author of three short story collections, 18 Blue, Tuesday and Thursday Mornings, and Who Will Die Last: Stories of Life in Israel. His literary café and bookstore, Tmol Shilshom, was a haven for avant-garde artists and writers, and the site of numerous readings by eminent authors. Michael Swirsky is a translator of Hebrew fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His work has been published by the University of Chicago Press, Yale University Press, Houghton Mifflin, and the Free Press, among others.
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Grossman, David. See Under: Love. New York. 1989. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374257310. Translated from the Hebrew by Betsy Rosenberg. 458 pages. hardcover. Translation of עיין ערך: אהבה / Ayen erekh—-ahavah.
DESCRIPTION - In this powerful novel by one of Israel's most prominent writers, Momik, the only child of Holocaust survivors, grows up in the shadow of his parents' history. Determined to exorcise the Nazi 'beast' from their shattered lives and prepare for a second holocaust he knows is coming, Momik increasingly shields himself from all feeling and attachment. But through the stories his great-uncle tells him--the same stories he told the commandant of a Nazi concentration camp--Momik, too, becomes 'infected with humanity.' Grossman's masterly fusing of vision, thought, and emotion make See Under: Love a luminously imaginative and profoundly affecting work.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Grossman (born January 25, 1954) is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature.
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Hareven, Shulamith. Prophet. San Francisco. 1990. North Point Press. 0865474230. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. 98 pages. hardcover. Translation of: Navi.
DESCRIPTION - The prophet Hivai flees his native city of Gibeon when his gifts fail to be adequate to the crisis it faces as an opposing army approaches the city. He joins a small camp of nomadic Hebrews, seeking the protection of the new god, although he cannot understand the absence of images and altars inthe camp. Cast out and disillusioned after seven years, he is resigned to solitude until he finds unexpected but comforting companionship.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shulamith Hareven (February 14, 1930, Warsaw, Poland - November 25, 2003, Jerusalem, Israel) was an Israeli author and essayist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
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Hareven, Shulamith. The Miracle Hater. San Francisco. 1988. North Point Press. 0865473293. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. 96 pages. paperback. Cover: Emil Nolde-'Prophet'.
DESCRIPTION - Eshkhar, a young boy whose mother died in Egypt, journeys with Moses and the rest of the Israelites to the Promised Land, growing into a young man before the journey ends
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shulamith Hareven was an Israeli author and essayist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
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Hareven, Shulamith. The Miracle Hater. San Francisco. 1988. North Point Press. 0865473293. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. 96 pages. paperback. Cover: Emil Nolde-'Prophet'. Translation of: Śone ha-nisim.
DESCRIPTION - Eshkhar, a young boy whose mother died in Egypt, journeys with Moses and the rest of the Israelites to the Promised Land, growing into a young man before the journey ends
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shulamith Hareven was an Israeli author and essayist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
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Hareven, Shulamith. Twilight. San Francisco. 1992. Mercury House. 1562790129. Various Translators From The Hebrew. 156 pages. paperback. Cover: Pablo Haz.
DESCRIPTION - Set in and around contemporary Jerusalem, Shulamith Hareven's Twilight and Other Stories is a mesmerizing collection, bringing readers into the lives and worlds of her characters.“Haraven once again uses her creative skill to craft these troubling, almost surreal stories. whose psychological insight and imaginative prose make them both engrossing and haunting.” — Molly Abramowitz, Library Journal
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shulamith Hareven was an Israeli author and essayist. She was born in Warsaw, Poland, to a Zionist family. She immigrated to Mandate Palestine with her parents in 1940.
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Hedaya, Yael. Housebroken: Three Novellas. New York. 2001. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt. 9780805059984. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 288 pages. hardcover. Translation of שלושה סיפורי אהבה.
DESCRIPTION - In a striking debut, three piercing, powerful novellas that unveil the hazards of love and desire. The men, women, and even animals in this enthralling collection live at the mercy of their hearts. Young and old, on two legs or four, they grope for love and tenderness, knowing that all connection is fraught with danger and all relationship random and evanescent. Yet the heart wants what it wants. The title novella, a wrenching account of the end of love, traces a gentle dog's transformation into a vicious beast as the couple who owns him breaks apart. In "The Happiness Game," the tenuous bonds between husband and wife are undermined by black crows and weak hearts, while "Matti" presents a chorus of voices -- doctors, nurses, jilted wife, dying husband -- that recounts an old man's passion for his lover, a fifteen-year-old Lolita. Wise and deft, tart yet tender, written in supple, beautifully inflected prose, Yael Hedaya's Housebroken navigates the moments of decision, betrayal, longing, and jealousy that torment the souls of wounded lovers.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yael Hedaya was born in Jerusalem in 1964. She is a journalist and humor columnist for the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot. Housebroken has been translated into Dutch, German, French, and Italian; it is Hedaya's first book to appear in English.
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Kaniuk, Yoram. Confessions of a Good Arab. New York. 1988. George Braziller. 0807612103. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 215 pages. hardcover. Translation of ערבי טוב,.
DESCRIPTION - Part Jewish and part Arab, Yosef Rosenzweig/Shehara is torn by the conflict between two peoples, and he comes to realize now much political events shape one's life, regardless of private aspirations
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yoram Kaniuk (May 2, 1930 – June 8, 2013) was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theatre critic.
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Kaniuk, Yoram. Rockinghorse. New York. 1977. Harper & Row. 0060122455. Translated from the Hebrew by Richard Flantz. 408 pages. hardcover. Translation of סוסעץ.
DESCRIPTION - Rockinghorse is a beautiful horse who longs to be a rockstar. She loves to play her guitar and sing in her free time, but her family is not supportive of her dreams. One day, she meets a strange man who tells her that she can be a rockstar if she practices hard. Inspired by her new mentor, Rockinghorse sets out to become a successful musician. Her family and friends are skeptical at first, but they eventually come to support her dream. Rockinghorse proves that anything is possible with hard work and determination. She becomes a rockstar and even makes a few friends along the way. Rockinghorse is a beautiful story about determination and hope. It is a touching and inspiring tale that will leave readers feeling inspired
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yoram Kaniuk (May 2, 1930 – June 8, 2013) was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theatre critic.
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Kaniuk, Yoram. The Story of Aunt Shlomzion the Great. New York. 1978. Harper & Row. 0060122595. Translated from the Hebrew by Zeva Shapiro. 171 pages. hardcover. Translation of ha-Sipur ʻal dodah Shelomtsiyon ha-gedolah.
DESCRIPTION - The Story of Aunt Shlomzion the Great tells a captivating tale of family dynamics within the Judaic community. The book is intended for young adults and adults.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yoram Kaniuk (May 2, 1930 – June 8, 2013) was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theatre critic.
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Kenan, Amos. The Road To Ein Harod. New York. 1988. Grove Press. 0802110835. Translated from the French by Anselm Hollo. 107 pages. hardcover. Translation of הדרך לעין חרוד [Ha-Derech le-Ein Harod].
DESCRIPTION - In a future Israel where the military has staged a coup, an Israeli rebel and his bitter enemy, Mahmoud, an Arab, must help each other in order to reach freedom in the North.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Kenan (Hebrew: עמוס קינן), also Amos Keinan (May 2, 1927 – August 4, 2009), was an Israeli columnist, painter, sculptor, playwright and novelist.
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Kenaz, Yehoshua. The Way To the Cats. South Royalton. 1994. Steerforth Press. 1883642485. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 325 pages. hardcover. Translation of בדרך אל החתולים.
DESCRIPTION - The story of Yolanda Moscowitz, a sensitive seventy-six year old woman who suddenly finds herself living in a Tel Aviv home for the aged where she is surrounded by unreliable friends, seducers, betrayers, fake healers, shysters, and would-be lovers. Told with blunt realism and savage humor, it is a very human story of living in a world apart and of coping with the decay of the body and the mind while keeping a sanctuary for one’s soul.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yehoshua Kenaz (2 March 1937 – 12 October 2020) was an Israeli novelist who studied at the Hebrew University and at the Sorbonne. Kenaz is best known for his novel Infiltration, published in 1986. Yehoshua Glass (later Kenaz) was born in Petah Tikva, in the British Mandate of Palestine, in 1937. During the Second World War, his father worked for the British Army, and for a while the family moved to Haifa. He learned to play the violin. His brother Hilik was born when he was thirteen. He was drafted to the Israel Defense Forces and was sent to a basic training camp for physically unfit soldiers. He then served in the Israeli Intelligence Corps. He changed his last name to Kenaz, after Othniel Ben Kenaz, a Biblical name with a similar sound. He studied Philosophy and Romance languages at the Hebrew University, and French literature at the Sorbonne. He wrote his first story in Paris and sent it to Aharon Amir's Keshet journal under the name of Avi Otniel (literally "father of Othniel"). He became famous in Israel in 1986 when his novel Infiltration became a best seller. Kenaz died on 12 October 2020, in Petah Tikva, after a COVID-19 infection. He was 83. He translated many French classics into Hebrew, and worked on the editorial staff of the Ha'aretz newspaper. He was awarded the Alterman Prize in 1991, the Newman Prize in 1992, the Agnon Prize (1993), the ACUM Prize (1994) and the Bialik Prize (1995). In 2007, Infiltration was named one of the ten most important books in Israeli history. Four of his novels have been adapted to film: Ahare Hahagim, directed by Amnon Rubinstein, in 1994; Alila (from the novel Returning Lost Lives), directed by Amos Gitai, in 2003; On the Way to the Cats, directed by Jorge Gurvich in 2009; and, Infiltration, directed by Dover Koshashvili, released to critical acclaim at the Jerusalem Film Festival 2010. Kenaz said he was not a Zionist because he did not believe a Jewish state would solve the problem of antisemitism. He supported a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict because he wanted the Hebrew language and culture to be hegemonic and more cultivated in Israel.
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Kovner, Abba. My Little Sister and Selected Poems. Oberlin. 1986. Field Translation Series/Oberlin College. 0932440215. Translated by Shirley Kaufman. Field Translations Series 11. 159 pages. paperback. Cover design by Stephen J, Farkas, Jr. Photo by Hayim Goldgraber.
DESCRIPTION - Abba Kovner's My Little Sister, acclaimed as a major poem-sequence about the Holocaust, is published now in a revised translation from the Hebrew, with a new selection from Kovner's work since 1965. In a career that spans more than 40 years, Kovner has published fiction, essays, and 10 volumes of poetry that have earned him international recognition and established him as one of Israel 's finest poets. Leader of the Partisans in Vilna when the Nazis invaded Poland, Abba Kovner settled on a kibbutz in Israel after the war. The poems in this book were chosen with the aim of collecting in English Kovner's most representative work, work that by the power and restraint of its personal response to the Holocaust proves poetry is possible "after Auschwitz." "Abba Kovner seeks and discovers metaphysical significance in suffering," wrote Stephen Spender in his introduction to Shirley Kaufman's first translation of My Little Sister. The American poet, who began to translate Kovner before moving to Jerusalem in 1973 , is well known for her earlier collections of Kovner and Amir Gilboa, and as the author of 5 volumes of her own poetry, most recently From One Life To Another and Claims.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abba Kovner (March 14, 1918 - September 25, 1987) was a Jewish Hebrew poet, writer and partisan leader. He became one of the great poets of modern Israel. He was a cousin of the Israeli Communist Party leader Meir Vilner.
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Lelchuk, Alan and Shaked, Gershon (editors). Eight Great Hebrew Short Stories. New York. 1983. New American Library. 0452006058. Introduction by Alan Lelchuk. 392 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - This is an anthology comprising complete novellas by some of the finest Hebrew writers of the past century. S.Y. Agnon, Yosef Brenner, Uri Gnessin, Yitzhak Shami, David Fogel, Amos Oz, Yehoshua Kenaz and A.B. Yehoshua are all represented. CONTENTS: Sideways / by Uri Nisan Gnessin -- Nerves / by Yosef Chaim Brenner -- The vengeance of the fathers / by Yitzhak Shami -- In the prime of her life / by S.Y. Agnon -- Facing the sea / by David Fogel -- The hill of evil counsel / by Amos Oz -- Musical moment / by Joshua Knaz -- A poet's continuing silence / by A.B. Yehoshua Bibliographic notes.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alan Lelchuk is an American novelist. His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Transatlantic Review, The Atlantic, Modern Occasions, The Boston Globe Magazine, and Partisan Review. Significant critical studies on Lelchuk have been Philip Roth in Esquire, Wilfrid Sheed in Book-of-the-Month Club News, Benjamin DeMott in The Atlantic, Mordechai Richler in the Chicago Tribune, and Steven Birkets in The New Republic. Gershon Shaked (Hebrew: גרשון שקד; 1929–2006) was an Israeli scholar and critic of Hebrew literature. Gerhard Mandel (later Gershon Shaked) was born in Vienna, Austria. He immigrated to Mandate Palestine alone in 1939, and was later followed by his parents. He attended Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv. He hebraicized his surname to "Shaked"(almond). He was married to Malka, and had two daughters. Shaked's major oeuvre is his Hebrew Narrative Fiction: 1880–1980, a series of five volumes that were published between 1977 and 1998. In these volumes he coined the term "The Zionist super-plot" and offered a broad perspective on the modern Hebrew literary system, its inner logic and development. Shaked was a member of Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and published about twenty books, hundreds of articles and also autobiographical writing. He studied the works of authors such as Mendele Mocher Sforim, H.N. Bialik, S.Y. Agnon, Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, as well as general currents in modern Hebrew literature – both in retrospect and in real time, as they were evolving. In 1950, Shaked studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he earned a doctorate in Hebrew literature in 1964 and later chaired the Department of Hebrew Literature. In addition to his many publications in Hebrew, he also wrote more than thirty books of criticism in other languages.
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Megged, Aharon. Fortunes of a Fool. New York. 1962. Random House. Translated from the Hebrew by Aubrey Hodes. With a Foreword to the English Edition by Max Brod. 304 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Fortunes of a Fool is an important and serious attempt in the young literature of Israel to come to grips with universal problems. The background, like the heroes, is unmistakably Israeli, and is presented with the satiric bite so characteristic of Megged's other works.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aharon Megged (10 August 1920 – 23 March 2016) was an Israeli author and playwright, a winner of multiple literary awards. Aharon Greenberg (later Megged) was born in Włocławek, Poland. In 1926, he immigrated with his parents to Mandate Palestine. He grew up in Ra'anana, attending Herzliya high school in Tel Aviv. After graduation, he joined a Zionist pioneering youth movement HaMahanot HaOlim, training at Kibbutz Giv'at Brenner. He was a member of Kibbutz Sdot Yam for twelve years. He left the kibbutz in 1951. Megged was married to author Eda Zoritte, with whom he had two children.
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Oz, Amos. A Perfect Peace. San Diego. 1985. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 015171696x. Translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. 374 pages. hardcover. Translation of מנוחה נכונה.
DESCRIPTION - In an exploration of the nature of Jewishness and the condition of modern Israel, this novel, set on a kibbutz in the mid-nineteen-sixties, traces the rebellion of a young man against the only world he knows.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Black Box. San Diego. 1988. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 015112888x. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange. 259 pages. hardcover. Translation of קופסה שחורה.
DESCRIPTION - Seven years after her divorce and remarriage, Illana, an Israeli, writes to her ex-husband Alex, a professor in Chicago, asking for help with their rebellious son Boaz, and her letter precipitates a flurry of correspondence between Illana, Alex, Boaz, and Michel, Illana's new husband.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Elsewhere, Perhaps. New York. 1973. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151837465. Translated by Nicholas de Lange in collaboration with the Author. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book. 309 pages. hardcover. Translation of מקום אחר.
DESCRIPTION - Oz's fictional community of Metsudat Ram is a microcosm of the Israeli frontier kibbutz, where, held together by necessity and menace, the kibbutz-niks share love and sorrow under the guns of their enemies and the eyes of history.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Fima. New York. 1993. Harcourt Brace. 0151898510. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange. 322 pages. hardcover. Translation of המצב השלישי.
DESCRIPTION - Fima's life in Jerusalem always manages to become enmeshed in the mundane. With wit and storytelling mastery, Oz portrays a man - and a generation - that has dreams but does nothing. Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. How to Cure a Fanatic. Princeton. 2006. Princeton University Press. 0691126690. 104 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Internationally acclaimed novelist Amos Oz grew up in war-torn Jerusalem, where as a boy he witnessed firsthand the poisonous consequences of fanaticism. In two concise, powerful essays, the award-winning author offers unique insight into the true nature of fanaticism and proposes a reasoned and respectful approach to resolving the Israeli Palestinian conflict. As an added feature, he comments on contemporary issues - the Gaza pullout, Yasser Arafat's death, and the war in Iraq - in an extended interview at the end of the book. Oz argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war of religion or cultures or traditions, but rather a real estate dispute - one that will be resolved not by greater understanding, but by painful compromise. As he writes, ‘The seeds of fanaticism always lie in uncompromising righteousness, the plague of many centuries.' The brilliant clarity of these essays, coupled with Oz's ironic sense of humor in illuminating the serious, breathes new life into this centuries-old debate. He emphasizes the importance of imagination in learning to define and respect other's space, and analyzes the twisted historical roots that have led to Middle East violence. In his interview, Oz sends a message to Americans. Why not, he proposes, advocate for a twenty-first-century equivalent of the Marshall Plan aimed at preventing poverty and despair in the region? ‘What is necessary is to work on the ground, for example, building homes for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have been rotting in camps for almost sixty years now.' Fresh, insightful, and inspiring, How to Cure a Fanatic brings a new voice of sanity to the cacophony on Israeli-Palestinian relations - a voice no one can afford to ignore. Amos Oz is the author of many novels and essay collections. His recent books include Don't Call It Night, Panther in the Basement, The Same Sea, and A Tale of Love and Darkness. As one of the leading figures in the Israeli ‘Peace Now' movement since 1977, his articles, essays, and political activities have made him an important figure in Israel, and his writings have appeared in translation throughout the world. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. In the Land of Israel. New York. 1983. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 015144644x. Translated from the Hebrew by Maurie Goldberg-Bartura, A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book. 257 pages. hardcover. Translation of: Poh ṿa-sham be-Erets-Yiśraʼel bi-setaṿ 1982.
DESCRIPTION - A distinguished Israeli novelist discusses the experiences and opinions of soldiers, religious leaders, Arabs, and other typical inhabitants of Israel and the West Bank.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. My Michael. New York. 1972. Knopf. 0394471466. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange In Collaboration W/The Author. 287 pages. hardcover. Translation of מיכאל שלי.
DESCRIPTION - One of Amos Oz's earliest and most famous novels, My Michael created a sensation upon its initial publication in 1968 and established Oz as a writer of international acclaim. Like all great books, it has an enduring power to surprise and mesmerize. Set in 1950s Jerusalem, My Michael tells the story of a remote and intense woman named Hannah Gonen and her marriage to a decent but unremarkable man named Michael. As the years pass and Hannah's tempestuous fantasy life encroaches upon reality, she feels increasingly estranged from him and the marriage gradually disintegrates. Gorgeously written and profoundly moving, this extraordinary novel is at once a haunting love story and a rich, reflective portrait of place.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Soumchi. New York. 1980. Harper & Row. 0060246227. Illustrated by Papas. Translated from the Hebrew by Amos Oz & Penelope Farmer. A young adult book for ages 9 12. 90 pages. hardcover. Translation of סומכי : סיפור לבני הנעורים על אהבה והרפתקאות.
DESCRIPTION - A young boy in modern-day Jerusalem trades away one possession after another, only to find something much more wonderful--his first love.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. The Hill of Evil Counsel. New York. 1978. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151402345. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange In Collaboration W/The Author. 210 pages. hardcover. Cover: Wendell Minor. Translation of הר העצה הרעה: שלושה סיפורים.
DESCRIPTION - Three stories in which history and imaginative narrative intertwine to re-create the world of Jerusalem during the last days of the British Mandate. A book 'as complex, vivid and uncompromising as Jerusalem itself' (The Nation).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. The Slopes of Lebanon. San Diego. 1989. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151830908. Translated from the Hebrew by Maurie Goldberg-Bartura. 240 pages. hardcover. Translation of ממורדות הלבנון.
DESCRIPTION - The author appeals to his Israeli countrymen to trade land for peace, in essays on the Jew-Arab problem, the Holocaust and the controversy surrounding Austrian president Kurt Waldheim
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Touch the Water,Touch the Wind. New York. 1973. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151908737. Translated by Nicholas De Lange In Collaboration with Author. 179 pages. hardcover. Translation of לגעת במים, לגעת ברוח.
DESCRIPTION - Oz has crafted an intricate tale of people constantly seeking escape from a hostile world, an escape symbolized on its highest level by the watchmaker Pomeranz, a mathematician and musician. By the power of his music, he causes the arid earth to turn into a moist womb that receives him and his wife not in death but in immortality.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Unto Death. New York. 1975. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151930953. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas De Lange In Collaboration W/The Author. 166 pages. hardcover. Translation of עד מוות.
DESCRIPTION - UNTO DEATH contains two novellas by one of Israel's most gifted writers. In both Oz explores the atmosphere of hatred in which Jews live, die, or degenerate into insanity. In CRUSADE a band of Crusaders journeys towards Jerusalem, attacking and killing Jews along the way. Their initial spirit of triumph gives way before depression as disease and deprivation slow their progress. In LATE LOVE, set in modern-day Israel, an aged lecturer who willingly ignores his deteriorating body cannot ignore his paranoid visions of the destruction of his people by Soviet Russia.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Oz, Amos. Where the Jackals Howl & Other Stories. New York. 1981. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151960380. Translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange & Philip Simpson. 217 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Gamarello. Translation of ארצות התן.
DESCRIPTION - Amos Oz's first book —beautifully repackaged— is a disturbing and moving collection of short stories about kibbutz life. Each of the eight stories in this volume grips the reader from the first line. Each conveys the tension and intensity of feeling in the founding period of Israel, a brand-new state with an age-old history. Some are love stories, more are hate stories, and frequently the two urges intertwine.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amos Oz (born May 4, 1939, birth name Amos Klausner) is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Since 1967, he has been a prominent advocate and major cultural voice of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oz's work has been published in some 41 languages, including Arabic in 35 countries. He has received many honours and awards, among them the Legion of Honour of France, the Goethe Prize, the Prince of Asturias Award in Literature, the Heinrich Heine Prize and the Israel Prize. In 2007, a selection from the Chinese translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness was the first work of modern Hebrew literature to appear in an official Chinese textbook.
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Shabtai, Yaakov. Past Perfect. New York. 1987. Viking Press. 0670813087. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 291 pages. hardcover. Translation of סוף דבר.
DESCRIPTION - Employing his characteristic, inventive stream-of-consciousness style, Israeli novelist Shabtai (Past Continuous) once again deftly scrutinizes the mystery of life's meaning. If the narrative is repetitious and relentless, so are the manifestations of the protagonist's psychic malady: "At the age of 42, shortly after Sukkoth, Meir was gripped by the fear of death. a slight, almost imperceptible ache stirring somewhere in the innermost tissues of his body, and then spreading and thickening until it was a canker gnawing at him without respite." A perspicacious master at depicting angst and anomie, Shabtai chronicles Meir's despair over his wife's unfaithfulness, panic over the diagnosis of his high blood pressure and depression over his mother's death and the Begin government (Meir may be a paradigm of a disillusioned Israeli society approaching middle age). Mired in a regrettable past and doomed future, Meir is an impotent observer of, not active participant in, life's immediate blessings, as epitomized by a trip to Europe that is marred by fear and disorientation. He dies, but the compelling novel ends on a surprising note of rebirth. This bittersweet work is Shabtai's last; he succumbed to a heart attack in 1981 at the age of 47.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaakov Shabtai (1934-1981) was born in Tel Aviv. After his military service, he moved to a kibbutz and started to write. Ten years later, he returned to Tel Aviv with his family and devoted himself to his literary career. He wrote two novels, a book of short stories, a children`s book, two collections of plays and a collection of poems and ballads. Shabtai holds a unique place in Hebrew literature. His novel, Past Continuous, is considered one of the high points of modern Hebrew fiction. It received the Kenneth B. Smilen Award for Literature and is included in "The 100 Greatest Works of Modern Jewish Literature" (2001). In 2007, Past Continuous topped the list of the most important as well as "best loved" books since the creation of the State of Israel. Yaakov Shabtai was awarded the prestigious Agnon Prize posthumously. His work has been published abroad in 10 languages.
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Shahar, David. His Majesty's Agent. New York. 1980. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151403562. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. A Helen and Kurt Wolff book. 392 pages. hardcover. Translation of Sokhen hod malkhuto.
DESCRIPTION -
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - DAVID SHAHAR (June 17, 1926, Jerusalem, Israel - April 2, 1997, Paris, France) won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in 1969, and in 1973 he was awarded the Agnon Prize. News from Jerusalem, a collection of tales, was published in 1974. Mr. Shahar represents the fifth generation of his family to reside in Jerusalem.
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Shahar, David. News From Jerusalem: Stories. Boston. 1974. Houghton Mifflin. 0395184800. 310 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - CONTENTS: The fortune teller.--Uncle Zemach.--The little doctor.--The pharmacist and the salvation of the world.--The woman with the familiar spirit.--Moses and the Negress (from the novel The palace of shattered vessels).--The king's eye (from the novel The palace of shattered vessels).--The dove and the moon (from the novel The palace of the shattered vessels).--The Pope's mustache.--First lesson.--Bruria.--The proposal.--The clock.--The empty packet of cigarettes.--The death of the little god.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - DAVID SHAHAR (June 17, 1926, Jerusalem, Israel - April 2, 1997, Paris, France) won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in 1969, and in 1973 he was awarded the Agnon Prize. News from Jerusalem, a collection of tales, was published in 1974. Mr. Shahar represents the fifth generation of his family to reside in Jerusalem.
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Shahar, David. The Palace of Shattered Vessels. Boston. 1975. Houghton Mifflin. 0395205506. Translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu. 212 pages. hardcover. Cover painting by Frank Bozzo. Translation of Ḳayits be-Derekh ha-Neviʼim.
DESCRIPTION - Life in all its abundance, memory, and the quest for truth are the themes in this haunting and mystical novel set in Jerusalem. The young narrator is fascinated by the figure of Gabriel Jonathan Luria, who is a descendant of a sixteenth century mystic and thus a symbol of all that Israel has been and all that it will become. The ‘shattered vessels' of the narrator's house have concrete meaning for him when he draws water from the well and senses that the water and the spilling of the water are a metaphor for the flux and flow of history. The reader is introduced through the narrator's eyes to the intimate life of Luria's family and to the people in the community who touch upon this life - the pharmacist, the librarian, the shopkeeper, the teacher. David Shahar conveys a sense of reality beyond the perceived reality in everyday life and portrays the city of Jerusalem and its inhabitants in a guise that reveals both their sacred and their profane purposes. His story of Luria interweaves beauty and mystery with a finite portrait of the social and religious crosscurrents in that most ancient and meaningful of cities.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - DAVID SHAHAR (June 17, 1926, Jerusalem, Israel - April 2, 1997, Paris, France) won the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in 1969, and in 1973 he was awarded the Agnon Prize. News from Jerusalem, a collection of tales, was published in 1974. Mr. Shahar represents the fifth generation of his family to reside in Jerusalem.
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Tammuz, Benjamin. Castle in Spain. New York. 1973. Bobbs-Merrill. Translated from the Hebrew by Joseph Schachter. 311 pages. hardcover. Translation of Be-sof maʻarav.
DESCRIPTION - Israeli author's first novel to be published in the U. S. A young Israeli falls in love with a woman 15 years his senior. Circumstances force them to France, and eventually Spain, where the affair comes to a tragic end.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benjamin Tammuz (July 11, 1919–July 19, 1989) was an Israeli writer and artist who contributed to Israeli culture in many disciplines, as a novelist, journalist, critic, painter, and sculptor. Benjamin Tammuz was born in Soviet Russia. When he was five years old, he immigrated with his parents to the Land of Israel. He attended the Tachkemoni school and the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. From an early age, he engaged in writing, sculpture, and painting. He also took an avid interest in art history, going on to study that subject at the Sorbonne in Paris. While growing up, he became a member of the Communist underground. As a youth he was a member of the Canaanite movement. More than his teachers and friends, the artist Yitzhak Danziger was an influence on him. In 1948, Tammuz joined the editorial board of Haaretz. At first he wrote the popular column ‘Uzi & Co.' Later he edited the children's newspaper Haaretz Shelanu. From 1965, he edited Haaretz's literary and cultural supplement, serving as the art critic there. From 1971 to 1975, he served as cultural attache at the Israeli embassy in London. From 1979 to 1984, he was invited as a writer-in-residence at Oxford University. Benjamin Tammuz died in 1989 in Tel Aviv.
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Tammuz, Benjamin. Minotaur. New York. 1981. New American Library. 0453004016. Translated from the Hebrew by Kim Parfitt & Mildred Budny. 210 pages. hardcover. Translation of מינוטאור - Minotaur.
DESCRIPTION - He first sees her on a bus in London. With her dark copper hair, dark honey eyes, refined looks and aristocratic bearing, she is clearly the mysterious young woman he has been searching for as long as he can remember. She is Thea, a beautiful young girl, imaginative and romantic, sheltered and untouched. He is her phantom suitor, a top secret agent, unseen and unknown except through the torrent of love letters with which he is slowly bewitching her heart and soul. Thus begins an extraordinary novel of obsessive desire and quietly accelerating suspense that moves through Europe and the Middle East and takes the reader through a strange labyrinth of relationships and into hidden recesses of the human heart and mind. With Thea, we await each new letter overflowing with secret messages that barely hint at her admirer's identity while assuring her that he is instantly aware of her every action, her every thought. We search the face of everyone she comes in contact with, hoping somehow to unmask the elusive lover who is tyrannically ruling her life. And finally, we watch breathlessly as Thea grows weary of endless waiting and reaches out to another - only to discover how swift and terrible is the vengeance of the man whose hunger for beauty and innocence has driven him beyond the bounds of reason. Brilliantly translated from the Hebrew, this haunting, mystical novel is both a startling love story and a taut thriller that draws us deep into the shadow-filled world of passion and betrayal. Beautifully constructed and elegant in style, Minotaur introduces us to a literary talent that ranks with such masters as Malamud and Nabokov.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benjamin Tammuz (July 11, 1919–July 19, 1989) was an Israeli writer and artist who contributed to Israeli culture in many disciplines, as a novelist, journalist, critic, painter, and sculptor. Benjamin Tammuz was born in Soviet Russia. When he was five years old, he immigrated with his parents to the Land of Israel. He attended the Tachkemoni school and the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. From an early age, he engaged in writing, sculpture, and painting. He also took an avid interest in art history, going on to study that subject at the Sorbonne in Paris. While growing up, he became a member of the Communist underground. As a youth he was a member of the Canaanite movement. More than his teachers and friends, the artist Yitzhak Danziger was an influence on him. In 1948, Tammuz joined the editorial board of Haaretz. At first he wrote the popular column ‘Uzi & Co.' Later he edited the children's newspaper Haaretz Shelanu. From 1965, he edited Haaretz's literary and cultural supplement, serving as the art critic there. From 1971 to 1975, he served as cultural attache at the Israeli embassy in London. From 1979 to 1984, he was invited as a writer-in-residence at Oxford University. Benjamin Tammuz died in 1989 in Tel Aviv.
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Tammuz, Benjamin. Requiem For Na'aman. New York. 1982. New American Library. 0453004172. Translated from the Hebrew by Mildred Budny & Yehuda Safran. 228 pages. hardcover. Translation of רקויאם לנעמן, כרוניקה של נאומים משפחתיים.
DESCRIPTION - Requiem for Na'aman is the story of the Abramson family from the end of the 19th century up to 1973. The characters are individualists who also represent social and ideological factions in the history of the pre-independent Jewish community. The founder of the dynasty represented a revolutionary change in Jewish history when he came to Israel and became a farmer. His wife never managed to adapt to life in the country and finally committed suicide. Their descendants continue in their footsteps, each in his own way. The son, Na'aman, is a musician, who goes mad in Paris and dies. The grandson, Elyakum returns to Palestine after travelling for years, and is killed in the War of Independence, and the great-granddaughter, Bella-Yaffa, loses her mind. The national self-appraisal of this book turns it into a requiem for the Zionist dream.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benjamin Tammuz (July 11, 1919 - July 19, 1989) was an Israeli writer and artist who contributed to Israeli culture in many disciplines, as a novelist, journalist, critic, painter, and sculptor. Benjamin Tammuz was born in Soviet Russia. When he was five years old, he immigrated with his parents to the Land of Israel. He attended the Tachkemoni school and the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. From an early age, he engaged in writing, sculpture, and painting. He also took an avid interest in art history, going on to study that subject at the Sorbonne in Paris. While growing up, he became a member of the Communist underground. As a youth he was a member of the Canaanite movement. More than his teachers and friends, the artist Yitzhak Danziger was an influence on him. In 1948, Tammuz joined the editorial board of Haaretz. At first he wrote the popular column ‘Uzi & Co.' Later he edited the children's newspaper Haaretz Shelanu. From 1965, he edited Haaretz's literary and cultural supplement, serving as the art critic there. From 1971 to 1975, he served as cultural attache at the Israeli embassy in London. From 1979 to 1984, he was invited as a writer-in-residence at Oxford University. Benjamin Tammuz died in 1989 in Tel Aviv.
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Tammuz, Benjamin. The Orchard. Providence. 1984. Copper Beech Press. 0914278436. Translated from the Hebrew by Richard Flantz. 88 pages. paperback. Translation of: ha-Pardes.
DESCRIPTION - The Orchard plots the story of two brothers -- a Jew and a Muslim -- on the mythic ground of Palestine and against the historical background of the region from the closing days of the Ottoman occupation to the Israeli-Egyptian war of 1956. It is a tale of fratricide and incest, and the haunting, Biblical rhythms of the prose remind us that it tells an old, old story of violence and loss.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benjamin Tammuz (July 11, 1919–July 19, 1989) was an Israeli writer and artist who contributed to Israeli culture in many disciplines, as a novelist, journalist, critic, painter, and sculptor. Benjamin Tammuz was born in Soviet Russia. When he was five years old, he immigrated with his parents to the Land of Israel. He attended the Tachkemoni school and the Herzliya Hebrew High School in Tel Aviv. From an early age, he engaged in writing, sculpture, and painting. He also took an avid interest in art history, going on to study that subject at the Sorbonne in Paris. While growing up, he became a member of the Communist underground. As a youth he was a member of the Canaanite movement. More than his teachers and friends, the artist Yitzhak Danziger was an influence on him. In 1948, Tammuz joined the editorial board of Haaretz. At first he wrote the popular column ‘Uzi & Co.' Later he edited the children's newspaper Haaretz Shelanu. From 1965, he edited Haaretz's literary and cultural supplement, serving as the art critic there. From 1971 to 1975, he served as cultural attache at the Israeli embassy in London. From 1979 to 1984, he was invited as a writer-in-residence at Oxford University. Benjamin Tammuz died in 1989 in Tel Aviv.
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Yehoshua, A. B. Early in the Summer of 1970. Garden City. 1977. Doubleday. 0385025904. Translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Arad & Pauline Shrier. 165 pages. hardcover. Translation of Bi-teḥilat ḳayits--1970.
DESCRIPTION - CONTENTS: Early in the summer of 1970, translated from the Hebrew by M. Arad.--Missile Base 612, translated from the Hebrew by M. Arad.--The last commander, translated from the Hebrew by P. Shrier.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avraham Gabriel "Boolie" Yehoshua (December 9, 1936 – June 14, 2022[2]) was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner". Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.
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Yehoshua, A. B. Three Days and a Child. Garden City. 1970. Doubleday. Translated from the Herbrew by Miriam Arad. 260 pages. hardcover. Translation of Shlosha Yamin Veyeled.
DESCRIPTION - CONTENTS: A poet's continuing silence.--Three days and a child.--Facing the forests.--Flood tide.--A long hot day, his despair, his wife, and his daughter.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avraham Gabriel "Boolie" Yehoshua (December 9, 1936 – June 14, 2022[2]) was an Israeli novelist, essayist, and playwright. The New York Times called him the "Israeli Faulkner". Underlying themes in Yehoshua's work are Jewish identity, the tense relations with non-Jews, the conflict between the older and younger generations, and the clash between religion and politics.
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JORDAN
[ JORDAN - Poetry ]Masannat, Siwar. cue: poems. Athens. 2024. University of Georgia Press. 9780820365978. Georgia Review Books Series. 97 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - With cue, Siwar Masannat follows up her prize-winning debut with poems that wrestle with intimacy and distance. Departing from love as a force of creation, cue’s intertextual experiments and lyric poems map environmental relations and pose questions about privacy and visibility, love and family, gender, and ecological agency. Masannat responds to artist Akram Zaatari’s excavation of studio portraits by Hashem El Madani. Captured between the 1940s and 1970s in the Lebanese town of Saida, El Madani’s photographs are living artifacts of a transnational modernity. They archive performances of gender and romance that seek to circumvent respectability politics. The private-public, then, emerges as a paradox at the heart of cue’s composition. The desire to commune with and re-transmit the photographs and their stories is accompanied by the speaker’s understanding of how visibility may be coopted and how privacy, at once essential and weaponized, is unevenly enjoyed, opportunistically deployed, and systematically encroached upon.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - SIWAR MASANNAT is a Jordanian writer. 50 Water Dreams, her debut collection of poetry, was selected by Ilya Kaminsky as the winner of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Competition and published in 2015. Managing Editor of the African Poetry Book Fund and Prairie Schooner, Masannat currently works at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Most recently, Masannat's writing appeared in Mïtra: Revue d'art et de littérature, 7iber, Fence, and Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, among others.
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Munif, Abd al-Rahman. Endings. New York. 1988. Quartet Books. 0704326515. Translated from the Arabic by Roger Allen. 140 pages. hardcover. Translation of النهايا.
DESCRIPTION - 'Drought. Drought again! When drought seasons come, things begin to change. Life and objects change. Humans change too, and no more so than in their moods!' It is not long before the reader of Endings discovers that this drought is not just an occasional but an enduring condition faced by a community on the edge of the desert, the village of al-Tiba. Nowhere do we discover exactly where this village is on the map of the Arab world and al-Tiba thus becomes a symbol for all villages facing nature unaided by modern technology. We hear of Abu Zaku, the village carpenter; of the Mukhtar; and above all of 'Assaf and his dog; and of the creatures that share the life of the community. But it is the people of al-Tiba as a group who discuss and argue about their past, present, and future, and the forces of change. The portrayal of the desert environment and its customs is as vivid as the hunting of animals and the sandstorm that led to 'Assaf's death. A series of stories accompanies the wake that follows -stories that borrow from the pre-Islamic tradition of expressing a particular vision through descriptions of animals. Endings is striking not only for its setting and style of narrative, but for being a vivid commentary on the emergence of the modern city and its urban middle class.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abdel Rahman Munif (May 29, 1933 - January 24, 2004) was a Jordanian-born Saudi novelist. His novels include strong political elements and parodies of the Middle Eastern elite class. His work so offended the rulers of Saudi Arabia that many of his books were banned and his Saudi citizenship revoked. Munif was born a Saudi national and brought up in Amman, Jordan to Saudi parents and an Iraqi grandmother. In 1952 he moved to Baghdad to study law and later moved to Cairo. He received a law degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in oil economics from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Economics. He later returned to Iraq to work in the oil ministry and became a member of the Ba'ath Party. He began writing in the 1970s after he left his job with the Iraqi ministry, quit the Ba'ath party, and moved to Damascus, Syria, removing himself from a regime he opposed. He quickly became known for his scathing parodies of Middle Eastern elites, especially those of Saudi Arabia, a country which banned many of his books and stripped him of Saudi citizenship. He used his knowledge of the oil industry to full effect criticizing the businessmen who ran it and the politicians they served. Munif was the author of a total of fifteen novels. The Cities of Salt quintet followed the evolution of the Arabian peninsula as its traditional Bedouin culture is transformed by the oil boom. The novels create a history of a broad region, evoking comparisons to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. The quintet begins with Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984) in the desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun that is disrupted by the arrival of Western oilmen in an image similar to that of the disrupted village of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. As Achebe described the effects on a traditional African village of the arrival of powerful missionaries, so Munif chronicles the economic, social, and psychological effects of the promise of immeasurable wealth drawn from the deserts of nomad and oasis communities. The quintet continues with Al-ukhdud (1985;The Trench), Taqasim al-layl wa-al-nahar (1989; Variations on Night and Day), Al-munbatt (1989; The Uprooted), and Badiyat al zulumat (1989; The Desert of Darkness). Daniel Burt ranked the quintet as the 71st greatest novel of all time. The last two novels in the series have not been translated into English. While his works were never particularly successful in the west, throughout the Middle East they are critically acclaimed and extremely popular. Cities of Salt was described by Edward Said as the 'only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country.' While he was one of the fiercest critics of Saddam Hussein and his regime, he was utterly opposed to the American invasion of Iraq and spent the last two years of his life working on non-fiction projects to oppose what he saw as renewed imperialism.
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Munif, Abdelrahman. Cities of Salt. New York. 1988. Random House. 0394570081. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux. 627 pages. hardcover. Translation of مدن الملح.
DESCRIPTION - Banned in Saudia Arabia, this is a blistering look at Arab and American hypocrisy following the discovery of oil in a poor oasis community. A major new Aventura: one of the greatest contemporary novels in the Arabic language, translated for the first time into English. Reveals and humanizes a society that has for too long been misunderstood, and should therefore command the serious attention of American reviewers.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abdel Rahman Munif (May 29, 1933 - January 24, 2004) was a Jordanian-born Saudi novelist. His novels include strong political elements and parodies of the Middle Eastern elite class. His work so offended the rulers of Saudi Arabia that many of his books were banned and his Saudi citizenship revoked. Munif was born a Saudi national and brought up in Amman, Jordan to Saudi parents and an Iraqi grandmother. In 1952 he moved to Baghdad to study law and later moved to Cairo. He received a law degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in oil economics from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Economics. He later returned to Iraq to work in the oil ministry and became a member of the Ba'ath Party. He began writing in the 1970s after he left his job with the Iraqi ministry, quit the Ba'ath party, and moved to Damascus, Syria, removing himself from a regime he opposed. He quickly became known for his scathing parodies of Middle Eastern elites, especially those of Saudi Arabia, a country which banned many of his books and stripped him of Saudi citizenship. He used his knowledge of the oil industry to full effect criticizing the businessmen who ran it and the politicians they served. Munif was the author of a total of fifteen novels. The Cities of Salt quintet followed the evolution of the Arabian peninsula as its traditional Bedouin culture is transformed by the oil boom. The novels create a history of a broad region, evoking comparisons to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. The quintet begins with Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984) in the desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun that is disrupted by the arrival of Western oilmen in an image similar to that of the disrupted village of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. As Achebe described the effects on a traditional African village of the arrival of powerful missionaries, so Munif chronicles the economic, social, and psychological effects of the promise of immeasurable wealth drawn from the deserts of nomad and oasis communities. The quintet continues with Al-ukhdud (1985;The Trench), Taqasim al-layl wa-al-nahar (1989; Variations on Night and Day), Al-munbatt (1989; The Uprooted), and Badiyat al zulumat (1989; The Desert of Darkness). Daniel Burt ranked the quintet as the 71st greatest novel of all time. The last two novels in the series have not been translated into English. While his works were never particularly successful in the west, throughout the Middle East they are critically acclaimed and extremely popular. Cities of Salt was described by Edward Said as the 'only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country.' While he was one of the fiercest critics of Saddam Hussein and his regime, he was utterly opposed to the American invasion of Iraq and spent the last two years of his life working on non-fiction projects to oppose what he saw as renewed imperialism.
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Munif, Abdelrahman. The Trench. New York. 1991. Pantheon Books. 0394576721. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux. 554 pages. hardcover. Translation of الأخدود.
DESCRIPTION - The first volume of Abdelrahman Munif's trilogy dealt with nomadic tribes on the Arabian Peninsula and how their lives are altered by the discovery of oil and the establishment of an Arabian kingdom on land they had historically roamed. The author's fictional kingdom closely resembles Saudi Arabia, where this novel was banned and where Munif was stripped of his citizenship. The fictional kingdom is forever altered by the discovery of oil. The kingdom's royal family allows Western technicians and advisers to exploit the environment in order to drill for oil. Through the setting up of an oil industry, the industrialized West gets a seemingly unlimited supply of the fossil fuel and the kingdom's royal family becomes filthy rich. THE TRENCH opens with Dr. Subhi Mahmilji being called to the city of Mooran to care for the dying sultan. Mahmilji is unable to save the old sultan, but he does succeed in gaining the confidence of the sultan's eldest son, Khazael, who ascends to the throne. The doctor becomes both physician and close adviser to Khazael. Mahmilji surmises that the kingdom will be changing dramatically in the near future and he is determined to have influence on how the kingdom is shaped. A major portion of THE TRENCH describes the various plots that are concocted by the doctor. Munif also relates on how life in Mooran has changed since the days when it was made up of no more than huts. Oil revenue is used to construct a number of palaces. The author describes in detail the inner workings of the sultan's ever-increasing harem. The doctor is the central character of THE TRENCH, but there are some finely drawn portraits of Arab women. The royal city of Mooran joins the modern world through the devious efforts of Mahmilji. He also helps to create a repressive secret service. The head of the secret service, Hammad, is chosen by the doctor; but little does he know at the time that Hammad will eventually take his place as the real power behind the throne. THE TRENCH is both an epic novel and an intimate portrait of Arabian life rarely revealed. Peter Theroux is to be commended for his expert translation of the first two volumes of CITIES OF SALT. Through this richly textured novel, Munif has given a human face to the Arab world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abdel Rahman Munif (May 29, 1933 - January 24, 2004) was a Jordanian-born Saudi novelist. His novels include strong political elements and parodies of the Middle Eastern elite class. His work so offended the rulers of Saudi Arabia that many of his books were banned and his Saudi citizenship revoked. Munif was born a Saudi national and brought up in Amman, Jordan to Saudi parents and an Iraqi grandmother. In 1952 he moved to Baghdad to study law and later moved to Cairo. He received a law degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in oil economics from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Economics. He later returned to Iraq to work in the oil ministry and became a member of the Ba'ath Party. He began writing in the 1970s after he left his job with the Iraqi ministry, quit the Ba'ath party, and moved to Damascus, Syria, removing himself from a regime he opposed. He quickly became known for his scathing parodies of Middle Eastern elites, especially those of Saudi Arabia, a country which banned many of his books and stripped him of Saudi citizenship. He used his knowledge of the oil industry to full effect criticizing the businessmen who ran it and the politicians they served. Munif was the author of a total of fifteen novels. The Cities of Salt quintet followed the evolution of the Arabian peninsula as its traditional Bedouin culture is transformed by the oil boom. The novels create a history of a broad region, evoking comparisons to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. The quintet begins with Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984) in the desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun that is disrupted by the arrival of Western oilmen in an image similar to that of the disrupted village of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. As Achebe described the effects on a traditional African village of the arrival of powerful missionaries, so Munif chronicles the economic, social, and psychological effects of the promise of immeasurable wealth drawn from the deserts of nomad and oasis communities. The quintet continues with Al-ukhdud (1985;The Trench), Taqasim al-layl wa-al-nahar (1989; Variations on Night and Day), Al-munbatt (1989; The Uprooted), and Badiyat al zulumat (1989; The Desert of Darkness). Daniel Burt ranked the quintet as the 71st greatest novel of all time. The last two novels in the series have not been translated into English. While his works were never particularly successful in the west, throughout the Middle East they are critically acclaimed and extremely popular. Cities of Salt was described by Edward Said as the 'only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country.' While he was one of the fiercest critics of Saddam Hussein and his regime, he was utterly opposed to the American invasion of Iraq and spent the last two years of his life working on non-fiction projects to oppose what he saw as renewed imperialism.
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Munif, Abdelrahman. Variations On Night and Day. New York. 1993. Pantheon Books. 039457673x. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Theroux. 335 pages. hardcover. Cover: G. Eric Matson. Translation of تقاسيم الليل و.
DESCRIPTION - Full of Machiavellian intrigue and searing political satire, the final volume of Abdelrahman Munif's landmark Cities of Salt trilogy - "the only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans, and local oligarchy on a Gulf country" (Edward Said) - chronicles the creation of a fictional Persian Gulf nation through the machinations of a corrupt Arab monarch and conniving British empire builders. Set in the 1930s, Variations on Night and Day depicts the rise to power of Sultan Khureybit and the emergence of Mooran as a modern nation. Khureybit expands and consolidates his dominion, crushing rival clans by military force and internal opposition with bribes, guile, and assassinations - all in the name of holy war - even as he is being sponsored by the British government, which plays rival sultans off one another to secure its influence in the region. Against this setting we see as well the venality of the Sultan's polygamous household, in which his several wives vie for preeminence through gossip, chicanery, and murder.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abdel Rahman Munif (May 29, 1933 - January 24, 2004) was a Jordanian-born Saudi novelist. His novels include strong political elements and parodies of the Middle Eastern elite class. His work so offended the rulers of Saudi Arabia that many of his books were banned and his Saudi citizenship revoked. Munif was born a Saudi national and brought up in Amman, Jordan to Saudi parents and an Iraqi grandmother. In 1952 he moved to Baghdad to study law and later moved to Cairo. He received a law degree from the Sorbonne and a PhD in oil economics from the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Economics. He later returned to Iraq to work in the oil ministry and became a member of the Ba'ath Party. He began writing in the 1970s after he left his job with the Iraqi ministry, quit the Ba'ath party, and moved to Damascus, Syria, removing himself from a regime he opposed. He quickly became known for his scathing parodies of Middle Eastern elites, especially those of Saudi Arabia, a country which banned many of his books and stripped him of Saudi citizenship. He used his knowledge of the oil industry to full effect criticizing the businessmen who ran it and the politicians they served. Munif was the author of a total of fifteen novels. The Cities of Salt quintet followed the evolution of the Arabian peninsula as its traditional Bedouin culture is transformed by the oil boom. The novels create a history of a broad region, evoking comparisons to William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. The quintet begins with Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984) in the desert oasis of Wadi al-Uyoun that is disrupted by the arrival of Western oilmen in an image similar to that of the disrupted village of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. As Achebe described the effects on a traditional African village of the arrival of powerful missionaries, so Munif chronicles the economic, social, and psychological effects of the promise of immeasurable wealth drawn from the deserts of nomad and oasis communities. The quintet continues with Al-ukhdud (1985;The Trench), Taqasim al-layl wa-al-nahar (1989; Variations on Night and Day), Al-munbatt (1989; The Uprooted), and Badiyat al zulumat (1989; The Desert of Darkness). Daniel Burt ranked the quintet as the 71st greatest novel of all time. The last two novels in the series have not been translated into English. While his works were never particularly successful in the west, throughout the Middle East they are critically acclaimed and extremely popular. Cities of Salt was described by Edward Said as the 'only serious work of fiction that tries to show the effect of oil, Americans and the local oligarchy on a Gulf country.' While he was one of the fiercest critics of Saddam Hussein and his regime, he was utterly opposed to the American invasion of Iraq and spent the last two years of his life working on non-fiction projects to oppose what he saw as renewed imperialism.
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Nasser, Amjad. Map of Signs and Scents. Evanston. 2016. Northwestern University Press. 9780810133655. 184 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - A Map of Signs and Scents is a collection of sixty poems by an acclaimed poet whose life and work span Middle Eastern and Western worlds, centuries past and the vivid present, the sweep of history and the intimacy of love. Born in Jordan in 1955, Amjad Nasser has lived and worked in Beirut, Cyprus, and London. His work reflects a nuanced view of the currents of history along which individual lives play out, putting him in conversation with such poets as C. P. Cavafy, Octavio Paz, and Derek Walcott. And yet, within his peripatetic life, Nasser has produced a corpus of work that, far from evoking the alienation possible in a life of motion, puts him in deep camaraderie with the world. Through fresh translations by the award-winning poets Fady Joudah and Khaled Mattawa, readers will experience the fascinating evolution of Nasser's style through his prolific, highly praised career, starting with samples of the rich textures and fertile symbolism of his 1979 debut Praise for Another Café. In selections from subsequent works such as Climbing the Mountain since Gilead, The Strangers Arrive, and Life like a Broken Tale, readers will trace Nasser's work as it develops into a mature style that, while more precise and direct, confidently encompasses broad horizons.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - AMJAD NASSER is a leading Jordanian poet, essaysist, and travel memoirist. He has cofounded a number of Arabic publications. FADY JOUDAH is a poet, a translator, and a practicing physician of internal medicine. His first poetry collection, The Earth in the Attic, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007. KHALED MATTAWA is an associate professor of English and creative writing at the University of Michigan. He has authored four books of poetry.
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KURDISTAN
[ KURDISTAN - Poetry ]Barzanji, Jalal. Trying Again to Stop Time: Selected Poems. Edmonton. 2015. University of Alberta Press. 9781772120431. Traslated and with a foreword by Sabah A. Salih. 128 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Jalal Barzanji’s poetry willingly mutates his native Kurdish experiences into the global. In the tradition of Taslima Nasrin, Adonis, Yehuda Amichai, and Mahmoud Darwish, he speaks with the authority of exile, of the tension that exists between home and an adoptive land, of that delicate dance of defiance in the face of censorship and oppression. Barzanji’s poetry is infused with the richness of the Middle East, but underneath, there are also strands of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and T. S. Eliot. It is here, in these moments where language and culture collide and co-operate that Barzanji finds a voice that, in its insistence on remaining true to itself, carves out a strong voice of opposition to political oppression. Barzanji will draw readers to his work again and again, the way in which we return to a favourite canvas.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jalal Barzanji is a highly respected Kurdish poet and journalist. Since 1970 he has published seven books of poetry and numerous critical columns. After his two-year imprisonment by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 1980s and further political repression into the 1990s, Barzanji and his family fled to Turkey, eventually immigrating to Edmonton, Canada. Sabah A. Salih is a professor of English at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.
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Hardi, Choman. Considering the Women. Hexham. 2016. Bloodaxe Books. 9781780372785. 64 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Considering the Women explores the equivocal relationship between immigrants and their homeland - the constant push and pull - as well as the plight of women in an aggressive patriarchal society and as survivors of political violence. The book draws on Choman Hardi's post-doctoral research on women survivors of genocide in Kurdistan. The stories of eleven survivors are framed by the radically shifting voice of the researcher. Hardi's second collection in English ends with a new beginning found in new love and in taking time off from the journey of traumatic discovery to enjoy the small, ordinary things of life.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in Kurdistan in 1974 and raised in Iraq and Iran, Choman Hardi came to the UK in 1993 and studied at Queen's College Oxford, University College London and the University of Kent in Canterbury. A poet, writer and academic researcher, she has been poet-in-residence at Moniack Mhor Writers Centre (Scotland), Villa Hellebosch (Belgium) and Hedgebrook Women Writers' Retreat (USA). She has performed her work in the UK, Europe, USA, India, Malaysia, and Taiwan. She has published three collections of poetry in Kurdish and her first English collection, Life for Us, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004. She has facilitated poetry workshops for Exiled Writers Ink, Apples and Snakes, New Writing Partnerships, Spread the Word, Academi, London's Southbank Centre, the Arvon Foundation and the British Council. In 2007 she facilitated a series of poetry workshops for the young people in Kurdistan through the Youth Culture Houses in different towns and cities. In 2005 she was awarded a two-year post-doctoral research scholarship by the Leverhulme Trust to research about the widows of genocide in Iraqi Kurdistan and during which she was associated with the Uppsala Program for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She presented some of her findings at academic conferences in the UK, USA, Oslo, Berlin, Amsterdam and Sarajevo. She co-facilitated Gender and Mental Health training workshops with Dr Jennie Williams for women in Kurdistan in 2006 and 2007. She has also provided various seminars and workshops on gender construction in Kurdish society and the position and experiences of the widows of Anfal in many Kurdish cities as well as for the diaspora.
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LEBANON
[ LEBANON - Literature ]Adnan, Etel. Night. Callicoon. 2016. Nightboat Books. 9781937658533. 64 pages. paperback. Cover art: Colter Jacobsen.
DESCRIPTION - Etel Adnan's evocative new book places night at its center to unearth memories held in the body, the spirit and the landscape. This striking new book continues Adnan's meditative observation and inquiry into the experiences of her remarkable life.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in 1925 in Beirut, ETEL ADNAN has written more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and essays. A two-volume collection, To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader, was published in 2014. She is a recipient of a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award, the California Book Award, a Lambda Book Award, and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She lives in Paris and Sausalito, California.
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Adnan, Etel. Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz). Sausalito. 1993. Post-Apollo Press. 0942996216. 114 pages. paperback. Cover: Michael O'Shea.
DESCRIPTION - 'Written against the background of war at the turn of this century, this millennium-the Gulf War, the Lebanese civil war and the military occupations of that country, the author's country of origin-these letters, OF CITIES AND WOMEN, are in their turn now letters to cities and women-that we, that is, women and men alike, might eventually, before it is too late, 'find the right geography for our revelations'-Barbara Harlow.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Etel Adnan was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. In Lebanon, she was educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris. In January 1955 she went to the United States to pursue post-graduate studies in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, and Harvard. From 1958 to 1972, she taught philosophy at Dominican College of San Rafael, California. Based on her feelings of connection to, and solidarity with the Algerian war of independence, she began to resist the political implications of writing in French and shifted the focus of her creative expression to visual art. She became a painter. But it was with her participation in the poets' movement against the war in Vietnam that she began to write poems and became, in her words, “an American poet”. In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers - first for Al Safa, then for L'Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976. In 1977, her novel Sitt Marie-Rose was published in Paris, and won the “France-Pays Arabes” award. This novel has been translated into more than 10 languages, and was to have an immense influence, becoming a classic of War Literature. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. In the late seventies, she wrote texts for two documentaries made by Jocelyne Saab, on the civil war in Lebanon, which were shown on French television as well as in Europe and Japan.
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Adnan, Etel. Paris, When It's Naked. Sausalito. 1993. Post-Apollo Press. 0942996208. 115 pages. paperback. Cover: Simone Fattal.
DESCRIPTION - Etel Adnan's novel "PARIS, WHEN IT'S NAKED amazes our retinas, ears, lips, fingertips, and noses with sensing, talking, and envisioning the city of Baudelaire and Delacroix, Mallarme and Picasso, Sartre and Djuna Barnes, Miller and Nin, Vietnamese and African refugees, revolutions and Bohemia. This tale of the Creative Now is told through the fine-tuned sensibility of Etel Adnan, the expatriate poet-painter who knows the French Capital as wholly as she does Beirut and San Francisco, her other homes. She is also the author of SITT MARIE-ROSE, an underground novel of the Lebanese Civil War, and many books of poetry. Her new work is a philosophically charged lyric in prose. The elan vital of every word evokes the eternal present of this wise woman. A highly personal, life-enhancing masterpiece in a deathly age of impersonality. An indespensable book by an indispensable writer" -Morgan Gibson.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Etel Adnan was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. In Lebanon, she was educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris. In January 1955 she went to the United States to pursue post-graduate studies in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, and Harvard. From 1958 to 1972, she taught philosophy at Dominican College of San Rafael, California. Based on her feelings of connection to, and solidarity with the Algerian war of independence, she began to resist the political implications of writing in French and shifted the focus of her creative expression to visual art. She became a painter. But it was with her participation in the poets' movement against the war in Vietnam that she began to write poems and became, in her words, “an American poet”. In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers - first for Al Safa, then for L'Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976. In 1977, her novel Sitt Marie-Rose was published in Paris, and won the “France-Pays Arabes” award. This novel has been translated into more than 10 languages, and was to have an immense influence, becoming a classic of War Literature. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. In the late seventies, she wrote texts for two documentaries made by Jocelyne Saab, on the civil war in Lebanon, which were shown on French television as well as in Europe and Japan.
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Adnan, Etel. Sea and Fog. Callicoon. 2012. Nightboat Books. 9780984459872. 118 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - These interrelated meditations explore the nature of the individual spirit and the individual spiritedness of the natural world. As skilled a philosopher as she is a poet, in Sea & Fog, Adnan weaves multiple sonic, theoretical, and syntactic pleasures at once.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in 1925 in Beirut, ETEL ADNAN has written more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and essays. A two-volume collection, To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader, was published in 2014. She is a recipient of a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award, the California Book Award, a Lambda Book Award, and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She lives in Paris and Sausalito, California.
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Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito. 1982. Post-Apollo Press. 094299602x. Translated from the French by Georgina Kleege. 105 pages. paperback. Cover by Simone Fattal.
DESCRIPTION - This is the story of a woman abducted by militiamen during the Civil War in LEBANON, and executed. It reveals the tribal mentality which makes of the Middle East a dangerous powerhouse. SITT MARIE ROSE received the ‘France-Pays Arabes' award in Paris and has been translated into Dutch, Arabic, and Italian. Etel Adnan is a poet and a writer well known throughout the Arab World. A painter and a tapestry designer, her works have been exhibited in the U.S., Europe, and the Arab countries. She lives in California. Georgina Kleege, a cum laude graduate from Yale University, is a young novelist and a translator. She is also a student of the Martha Graham School of Dance. She resides in New York and Paris. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Etel Adnan was born in 1925 and raised in Beirut, Lebanon. Her mother was a Greek from Smyrna, her father, a high ranking Ottoman officer born in Damascus. In Lebanon, she was educated in French schools. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris. In January 1955 she went to the United States to pursue post-graduate studies in philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, and Harvard. From 1958 to 1972, she taught philosophy at Dominican College of San Rafael, California. Based on her feelings of connection to, and solidarity with the Algerian war of independence, she began to resist the political implications of writing in French and shifted the focus of her creative expression to visual art. She became a painter. But it was with her participation in the poets' movement against the war in Vietnam that she began to write poems and became, in her words, “an American poet”. In 1972, she moved back to Beirut and worked as cultural editor for two daily newspapers - first for Al Safa, then for L'Orient le Jour. She stayed in Lebanon until 1976. In 1977, her novel Sitt Marie-Rose was published in Paris, and won the “France-Pays Arabes” award. This novel has been translated into more than 10 languages, and was to have an immense influence, becoming a classic of War Literature. In 1977, Adnan re-established herself in California, making Sausalito her home, with frequent stays in Paris. In the late seventies, she wrote texts for two documentaries made by Jocelyne Saab, on the civil war in Lebanon, which were shown on French television as well as in Europe and Japan.
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Adnan, Etel. Surge. Callicoon. 2018. Nightboat Books. 9781937658854. 56 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - A new volume of aphoristic prose and philosophical poetry from Etel Adnan, whose work The New York Times recently described as the “meditative heir to Nietzsche's aphorisms, Rilke's Book of Hours and the verses of Sufi mysticism.” She writes: “Reality is messianic/apocalyptic/ my soul is my terror.”
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born in 1925 in Beirut, ETEL ADNAN has written more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and essays. A two-volume collection, To look at the sea is to become what one is: An Etel Adnan Reader, was published in 2014. She is a recipient of a PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award, the California Book Award, a Lambda Book Award, and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. She lives in Paris and Sausalito, California.
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Al-Saadi, Yazan and Khouri, Omar. Lebanon Is Burning and Other Dispatches. University Park. 2024. Graphic Mundi - PSU Press. 9781637790786. 144 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Voices from the Middle East on the fight for self-determination. Much of the present discourse about the pro-democracy Arab uprisings of 2011 paints a bleak picture of their defeat. But the truth is more complicated, and moments of struggle and inspiration still recur despite the overwhelming odds against the movements’ success. This collection of short comics documents the political and social unrest in the Middle East during the 2010s, in such places as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, and Bahrain. A collaboration between writer and journalist Yazan Al-Saadi and a lineup of stellar cartoonists from the region—Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirène Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma, and Enas Satir—this graphic reportage serves as a witness to an era of counterrevolutionary resurgence in which entrenched powers clashed with the people’s struggle for self-determination.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yazan Al-Saadi is a Kuwait-born Syrian who holds a Canadian passport. He has lived in seven countries across three continents over the course of his life, and since 2012 he has lived and written in Beirut, Lebanon. He has worked as a researcher, a newspaper and online journalist and editor, a creative content and communications officer for a medical international humanitarian organization, and a political analyst and commentator.
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Al-Shaykh, Hanan. Beirut Blues. London. 1995. Chatto & Windus. 0701163038. Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham. 279 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Leila Naaman, Jacket design by Sheridan Wall. Translation of Barîd Bayroûth.
DESCRIPTION - Asmahan is a woman living in Beirut as it is torn apart in a civil war involving Christian and Muslim militias, Palestianian, the Israeli military and others. She writes letters to try to understand the chaos around her and to give herself hope of living through it.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hanan al-Shaykh (born November 12, 1945, Beirut) is a Lebanese author of contemporary literature. Hanan al-Shaykh's family background is that of a strict Shi'a family. Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence. She attended the Almillah primary school for Muslim girls where she received a traditional education for Muslim girls, before continuing her education at the Ahliyyah school. She continued her gender-segregated education at the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 1966. She returned to Lebanon to work for the Lebanese newspaper Al-Nahar until 1975. She left Beirut again in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She now lives in London with her family. Al-Shaykh's literature follows in the footsteps of such contemporary Arab women authors as Nawal El Saadawi in that it explicitly challenges the roles of women in the traditional social structures of the Arab Middle East. Her work is heavily influenced by the patriarchal controls that were placed on her not only by her father and brother, but also within the traditional neighborhood in which she was raised. As a result, her work is a manifestation of a social commentary on the status of women in the Arab-Muslim world. She challenges notions of sexuality, obedience, modesty, and familiar relations in her work. Her work often implies or states sexually explicit scenes and sexual situations which go directly against the social mores of conservative Arab society, which has led to her books being banned in the more conservative areas of the region including the Persian Gulf. In other countries, they are difficult to obtain because of censorship laws which prevent the Arabic translations from being easily accessible to the public. Specific examples include The Story of Zahra which includes abortion, divorce, sanity, illegitimacy and sexual promiscuity, and Women of Sand and Myrrh which contains scenes of a lesbian hard core sexual relationships between two of the main protagonists. In addition to her prolific writing on the condition of Arab women and her literary social criticism, she is also part of a group of authors writing about the Lebanese Civil War.
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Al-Shaykh, Hanan. The Story of Zahra. New York. 1986. Readers International. 0930523210. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Ford with the author's cooperation. 185 pages. hardcover. Translation of حكاية زهرة.
DESCRIPTION - Hanan al-Shaykh's sensitive and implacably honest novel raised a scandal in the Arab world. It also brought its author prominence as one of the most innovative and important writers of her generation. Zahra-'flower' in Arabic-symbolises the ambiguous position of women in the Middle East. A Lebanese Shiite Muslim, the girl grows up in the grip of family, husband and finally the street fighters of war-torn Beirut.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hanan al-Shaykh (born November 12, 1945, Beirut) is an acclaimed Lebanese author of contemporary literature. Hanan al-Shaykh's family background is that of a strict Shi'a family. Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence. She attended the Almillah primary school for Muslim girls where she received a traditional education for Muslim girls, before continuing her education at the Ahliah school. She continued her gender-segregated education at the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 1966. She returned to Lebanon to work for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar until 1975. She left Beirut again in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She now lives in London with her family. Al-Shaykh's literature follows in the footsteps of such contemporary Arab women authors as Nawal El Saadawi in that it explicitly challenges the roles of women in the traditional social structures of the Arab Middle East. Her work is heavily influenced by the patriarchal controls that were placed on her not only by her father and brother, but also within the traditional neighborhood in which she was raised. As a result, her work is a manifestation of a social commentary on the status of women in the Arab-Muslim world. She challenges notions of sexuality, obedience, modesty, and familiar relations in her work. Her work often implies or states sexually explicit scenes and sexual situations which go directly against the social mores of conservative Arab society, which has led to her books being banned in the more conservative areas of the region including the Persian Gulf. In other countries, they are difficult to obtain because of censorship laws which prevent the Arabic translations from being easily accessible to the public. Specific examples include The Story of Zahra which includes abortion, divorce, sanity, illegitimacy and sexual promiscuity, and Women of Sand and Myrrh which contains scenes of a lesbian relationship between two of the main protagonists. In addition to her prolific writing on the condition of Arab women and her literary social criticism, she is also part of a group of authors writing about the Lebanese Civil War.
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Arnesen, Eric (editor). Lebanon – Poems of Love and War, Bilingual Edition . Syracuse. 2006. Syracuse University Press. 9780815608165. Translated by Paul B. Kelley and Sam Hazo. Edited by Christophe Ippolito. Middle East Literature in Translation. 122 pages. paperback. Translation of Poemes d'amour et de guerre.
DESCRIPTION - Long before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made a frontal assault on the reigning segregationist order, African American workers had to struggle against both their employers and fellow white workers. Because their efforts to secure their workplace rights pitted them against the broader structures of racial oppression, their activism constituted nothing less than a form of civil rights struggle. Uniting the latest scholarship on race, labor, and civil rights, The Black Worker aims to establish the richness of the African American working-class experience, and the indisputable role of black workers in shaping the politics and history of labor and race in the United States. To capture the complexity of African Americans’ experiences in the workplace, this reader examines workers engaged in a wide array of jobs, including sharecropping, coal mining, domestic service, longshoring, automobile manufacturing, tobacco processing, railroading, prostitution, lumbering, and municipal employment. The essays’ subjects include black migration, strikebreaking, black conservatism, gender, and the multiple forms of employment discrimination in the South and North. Other contributions deal explicitly with state policy and black workers during the transition from slavery to freedom, World Wars I and II, and the 1960s. The variety of challenges made by these workers, both quiet and overt, served as clear reminders to the supporters of white supremacy that, despite their best efforts through violence, fraud, and the law, as long as they insisted on racial inequality, the “race question” would never be fully resolved.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nadia Mohammad Hamadeh Tueni (1935–1983) was a Lebanese Francophone poet, who authored of numerous volumes of poetry. Nadia Mohammad Ali Hamadeh was born in Beirut in 1935, to a Lebanese Druze father, Mohammed Ali Hamadeh, who was a diplomat and writer, and a French Algerian mother. She grew up bilingual. Her brother, Marwan Hamadeh, is a politician, and another brother, Ali Hamadeh, is a journalist at An Nahar and Future TV. Nadia Tueni was educated in French schools in Lebanon and Greece. She attended Ecole des Soeurs de Besançon, then La Mission Laïque Française. She received her secondary education at the Lycée Français in Athens where her father was ambassador of Lebanon. She received her law degree at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut. However, there is another report stating that she attended the Université Saint-Joseph, but could not complete her study there due to her marriage in 1954. Tueni published her first book of poems, Les Textes Blonds, in 1963. She worked as the literary editor of the Lebanese French-language newspaper, The Day, in 1967 and contributed to various Arabic and French publications. She married Ghassan Tueni, the publisher of An Nahar and doyen of the Lebanese press, in 1954. They had three children, all of whom would predecease their father, who long outlived her. Her son, Gebran Tueni, a journalist and politician, was assassinated in 2005. Another son, Makram, was 21 when he died in a car accident in Paris in 1987. A daughter, Nayla, who was born in 1955 died of cancer at age 7. She describes her country, Lebanon, in Poems of Love and War (2006:xxxv) as follows: "I belong to a country that commits suicide every day while it is being assassinated. As a matter of fact, I belong to a country that died several times. Why should I not die too of the gnawing, ugly, slow, and vicious death, of this Lebanese death?" Nadia Tueni died in Beit Meri near Beirut in 1983 after an 18 year battle with cancer. She was 47. She received several awards during her lifetime, including the Prix de l'Académie Française, the Order of La Pléiade, and the Prix Said Akl.
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Chedid, Andree. From Sleep Unbound. Athens. 1983. Swallow Press. 0804003998. Translated from the French by Sharon Spencer. 141 pages. hardcover. Translation of Sommeil délivré.
DESCRIPTION - FROM SLEEP UNBOUND portrays the life of Samya, an Egyptian woman who is taken at age 15 from her Catholic boarding school and forced into a loveless and humiliating marriage. Eventually sundered from every human attachment, Samya lapses into despair and despondence, and finally an emotionally caused paralysis. But when she shakes off the torpor of sleep, the sleep of avoidance, she awakens to action with the explosive energy of one who has been reborn. Professor Bettina Knapp, who provides the Foreword to this translation, describes Chedid as ‘one of France's outstanding creative spirits. Her way is profound and sensitive, her vision innovative in its archetypal delineations,. a product of two civilizations, two ways of life, two psyches. Chedid's literary works unity inner and outer aspects of Western and Middle-Eastern cultures' - (World Literature Today, Autumn 1977).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andre Chedid is a poet, essayist, dramatist and novelist of Egypto-Lebanese origin. Born and educated in Cairo, where she received a degree in literature from the American University she moved to Paris in 1946, and became a naturalized French citizen. She is the recipient of many literary awards, including the Prix Louise LabbE (poetry), 1969: Aigie d'or de la poesie, 1972; Grand prix de l'Academie Belge, 1974; Prix de l'afrique Mediteaneene, 1974; Prix Mallarme (poetry), 1976: and Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle, 1979. Sharon Spencer is professor of English and comparative literature at Montclair State College in New Jersey. A novelist herself, she received an award in fiction-writing from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for 1981-82. She is the author of COLLAGE OF DREAMS: THE WRITINGS OF ANAÏS NIN and SPACE, TIME AND STRUCTURE IN THE MODERN NOVEL.
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Chedid, Andree. The Multiple Child. San Francisco. 1995. Mercury House. 156279079x. Translated from the French by Judith Radke. 178 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Marcia Clay. Translation of L'enfant multiple.
DESCRIPTION - Set in Paris and war-torn Lebanon in the 1980s, THE MULTIPLE CHILDis a timeless tale in a spare yet elegant style by a powerful writer admired worldwide. The title character, Omar-Jo, a child of war and of peace, has the power and vision of Oskar of The Tin Drum and the gentle wisdom of The Little Prince. After Omar-Jo loses his parents and one of his arms in a bomb blast in Lebanon, his grandfather sends the boy to live with relatives in Paris. There he meets Maxime, the owner of a carousel that has fallen into disrepair. The child breathes new life into the carousel - a character in its own right - as well as into its owner and patrons. Omar-Jo plays the part of the wise clown: ‘all the zanies, all the fools, all the ‘grasiosos,' all the minstrels, the itinerant players, the white-faced clowns, the Monsieur Loyals, the Augustes, of times past and present, dwelt in his body.' In this novel, Chedid illuminates the essence of conflict and redemption.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andree Chedid is a poet, dramatist and novelist. Born and educated in Cairo, she moved to Paris, where she now lives, in 1946. Her works have won major literary awards including the Prix Goncourt (for short stories) and the Prix Mallarme (for poetry).
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Chedid, Andree. The Return To Beirut. London. 1989. Serpent's Tail. 1852421495. Translated by Ros Schwartz. 158 pages. paperback. Cover design by Adrian Yeeles/Artworkers. Cover illustration by Phyllis Mahon. Signet Classic reprint. Translation of: Maison sans racines.
DESCRIPTION - Sybil, a twelve-year-old American, meets her grandmother, Kalya, for the first time. It is Beirut in 1975, and Lebanon is on the verge of civil war. From her window, Kalya looks out over the square where her friends Ammal and Myriam have arranged to meet. Aware of the tensions that threaten to tear the country apart, Kalya recalls a holiday she took many years ago with her own grandmother, at a time in Lebanon's history when it was possible to contemplate a radiant future. THE RETURN TO BEIRUT is Andree Chedid's hymn for a dying country. Flash-backs, memories and images of poetic beauty are richly interwoven to depict the smells, sounds and sights of this tragic land. ‘That THE RETURN TO BEIRUT moves us so greatly is because it is written by a novelist and poet of Lebanese origins who does not cease to celebrate the possibility of harmony. The book is all the more effective, sincere and moving for being sober, transparent and measured. a beautiful novel.' - Evennement du Jeudi. ‘THE RETURN TO BEIRUT works its magic in many ways. Not only because its central focus is women who take control of their lives, of the lives of their loved ones, lost but still near. But also because, even if the protests of poets are not always heard above the din of armaments, they will, one day, bring Kalya and Sybil back to life and rebuild a country.' - Elle (France).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andree Chedid is a poet, dramatist and novelist. Born and educated in Cairo, she moved to Paris, where she now lives, in 1946. Her works have won major literary awards including the Prix Goncourt (for short stories) and the Prix Mallarme (for poetry). Two previous novels, THE SIXTH DAY (A remarkable novel' - The Sunday Times) and FROM SLEEP UNBOUND (‘A brilliant. touching book' - The Guardian), are also published by Serpent's Tail.
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Chedid, Andree. The Sixth Day. London. 1987. Serpent's Tail. 0852421118. Translated from the French by Isobel Strachey. 170 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Sue Hillwood-Harris. Translation of: Le sixième jour.
DESCRIPTION - Foremost among Arab women writers, Chedid may be at her best in this slight, simple tale of Om Hassan, a woman exhausting herself in the struggle to bring her grandson whole through the ravages of cholera. The contagion, and reaction to it, force the two to seek isolation, first amidst the millions of Cairo and then on a small boat making its way down the Nile to the seathe way somehow to hope, to new life. The novel's lustrous prose and its concluding epiphany are more than enough to explain why this novel, written in 1960 and published in translation in England in 1962, should finally have been made available to American readers. - LIBRARY JOURNAL.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andree Chedid is a poet, dramatist and novelist. Born and educated in Cairo, she moved to Paris, where she now lives, in 1946. Her works have won major literary awards including the Prix Goncourt (for short stories) and the Prix Mallarme (for poetry).
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Daoud, Hassan. No Road to Paradise: A Novel. Cairo. 2017. American University of Cairo Press/Hoopoe. 9789774168178. Translated by Marilyn Booth. 298 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - In a small Lebanese village a disillusioned imam, diagnosed with terminal cancer, must face his demons. Having consented to an arranged marriage, he has found himself in a loveless union and lusts after another. To please his family, he took up the robe and turban of his forefathers but the expected path to fulfillment did not unfold before him. Meticulous, sparse prose quietly evokes the essence of rural life and the burden of tradition. Hassan Daoud’s masterful novel plumbs the depths of a man’s struggle with religion and his place in the world. Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hassan Daoud, born in Beirut in 1950, holds a master’s degree in Arabic literature and has taught creative writing at the Lebanese American University. He is the editorial director of al-Mudun news website and is on the editorial board of the quarterly magazine Kalamon. He is the author of three short story collections and ten novels. No Road to Paradise was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2015. Marilyn Booth has translated works by Hoda Barakat, Latifa al-Zayyat, Nawal El Saadawi, and many other Arab writers, and is the translator of Hassan Daoud's The Penguin's Song. She is Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University.
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Eban, Abba (introduction). The Beirut Massacre: The Complete Kahan Commission Report. New York. 1983. Karz-Cohl. 0943828554. Introduction by Abba Eban. 136 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Based on the testimony of 163 witnesses and over 17,000 pages of documents, the Kahan commission report thoroughly examines the circumstances surrounding the 1982 Beirut massacre and is a stinging indictment of those involved. Includes appendices, parliamentary addresses by Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, and biographies of the Kahan Commission Members. Abba Eban contributes an introduction placing both the massacre and the report in the context of Israel's history and moral standards. His comments highlight the differences between the views of Labor and of Likud, but also pay tribute to the Commission's work as a vindication of Israel's democracy and rule of law.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Abba Solomon Meir Eban (2 February 1915 - 17 November 2002) was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages. During his career, he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
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Gibran, Kahlil and Lewis, A. David. The Prophet: A Graphic Novel Adaptation. University Park. 2023. Graphic Mundi - PSU Press. 9781637790502. 112 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - A graphic novel adaptation of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, illustrating the story of an exile preparing to return to his home and sharing his thoughts on the human condition. One of the best-known and most-translated works of free verse poetry ever published in the English language, The Prophet, by Lebanon-born Khalil Gibran, tells the story of the prophet Almustafa, who was banished from his homeland, and lived twelve years as a refugee in the fictional city of Orphalese. One day, as Almustafa prepares to board the ship that will take him home, he addresses a gathering of townspeople who have come to see him off. His parting words of wisdom about the human condition reveal him to be a man who sees deeply into the hearts, minds, and souls and his fellow humans. Illustrated by Justin Renteria in a 1920s Ottoman-inspired style and adapted by A. David Lewis, this is a vibrant, authentic, and skillfully paced graphic novel that is faithful to the original text. It includes an imagined backstory about the enigmatic main character. Appearing 100 years after the original publication of Gibran’s masterpiece, and at a time when entire groups of people are being forced to seek refuge elsewhere, this fresh and visually compelling rendering of The Prophet conveys the original work’s bracing and inspirational message about what it means to live well in today’s the world.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - A. David Lewis is an Eisner Award-nominated writer whose graphic novels include an award-winning adaptation of Exodus, entitled The Lone and Level Sands, and his revival of the first Muslim superhero: Kismet, Man of Fate. Lewis is a Boston-based university educator, library curator, and comics studies scholar. Justin Rentería is an award-winning illustrator. His illustrations have been published in the New Yorker and the Atlantic and as frequent contributions to the New York Times's op-ed pages. Before deciding to focus on graphic novels, Rentería worked on everything from book cover designs for the memoirs of media personalities to billboards for popular television series.
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Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York. 2002. Penguin Books. 9780141187013. Introduction by Robin Waterfield. Penguin Modern Classics. 128 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - First published in the 1920's, The Prophet is perhaps the most famous work of religious fiction of the twentieth century, and has sold millions of copies in more than twenty languages. Gibran's Prophet speaks of many things central to daily life: love, marriage, death, beauty, passion, eating, work and play. The spiritual message he imparts, of finding divinity through love, blends eastern mysticism, religious faith and philosophy with simple advice. The Prophet became the bible of 1960s culture and was credited with founding the New Age movement, yet it still continues to inspire people around the world today. This edition is illustrated with Gibran's famous visionary paintings. Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) was a poet, philosopher and artist, who stands among the most important Arabic language authors of the early twentieth century. Born in Lebanon, he spent the last twenty years of his life in the United States, where for many years he was the leader of a Lebansese writing circle in New York. He is the author of numerous volumes, including The Garden of the Prophet, The Storm, The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart, The Vision, Reflections on the Way of the Soul, and Spirit Brides. If you enjoyed The Prophet, you might like Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'His work goes on from generation to generation' Daily Mail 'To read it was to transcend ordinary levels of perception, to become aware. of a more intense level of being' Independent
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gibran Khalil Gibran (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931), usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist; he was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.
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Halaby, Laila. my name on his tongue: poems . Syracuse. 2012. Syracuse University Press. 9780815632948. Arab American Writing. 136 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Best-selling novelist and PEN Award winner Halaby presents readers with her first collection of poetry. Intensely personal and marked with a trenchant wit, these poems form a memoir following Halaby's life as they explore the disorientation of exile, the challenge of navigating two cultures, and the struggle to shape her own creative identity. She shares the pain and confusion of growing up-the need for belonging and the solace of community-with tenderness and fearless candor. Rooted in her Middle Eastern heritage, these poems illuminate the Arab American experience over the last quarter century. Turning away from all that is esoteric and remote in American poetry today, Halaby's lucid and forthright voice speaks to and for a large audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Laila Halaby was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a Jordanian father and an American mother. She speaks four languages, won a Fulbright scholarship to study folklore in Jordan, and holds a master's degree in Arabic literature. Her first novel, West of the Jordan, won the prestigious PEN Beyond Margins Award. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her family. Visit www.lailahalaby.net for more information on Laila Halaby and her work.
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Kassir, Samir. Beirut. Berkeley. 2010. University of California Press. 9780520256682. 115 b/w photographs, 17 maps. 629 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Widely praised as the definitive history of Beirut, this is the story of a city that has stood at the crossroads of Mediterranean civilization for more than four thousand years. The last major work completed by Samir Kassir before his tragic death in 2005, Beirut is a tour de force that takes the reader from the ancient to the modern world, offering a dazzling panorama of the city's Seleucid, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French incarnations. Kassir vividly describes Beirut's spectacular growth in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concentrating on its emergence after the Second World War as a cosmopolitan capital until its near destruction during the devastating Lebanese civil war of 1975–1990. Generously illustrated and eloquently written, Beirut illuminates contemporary issues of modernity and democracy while at the same time memorably recreating the atmosphere of one of the world's most picturesque, dynamic, and resilient cities.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - One of the leading voices for progressive change in the Middle east, Samir Kassir (1960–2005) taught at the Institut des sciences Politiques of the UniversitE Saint-Joseph in Beirut, worked as a journalist and editorial writer for the daily An-Nahar newspaper there, and was a cofounder of the Democratic Left Movement in Lebanon. The author of several other books, including Being Arab, Kassir was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut in June 2005.
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Kerr, Ann Zwicker. Come With Me From Lebanon: An American Family Odyssey. Syracuse. 1994. Syracuse University Press. 0815602987. With a foreword by Albert Hourani. Contemporary Issues in the Middle East series. 322 pages. Front cover: ‘Ain Mreisseh, Beirut’, watercolor by Ann Kerr, 1966.
DESCRIPTION - Ann Kerr's is a personal account of an American family during the most tumultuous years of Beirut's political strife. It begins with the tragic assassination of her husband Malcolm Kerr, one of the most respected scholars of Middle East Studies, in 1984, seventeen months after he became president of the American University of Beirut. She retraces in detail the events that brought them to the Middle East, and reaches back into her childhood to describe a lifelong affinity for Lebanon. For a young American woman caring for a family in Lebanon and Egypt, life was like nothing she had ever known, but Ann Kerr approached it with a sense of adventure, which would help her deal with the beauty, chaos, and the ultimate horror of life during the country's most volatile years of the last three decades. The personal saga of her family and the events surrounding her husband's untimely death merge with the political episodes that have shaped U.S.-Arab relations since World War II. Kerr describes with humor and grace her life within a culture that most Americans perceive as strange and hostile, but which she loved from the beginning. Her story is deeply moving, whether it describes her junior year at the American University of Beirut or raising a family in Lebanon and Egypt or experiencing a reverse culture shock when returning to the United States with her husband. Through entries from her diaries and excerpts from his letters, Kerr examines her husband's ideals and goals to promote reconciliation among the myriad factions that comprise Lebanese society. The book contains much information about Islam and the cultural diversity of Lebanon's religious groups, while supplying an essential historical perspective of the American University of Beirut. Come with Me from Lebanon will be of interest to Middle East scholars, as well as to the general reader. Since it examines the problems women faced in a culture with different expectations about women's roles, this book will have a significant place in women's studies programs.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ann Zwicker Kerr, coordinator of the Fullbright Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, serves as trustee of the American University of Beirut and escorts study tours to the Arab World for the National Council on US-Arab Relations. Her late husband, Malcolm Kerr, was the president of the American University of Beirut and was assassinated in office in 1984.
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Khoury, Elias. As Though She Were Sleeping. Brooklyn. 2012. Archipelago Books. 9781935744023. Translated by Marilyn Booth. 300 pages. paperback. Translation of كأنها نائم.
DESCRIPTION - Milia's response to her new husband Mansour and to the Arab World of 1947 is to close her eyes and drift into parallel worlds. Identities shift. Present, past, and future mingle and merge: she finds herself able to converse with the dead and foresee the future. As the novel progresses in glimpses, Milia's dreams become more navigable than the strange and obstinate "reality" in which she finds herself, and the two realms grow ever more entangled. This wondrous tapestry of love, faith, history, poetry, and vision cuts to the very heart of the deep-rooted conflicts of the region and breaks new literary ground.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish.
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Khoury, Elias. Gate of the Sun. Brooklyn. 2016. Archipelago Books. 9780914671619. Translated by Humphrey Davies. 552 pages. paperback. Translation of باب الشم.
DESCRIPTION - New York Times Notable Book of the Year "An imposingly rich and realistic novel, a genuine masterwork" that vividly captures the Palestinian experience following the creation of the Israeli state (New York Times Book Review) After Palestine is torn apart in 1948, two men remain alone in a deserted makeshift hospital in the Shatila camp on the outskirts of Beirut-entering a vast world of displacement, fear, and tenuous hope. Khalil holds vigil at the bedside of his patient and spiritual father, a storied leader of the Palestinian resistance who has slipped into a coma. As Khalil attempts to revive Yunes, he begins a story, which branches into many: stories of the people expelled from their villages in Galilee; of the massacres that followed; of the extraordinary inner strength of those who survived; and of love. Khalil-like Elias Khoury-is a truth collector, trying to make sense of the fragments and various versions of stories that have been told to him. His voice is intimate and direct, his memories are vivid, his humanity radiates from every page. Khalil lets his mind wander through time, from village to village, from one astonishing soul to another, and takes us with him. Gate of the Sun is a Palestinian Odyssey and the first magnum opus of the Palestinian saga. Beautifully weaving together haunting stories of survival and loss, love and devastation, memory and dream, Khoury humanizes the complex Palestinian struggle as he brings to life the story of an entire people.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish.
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Khoury, Elias. Little Mountain. Minneapolis. 1989. University of Minnesota Press. 0816617694. Translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet. 124 pages. hardcover. Translation of: al-Jabal al-ṣaghīr.
DESCRIPTION - Written in the opening phases of the Lebanese Civil War (1975 - 1990), Little Mountain is told from the perspectives of three characters: a Joint Forces fighter; a distressed civil servant; and an amorphous figure, part fighter, part intellectual. Elias Khoury's language is poetic and piercing as he tells the story of Beirut, civil war, and fractured identity.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish. MAIA TABET, born in Lebanon, is a literary translator and a professional cook. She translated Khoury's first novel to be published in English, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, and has translated a number of prose texts that have appeared in literary magazines including BANIPAL, WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS, and FIKRAN WA FANN. Currently, she lives in the United States.
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Khoury, Elias. The Children of the Ghetto: II. Brooklyn. 2024. Archipelago Books. 9781962770064. Translated by Humphrey Davies. 417 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - An acclaimed Lebanese writer speaks to the complexity of the Palestinian experience in a devastating account of resilience and loss "Gives voice to rooted exiles and trapped refugees, to dissolving boundaries and changing identities, to radical demands and new languages." - Edward Said Weaving personal and cultural memory into a tale that humanizes the complex Palestinian experience, Star of the Sea traces the contours of the unspeakable. Adam Dannoun's story is one of beginnings. Born in a war-torn Israel, Adam dreams of becoming a writer. He is just an infant when Jewish forces uproot and massacre thousands of Palestinians in the 1948 Nakba, including his own father. Adam's mother, crumbling with loss, takes her son to Haifa and remarries. Soon she feels stifled by her new husband. Adam flees this lifeless home and writes himself a second beginning. With nothing but his father's will and the image of his mother at the doorway, Adam is born again into the streets of Haifa. Here he spins a new life alongside an auto-shop owner, Gabriel. Adam Dannoun shapeshifts into Adam Danon, an Israeli born into the Warsaw ghetto, and Gabriel's younger brother. There are limits to this charade, lines he's forbidden to cross-and when he falls in love with Gabriel's only daughter he steps, unawares, into a third life. Life after life, Adam confronts the horrors of his past. Following My Name Is Adam, Star of the Sea is the second installment of a brilliant trilogy-an epic tale of love, survival, and ongoing devastation.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish.
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Khoury, Elias. The Journey of Little Gandhi. Minneapolis. 1994. University of Minnesota Press. 0816619956. Translated from the Arabic by Paula Haydar. 194 pages. hardcover. Translation of Riḥlat Ghāndī al-ṣaghīr.
DESCRIPTION - 'He was born in Mashta Hasan, ran away from his father, who took him to his grandfather's cave, worked in the Miftah bakery in Tripoli, moved to Beirut where he worked in Abu Ayoun's restaurant, and then worked as a shoe shiner. He got married and had two children, Husn and Suad. Husn was a barber, and Suad was sick. He loved life and loved the flavor of it. Alice told him, and the Reverend Amin befriended him, and Davis turned him into a restaurant owner, and the dog died, and Gandhi grieved over the dog more than he grieved for his own father.' Such was the journey of Abd al-Karim (Husn al-Ahmadi al-Mughayiri), nicknamed Little Gandhi. As told by Alice to the one who tells the story here, it is, however, not so simple. In the hands of Elias Khoury, the tale of this humble shoe shiner living and working in Beirut during the recent Lebanese war is also the story of a city, perhaps a world, coming apart at the seams. First published in Beirut, where it has gone through several printings, The Journey of Little Gandhi is representative of Khoury's distinctive style and narrative technique as well as his consistent exploration of Beirut as the locus of competing historical and political forces. As such, the book also reflects the author's significant, ongoing contribution to modern Arab literature.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish.
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Khoury, Elias. White Masks. Brooklyn. 2010. Archipelago Books. 9780981987323. Translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet. 303 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: Paul Klee. Jacket design: David Bullen. Translation of Al-wudjuh al-bayda.
DESCRIPTION - Why was the corpse of Khalil Ahmad Jaber found in a mound of garbage? Why had this civil servant disappeared weeks before his horrific death? Who was this man? A journalist begins to piece together an answer by speaking with his widow, a local engineer, a watchman, the garbage man who discovered him, the doctor who performed the autopsy, and a young militia-man. Their stories emerge, along with the horrors of Lebanon's bloody civil war and its ravaging effects on the psyches of the survivors. With empathy and candor, Elias Khoury reveals the havoc the war wreaked on Beirut and its inhabitants, as well as the resilience of a people.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish. MAIA TABET, born in Lebanon, is a literary translator and a professional cook. She translated Khoury's first novel to be published in English, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, and has translated a number of prose texts that have appeared in literary magazines including BANIPAL, WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS, and FIKRAN WA FANN. Currently, she lives in the United States.
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Khoury, Elias. Yalo. Brooklyn. 2015. Archipelago Books. 9780914671282. Translated by Peter Theroux. 318 pages. paperback. First published as Yalo by Dar-al-Adab, Beirut, 2002.
DESCRIPTION - Yalo propels us into a skewed universe of brutal misunderstanding, of love and alienation, of self-discovery and luminous transcendence. At the center of the vortex stands Yalo, a young man drifting between worlds like a stray dog on the streets of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Living with his mother who "lost her face in the mirror," he falls in with a dangerous circle whose violent escapades he treats as a game. The game becomes a horrifying reality, however, when Yalo is accused of rape and armed robbery, and is imprisoned. Tortured and interrogated at length, he is forced to confess to crimes of which he has little or no recollection. As he writes, and rewrites his testimony, he begins to grasp his family's past, and the true Yalo begins to emerge. Ha'aretz calls Yalo "a heartbreaking book. hypnotic in beauty."
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ELIAS KHOURY, born in Beirut in 1948, is the author of over a dozen novels (including YALO, LITTLE MOUNTAIN, CITY GATES, THE JOURNEY OF LITTLE GANDHI, and THE KINGDOM OF STRANGERS), four volumes of literary criticism, and three plays. His GATE OF THE SUN was a 2006 New York Times Book Review Notable Book and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science, and The Kansas City Star. Public intellectual and advocate for social justice, Khoury is a Global Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. His novels have been translated into Catalan, Portuguese, Norwegian, French, Hebrew, Swedish, German, and Spanish.
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Khoury-Ghata, Venus. Where Are the Trees Going?. Evanston. 2014. Northwestern University Press. 9780810130081. Translated by Marilyn Hacker. 128 pages. paperback. Translation of Ou vont les arbres.
DESCRIPTION - Where Are the Trees Going? brings together some of the latest work of the poet and novelist Venus Khoury-Ghata in a manner that showcases her central concerns in a wholly novel and provocative format. Renowned translator Marilyn Hacker interleaves a full translation of Khoury-Ghata's volume of poetry Où vont les arbres. with prose from La maison aux orties. The resulting interplay illuminates the poet's contrasting and complementary drives toward surreal lyricism and stark narrative exposition. Khoury-Ghata takes on perennial themes of womanhood, immigration, and cultural conflict. Characters take root in her memory as weathered trees and garden plants, lending grit and body to the imaginative collection. As bracing as the turn of seasons, Where Are the Trees Going? highlights a writer who has approached her most recent work with renewed urgency and maturity.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vénus Khoury-Ghata is a Lebanese poet and novelist, resident in France since 1973, author of twenty-four novels and twenty collections of poems, translated into German, Arabic, Swedish, and other languages. Her most recent collection to appear in English, Nettles (2008), was also translated by Marilyn Hacker. Her awards include the Goncourt Prize for Poetry for Où vont les arbres. She is an Officier of the French Legion of Honor. Marilyn Hacker is the author of twelve collections of poems and twenty translations of books of poems from the French. She received the PEN Voelcker Award for her own work in 2010, and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne in 2009.
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Maalouf, Amin. Leo Africanus. New York. 1989. Norton. 0393026302. Translated from the Arabic by Peter Sluglett. 360 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Namara. Translation of Léon l'Africain.
DESCRIPTION - Leo Africanus is based on the true life story of the geographer Hasan al~Wazzan, who came to be known as Leo Africanus or Leo the African. In this imaginary autobiography Hasan al~Wazzan is born at the end of the fifteenth century in Granada from where, with many other Muslim and Jewish families, his family flees the Christian reconquest and the ensuing Inquisition. They settle in Fez, where Hasan spends his childhood. He takes up work, first in the public baths and then in the insane asylum, before joining his uncle, an emissary to the Sultan of Fez, in a long journey across the Atlas. It is on this journey that he is presented with the gift of a beautiful slave girl, Hiba. On his subsequent journeys to the East as an itinerant merchant, he falls in love with a Circassian princess, meets the famous pirate Barbarossa, goes to the court of Salim the Grim at Constantinople, and performs the pilgrimage to Mecca. During his voyage homeward by sea, he is captured by a Sicilian pirate, taken to Rome, and offered as a gift to Pope Leo X. At the end of the first year at the Pope's court he becomes a Christian and is baptized Johannes Leo. While in Italy he writes his renowned Description of Africa. The life of Leo the African is thus recreated and told against the backdrop of the sixteenth~century Mediterranean world~the fall of Granada, the Ottoman conquest of Egypt, the magnificent setting of Renaissance Rome under the Medicis. Finally, after forty years of wandering, he returns to the Muslim faith and to Tunisia, where he records the adventures of his life for the benefit of his son. 'Leo Africanus' is a beautiful book of tales about people who are forced to accept choices made for them by someone else. It relates, poetically at times and often imaginatively, the story of those who did not make it to the New World.' - New York Times Book Review.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - AMIN MAALOUF is a Lebanese writer journalist. He was formerly director of the weekly international edition of the Beirut daily an-Nahar, and was also editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine Jeune Afrique.
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Rowell, Alex. Vintage Humour: The Islamic Wine Poetry of Abu Nuwas. New York. 2018. Oxford University Press. 9781849048972. 224 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Abu Nuwas, the pre-eminent bacchic bard of the classical Arabic canon, was loved and reviled in equal measure for his lyrical celebration of Abbasid Baghdad's dissolute nightlife, his cutting satires of religion and the clergy, and the extraordinary range and virtuosity of his literary talent. Vintage Humour contains 125 translations, each replicating the monorhyme scheme of the originals, with commentary where appropriate, a brief history of the poet's life and times, and a glossary of the key themes, motifs, and running jokes of the poems themselves. Based on extensive research with both Arabic and English source materials, Vintage Humour is an illuminating collection, of interest to both general and informed readers with an interest in Islamic studies, Arabic literature, and the history of Iraq and the Middle East.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alex Rowell is a writer and translator based in Beirut, Lebanon, where he has contributed to media including The Daily Beast, The Economist, the BBC, and NOW Lebanon. His classical Arabic poetry translations have previously been published in the literary journal of the American University of Beirut.
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MESOPOTAMIA
[ MESOPOTAMIA - Mythology ]Dalley, Stephanie (editor and translator). Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. New York. 2009. Oxford University Press. 9780199538362. Oxford World's Classics. 368 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The ancient civilization of Mesopotamia thrived between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates over 4,000 years ago. The myths collected here, originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, include parallels with the biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the tale of a man of great strength, whose heroic quest for immortality is dashed through one moment of weakness. Recent developments in Akkadian grammar and lexicography mean that this new translation--complete with notes, a glossary of deities, place-names, and key terms, and illustrations of the mythical monsters featured in the text--will replace all other versions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Stephanie Dalley is an Honorary Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, a Member of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. With degrees in Assyriology from the Universities of Cambridge and London, her academic career has specialized in the study of ancient cuneiform texts and she has worked on archaeological excavations in Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. She has written several books on the myths and culture of ancient Mesopotamia, with special reference to their impact on later civilizations, many of which have been translated into Arabic, Italian, and Japanese. She lives in Oxford with her husband and maintains a large garden.
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George, Andrew (translator). The Epic of Gilgamesh. New York. 2003. Penguin Books. 9780140449198. Introduction by Andrew George. Penguin Epics. 304 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Andrew George's "masterly new translation" (The Times) of the world's first truly great work of literature. Miraculously preserved on clay tablets dating back as much as four thousand years, the poem of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is the world's oldest epic, predating Homer by many centuries. The story tells of Gilgamesh's adventures with the wild man Enkidu, and of his arduous journey to the ends of the earth in quest of the Babylonian Noah and the secret of immortality. Alongside its themes of family, friendship and the duties of kings, the Epic of Gilgamesh is, above all, about mankind's eternal struggle with the fear of death. The Babylonian version has been known for over a century, but linguists are still deciphering new fragments in Akkadian and Sumerian. Andrew George's gripping translation brilliantly combines these into a fluent narrative and will long rank as the definitive English Gilgamesh.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andrew R. George (born 1955) is a British Assyriologist and academic best known for his edition and translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Andrew George is Professor of Babylonian, Department of the Languages and Cultures of Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
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Sandars, N. K. (translator). Poems of Heaven and Hell From Ancient Mesopotamia. Baltimore. 1971. Penguin Books. 0140442499. Translated & With An Introduction by N. K. Sandars. 184 pages. paperback. L249. The cover, designed by Germano Facetti, shows a relief of Assurbanipal, in the British Museum (photo Michael Holford).
DESCRIPTION - In this volume N.K. Sandars, well known for her version of THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH, has translated five poems dating from the height of Babylonian civilization in the second millennium B.C. They include ‘The Babylonian Creation', which was recited at the New Year festival in honour of the god Marduk and his conquest of Tiamat, goddess of watery chaos; ‘Inanna's Journey to Hell', in which the goddess of fertility descends into a gloomy waste-land of devils and darkness; and ‘Adapa: the Man', a story of man's fall from grace, not through arrogant disobedience but through blind obedience. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - N.K. Sandars is a published author and a translator.
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Sandars, N. K. (translator). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Baltimore. 1960. Penguin Books. Translated & with An Introduction by N. K. Sandars. 127 pages. paperback. L100. The cover shows a detail from the Seal of Gilgamesh, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.
DESCRIPTION - Miraculously preserved on clay tablets which were deciphered in the last century, THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH is at least 1,500 years older than Homer. This volume contains a straightforward English version of the adventures of the great King of Uruk in his fruitless search for immortality and of his friendship with Enkidu, the wild man from the hills. Also included in the epic is another legend of the Flood which agrees in many details with the Biblical story of Noah. ‘The work of synthesis has been accomplished, and with a remarkable degree of tact and imagination.' - The Time Literary Supplement.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - N.K. Sandars is a published author and a translator.
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PALESTINE
[ PALESTINE - Poetry ]Al-Qasim, Samih. All Faces but Mine: The Poetry of Samih Al-Qasim . Syracuse. 15. Syracuse University Press. 9780815610526. Middle East Literature in Translation. Translated from the Arabic by Abdulwahid Lu’lu’a. 280 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - All Faces but Mine gathers selected poems from the acclaimed Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim (1934-2014). A contemporary of Mahmoud Darwish, Al-Qasim was a celebrated resistance poet whose passionate call for independence inspired a generation of poets. In this award-winning volume, poems are drawn from fourteen of the poet's collections published over the last twenty years in addition to some of his final works. Lu'lu'a's fluid translation captures both Al-Qasim's innovative style and the emotional tenor of his poetry. CONTENTS: Introduction -- Collected works, volume 3 (Jerusalem, 1991) -- Selections from Elusive land -- I'll get out of my image one day (Acre, Palestine, 2000) -- Funeral oration by the deceased -- Atlantis king -- Visions of Nostrasamihdamos -- A very personal conversation with Mahmood Darwish -- I regret -- Collage 2 -- Regardless -- Collage 3 -- Collage 4.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samih Al-Qasim was a critically acclaimed poet, essayist, and journalist. An outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights, he was imprisoned several times for his writing. He published numerous poetry collections, including Sadder Than Water: New and Selected Poems, the only other book-length English translation of his work. Abdulwahid Lu’lu’a is an Iraqi writer based in the United Kingdom, whose previous translations have won a range of literary prizes. He has published twelve books in Arabic and forty-two books in translation, all on literary subjects.
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Alsous, Zaina. A Theory of Birds: Poems. Fayetteville. 2019. University of Arkansas Press. 9781682261040. Etel Adnan Poetry Series. 88 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Winner of the 2019 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. A layering of bird, woman, place, technology, and ceremony, which begins this first full-length collection by Zaina Alsous, mirrors the layering of insights that marks the collection as a whole. The poems in A Theory of Birds draw on inherited memory, historical record, critical theory, alternative geographies, and sharp observation. In them, birds-particularly extinct species-become metaphor for the violences perpetrated on othered bodies under the colonial gaze. Putting ecological preservation in conversation with Arab racial formation, state vernacular with the chatter of birds, Alsous explores how categorization can be a tool for detachment, domination, and erasure. Stretching their wings toward de-erasure, these poems-their subjects and their logics-refuse to stay put within a single category. This is poetry in support of a decolonized mind. "A Theory of Birds opens with phrases stitched with commas that are both light and startling: a grammar-flux that produces the effect of something falling out of or off the page. Zaina Alsous: 'I entered through the empty cage, hips first.' Zaina Alsous: 'Can the map eat?' The questions that follow invert their cardinal nouns, reverting to zero each time the next one is asked. I became curious about the nothing-everything of the book itself, the logic of voids and flight. A book that proposes a 'collaboration with the dead' but also a paradise of solar pathways and outcomes (intense joy). Alsous offers the reader a 'previously' as much as an 'almost.' A jar in France, a blonde hair in Fez: foreignness composes fragments in the shape of an ibis, a harp, a broken lantern, pinning them on a sky-red space: the page, which also shakes-shakes so hard that letters lose their place. And what would it be to write anyway? To love anyway? Zaina Alsous: 'When I say home, I mean origin as a transitive verb. / When I say love, I mean these miracles are work.'"-Bhanu Kapil.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Zaina Alsous is an abolitionist and a daughter of the Palestinian diaspora. She is a writer, editor at Scalawag Magazine, and grad student worker at the University of Miami. Her work has appeared in The Boston Review, The Offing, and The New Inquiry.
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Antonius, Soraya. The Lord: A Novel. New York. 1988. Henry Holt. 0805004777. 218 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - n this stunning portrait of Palestinian life before the Nakba, a young man gains renown as a magician of a revolutionary sort—meanwhile evading the British colonialist forces who seek to destroy him and the resistance he represents. A reporter posted to Lebanon in the early 1980s, covering the Israeli invasion of the time, encounters Miss Alice, an English missionary who is nearing the end of a long life in the region. With memories that go back to World War I and the start of the British Mandate in Palestine, she unfolds the strangely puzzling story of one of her students, Tareq, a talented and charismatic youth who, on leaving school, took up the unlikely calling of a traveling magician. Moving from village to village, from country to city, Tareq observes the growing discontent with the colonial authorities that will erupt in a full-scale rebellion in 1936. He observes; perhaps he contributes. Among the people, he has come to be known as “the lord,” while his comings and goings have also attracted the attention of Challis, the ruthless British police chief. A manhunt begins. The Lord re-creates the extraordinary richness and vivacity of Palestinian life before the Nakba, offering a view, at once panoramic and intimate, of Palestinian society and colonial occupation. A clear-eyed examination of a chapter of British colonial history that laid the groundwork for conflicts that continue to rack the Middle East, The Lord remains as timely and telling now as ever.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Soraya Antonius (1932–2017) was born in Jerusalem, then the capital of Palestine, the only child of the author and diplomat George Antonius and the socialite Katy Nimr. After attending Cheltenham Ladies' College and the Slade School of Fine Art in England, she lived for many years in Beirut, Lebanon, where she worked as a journalist, editor, publisher, and curator. A founding member of the Fifth of June Society, organized to educate journalists and the general public about Palestine, she also wrote and produced a documentary film about the Palestinian Revolution, Resistance, Why? She was the author of two novels, The Lord and Where the Jinn Consult.
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Ashrawi, Hanan. This Side of Peace: A Personal Account. New York. 1995. Simon & Schuster. 0684802945. 318 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - An insider's view of Mideast diplomacy, the PLO heirarchy, and the author's own life reveals Hanan Ashrawi's struggles as a Christian Arab woman in a Muslim, male-dominated society and chronicles her efforts for peace.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hanan Daoud Mikhael Ashrawi (ي; born 8 October 1946) is a Palestinian politician, activist, and scholar. Ashrawi began her career at Birzeit University. Beginning in the 1990s, Ashrawi was a member of the PLO's Leadership Committee, serving as the official spokesperson of the Palestinian delegation during the Madrid Peace Conference of 1991. In 1996, Ashrawi was appointed as the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research of the Palestinian Authority in the second Arafat cabinet. Ashrawi was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council representing Jerusalem in 1996 and was re-elected in 2006. She was elected as member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 2009 and 2018, becoming the body's first female member. She resigned in 2020. As a civil society activist, she founded the Independent Commission for Human Rights in 1994 and served as its Commissioner-General until 1995. In 1998, she also founded MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, and she continues to serve as head of its board of directors. In 1999, Ashrawi founded the National Coalition for Accountability and Integrity (AMAN). She is the author of several books, articles, poems and short stories on Palestinian politics, culture and literature. Her book This Side of Peace (Simon & Schuster, 1995) earned worldwide recognition.
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Azem, Ibtisam. The Book of Disappearance: A Novel. Syracuse. 2019. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611110. Translated by Sinan Antoon. Middle East Literature In Translation. 240 pages. paperback. Translation of Sifr al-ikhtifa'.
DESCRIPTION - What if all the Arabs in Israel simply disappeared one day? What would happen next? How would Israelis react? These unsettling questions are poised in Ibtisam Azem's powerfully imaginative novel. Set in contemporary Tel Aviv 48 hours after Israelis discover all their Palestinian neighbors have vanished. The story unfolds through alternating narrators, Alaa, a young Palestinian boy who converses with his dead grandmother in the journal he left behind after his disappearance, and his Jewish neighbor, Ariel, a journalist struggling the understand the traumatic event. Through these alternating perspectives, the novel stages a confrontation between two memories. Ariel is a liberal Zionist who is critical of the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but nevertheless believes in Israel's project and its national myth. Alaa is haunted by his grandmother's memories of being evicted from Jaffa and becoming a refugee in her homeland. Arial's search for clues to the secret of the collective disappearance and his reaction to it, intimately reveal the fissures at the heart of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The Book of Disappearance grapples with both the memory of loss and the loss of memory for the Palestinians, revealing a great deal about the fissures at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Presenting a narrative that is often marginalized, Sinan Antoon's translation of the critically acclaimed Arabic novel invites English readers into the complex lives of Palestinians living in Israel.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ibtisam Azem is a Palestinian novelist and journalist. She has published two novels in Arabic: Sariq al-Nawm (The Sleep Thief, 2011) and Sifr al-Ikhtifaa (The Book of Disappearance, 2014), both by Dar al-Jamal (Beirut/Baghdad). The Book of Disappearance is currently being translated into English, French, and Hebrew. She was born and raised in Taybeh, northern Jaffa, and studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and later at Freiburg University in Germany, where she completed an MA in German and English Literature, and Islamic Studies. She works as senior correspondent in New York for the Arabic daily al-Araby al-Jadeed. She is also co-editor at Jadaliyya e-zine and editor of the Arabic page. She is currently working on an MA at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Sinan Antoon is a poet, novelist, translator, and scholar. He is associate professor at New York University's Gallatin School. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's In the Presence of Absence won the 2012 National Translation Award.
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Bucaille, Laetitia. Growing Up Palestinian: Israeli Occupation and the Intifada Generation. Princeton. 2004. Princeton University Press. 0691116709. Translated by Anthony Roberts. 200 pages. hardcover. Translation of Générations intifada.
DESCRIPTION - This remarkable book tells the inside story of three young men caught up in the Palestinian intifada. Through their stories, the tangled and tragic web of the past twenty years of the most enduring conflict in the Middle East unfolds before us. For over a decade, Laetitia Bucaille lived in the Occupied Territories for months at a time, gaining rare access to the three militants she calls Sami, Najy, and Bassam and many other Palestinians they crossed paths with - those who grew up during the first intifada and whose lives became bound up with the second, which erupted in 2000. The result is an intimate yet unsentimental portrait of daily life in the West Bank and Gaza from the mid-1980s to today. Raised in squalid refugee camps, and veterans of Israeli prisons and forced exile, Sami, Najy, and Bassam are torn between the struggle against Israel and a desire for a stable family life. Shooting a suspected informer at point blank range turns out to be easier than learning job skills for a globalized economy. For many young Palestinians, collective political failure mirrors their shipwrecked lives. A riveting blend of social and political analysis, Growing Up Palestinian shows us Palestinian society as it unfolds in camps, prisons, homes, and the street. This is a society divided by class, age, politics, and religion, and consumed by corruption - a society that must somehow integrate its underprivileged and brutalized youth into nonviolent and productive activity if it is ever to meet the daunting challenges ahead. In a new afterword, the author examines the social and political developments in the Occupied Territories since the book's publication in 2004, including the implications of Yasser Arafat's death and the challenges and opportunities presented to his elected successor, Mahmood Abbas.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Laetitia Bucaille is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux II; Associate Researcher at the Centre d'Etudes de relations internationales of the l'Institut d'Etudes politiques in Paris; and a member of the Institut universitaire de France. She is the author of Gaza: la violence de la paix.
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Bunton, Martin. Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel. Detroit. 1998. Wayne State University Press. 9780814327104. Raphael Patai Series in Jewish Folklore and Anthropology. 6 x 9. 280 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - The conflict between Palestine and Israel is one of the most highly publicized and bitter struggles of modern times, a dangerous tinderbox always poised to set the Middle East aflame--and to draw the United States into the fire. In this accessible and stimulating Very Short Introduction, Martin Bunton illuminates the history of the problem, reducing it to its very essence. Adopting a fresh and original approach, Bunton explores the Palestinian-Israeli dispute in twenty-year segments, to highlight the historical complexity of the conflict throughout successive decades. Each chapter starts with an examination of the relationships among people and events that marked particular years as historical stepping stones in the evolution of the conflict, including the 1897 Basle Congress, the 1917 Balfour Declaration and British occupation of Palestine, and the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the war for Palestine. Providing a clear and fair exploration of the main issues, Bunton explores not only the historical basis of the conflict, but also looks at how and why partition has been so difficult and how efforts to restore peace continue today. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raphael Patai (November 22, 1910 − July 20, 1996), born Ervin György Patai, was a Hungarian-Jewish ethnographer, historian, Orientalist and anthropologist.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. From Beirut. Albion. 1992. Pygmy Forest Press. 0944550258. Translated by Stephen Kessler. 20 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - From the Translator's Preface – “Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish wrote "From Beirut" during the invasion and bombing of Lebanon by the Israeli Defense Forces in the summer of 1982. Part documentary, part love lyric, part historical hallucination, part battle cry, it is a political statement and a shriek of pain, a mournful elegy and a delirious celebration of survival. The voice in the poem--or its mix of voices--is at once profoundly inward and radically outward, near-incoherent at moments yet modulated with the craft and clarity of a skilled singer. Its language moves forward through fear and courage at cross-purposes with itself, driving its author onward in composition as a desperate strategy for staying sane amid the chaos of extreme violence. The result is both a subjective record of a specific episode in Palestinian history and a universal testimony to the terror of war. One of the Arab world's leading poets, Darwish was born in 1942 in a village later razed by the Israelis. A refugee in his own country, he became politically active in early life, joining the Israeli Communist Party and for a tine editing its newspaper. After years of harassment, imprisonment and house arrest for his activities, Darwish left Israel in 1971 and took up residence in Beirut, where his reputation as a writer grew with the publication of numerous books of poetry and prose. Although not widely translated in English and little known as yet in the United States, his work is internationally acclaimed. Darwish now lives in Paris and Tunis and edits the literary journal "Fron Beirut" appeared in a Spanish version by Ikran Antaki in the Mexico City magazine Plural in 1983.” The present version is taken from Ikran Antaki's.edition.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 - 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting ‘the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry'.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. If I Were Another: Poems. New York. 2009. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374174293. Translated from the Arabic by Fady Joudah. 203 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Quemadura. Jacket photograph by Anne-Laure Exbrayat.
DESCRIPTION - Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language - lyrical and tender - helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in this collection, constructed from the cadence and imagery of the Palestinian struggle, shift between the most intimate individual experience and the burdens of history and collective memory. Brilliantly translated by Fady Joudah, If I Were Another - which collects the greatest epic works of Darwish's mature years - is a powerful yet elegant work by a master poet and demonstrates why Darwish was one of the most celebrated poets of his time and was hailed as the voice and conscience of an entire people. PRAISE - ‘No poet in our time has confronted the violent tides of history with greater humanity or greater artistic range than Mahmoud Darwish. This collection, masterfully edited and translated by Fady Joudah, bears witness to the unceasing development and deepening of Darwish's practice over the last two decades of his life. Here the lyric, the elegiac, and the epic conjoin in one voice encompassing self and other, desire and memory, the olive's tang and the ashes of exile.' - Michael Palmer, author of Company of Moths. ‘A world-class poet. Darwish has not only remade a national consciousness; he has reworked language and poetic tradition to do so.' - Fiona Sampson, The Guardian. ‘Poetry for Darwish provides not simply an access of unusual insight or a distant realm of fashioned order, but a harassing amalgam of poetry and collective memory, each pressing on the other. The conventional and the ethereal, the historical and the transcendently aesthetic combine to provide an astonishingly concrete sense of going beyond what anyone has ever lived through in reality.' - Edward Said, Grand Street. ‘Here we have in one glorious volume the reach and the depth of Darwish's lyric epics that individually, repeatedly, and cumulatively shifted our understanding of what poetry can accomplish. In his lucid and compelling translations, Joudah offers us a gesture of unequaled fraternity in lines that mirror and move in loyalty to the birth of new poems.' - Breyten Breytenbach, author of All One Horse. ‘[Darwish's] best political poetry, because it is love poetry, is uncannily intimate. At timesit is frankly mystical, imagining a union that recalls the rapt ecstasies of Sufi aints.' - Robyn Cresswell, Harper's Magazine. ‘[Darwish] writes poetry of the highest and most intense quality - poetry that embodies epic and lyric both, deeply symbolic, intensely emotional. He has, in Joudah's startling and tensile English,expended into us a new vastness.' - Kazim Ali, The Kenyon Review. ‘This second volume by the late, great Palestinian poet Darwish (1941–2008) to be translated by Palestinian-American doctor/poet Joudah comprises four nonconsecutive books of longer poems spanning 1990 to 2005. These works follow Darwish's poetic development from a historically focused middle period to the devastatingly personal lyric-epic of his late style. Formally varied - Rubaiyats alternate with sprawling free-form poems, in which prose paragraphs meet both long and short verse lines - Darwish's Sufi-inspired poetry probes, admires, describes, longs for and questions. His subjects are often broad: the inheritance and disinheritance of lands, languages and histories. Sometimes, though, he turns to concrete need, confessing, for example, in ‘Mural,' his book-length poem about a brush with death: ‘I want to walk to the bathroom/ on my own.' But Darwish's poems are at their most singular and powerful when he collapses the boundaries between great and small concerns, as when he articulates, ‘Wars teach us to love detail: the shape of our door keys,/ how to comb our wheat with eyelashes and walk lightly on our land.' The stakes of this work - for Darwish and for his readers - are clear: ‘O my language,/ help me to adapt and embrace the universe.' - Publishers Weekly (starred review).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish was born in the village of al-Birweh in what was then Western Galilee, Palestine. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry and ten volumes of prose. He was the recipient of numerous awards for both his poetry and his political activism. Fady Joudah is a physician, poet, and translator. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden was a finalist for the 2008 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. Journal of An Ordinary Grief. Brooklyn. 2010. Archipelago Books. 9780982624647. Translated from the Arabic by Ibrahim Muhawi. 177 pages. paperback. Cover design by David Bullen Design. Translation of يوميات الحزن العا.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Every beautiful poem is an act of resistance,' asserts Darwish. Both voice of the Palestinian people and one of the most transcendent poets of his generation, Mahmoud Darwish also wrote several remarkable volumes of autobiographical essays over the course of his life. First published in Beirut in 1973, these probing essays ask vital questions about the existentially complex realities the Palestinians in Israel face and the ambiguity of Darwish's own identity as an Israeli Palestinian. They call upon myth, memory, and language to delve into the poet's experience of house arrest, his encounters with Israeli interrogators, and the periods he spent in prison. Meditative, lyrical, rhythmic, Darwish gives absence a vital presence in these linked essays. Journal is a moving and intimate account of the loss of homeland and, for many, of life inside the porous walls of occupation - no ordinary grief.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) was one of the most acclaimed poets in the Arab world. His twenty books of poetry include WHY DID YOU LEAVE THE HORSE ALONE? A RIVER DIES OF THIRST, MURAL, THE BED OF THE STRANGER, and IN THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE (forthcoming from Archipelago Books). In 2001 Darwish was awarded the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. Memory For Forgetfulness: August,, Beirut, 1982. Berkeley. 1995. University of California Press. 0520087682. Translated from the Arabic by ibrahim Muhawi. 184 pages. paperback. Translation of ذاكرة للنسي.
DESCRIPTION - Using as setting the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the shelling of Beirut, Mahmoud Darwish re-creates in this sequence of vivid prose poems the sights and sounds of a city under siege. With fighter jets screaming overhead, the author sets out on a journey on August 6 (Hiroshima Day) through the war-ravaged streets of Beirut in search, not so much of a ‘right answer' as of a ‘right question.' Memory for Forgetfulness is an extended reflection on the invasion and its political and historical dimensions. It is also a journey into personal and collective memory. What is the meaning of exile? What is the role of the writer in time of war? What is the relationship of writing (memory) to history (forgetfulness)? What will become of the Palestinian people? In raising these significant questions, Darwish implicitly connects writing, homeland, meaning, and resistance in an ironic, condensed work that combines wit with rage. His masterly text testifies to the heroism of the people under siege, and to Palestinian creativity and continuity. From the book: ‘The street. Seven o'clock. The horizon a huge egg made of steel. To whom shall I offer my innocent silence? The street has become wider. I walk slowly 'lowly, I walk. I walk slowly, that a jet fighter may not miss me. The void opens its jaws, but it doesn't swallow me. I move aimlessly, as if getting to know these streets for the first time and walking on them for the last time.'
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 - 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting ‘the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry'. IBRAHIM MUHAWI is co-author and translator of SPEAK BIRD, SPEAK AGAIN: PALESTINIAN ARAB FOLKTALES (California, 1988). He is currently Visiting Professor of Folklore and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. Now, As You Awaken. San Francisco. 2006. Sardines Press. 0972921346. Translated from the Arabic by Omnia Amin and Rick London. 23 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Selections from Mahmoud Darwish's book, DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - The author of more than twenty books of poetry, Mahmoud Darwish is the most celebrated Palestinian poet writing today. Born in 1942 in Palestine, he has lived in Beirut, Cairo, Moscow, and Amman, and currently resides in Ramallah. His most recent book of poems is DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE (Riad El-Rayyes Books, Beirut, 2004). The translations in this book are of poems from this collection. Omnia Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt. She graduated from The American University in Cairo and received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Modern and Contemporary British Literature from the University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College. She was chair of the English Department at Philadelphia University in Jordan, and currently teaches at Zayed University in UAE. Rick London's most recent publication is the chapbook PICTURE WITH MOVING PARTS (Doorjamb Press. 2002). He lives and works in San Francisco.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. State of Siege . Syracuse. 10. Syracuse University Press. 9780815609230. Translated from the Arabic by Munir Akash and Daniel Abdal-hayy Moore. With an Introduction by Munir Akash . 183 pages. paperback. Translation of حالة حصار.
DESCRIPTION - Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008), recipient of France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal, the Lotus Prize, and the Lannan Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom, is widely considered Palestine's most eminent poet. State of Siege was written while the poet himself was under siege in Ramallah during the Israeli invasion of 2002. An eloquent and impassioned response to political extremity, the collection was published to great acclaim in the Arab world. Munir Akash's translation, including an introduction exploring the rich mythology of these poems, presents the first book-length, bilingual edition of State of Siege to an English audience.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France. In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling between villages without a permit. Considered a “resistance poet,” he was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned into a protest song. After spending a year at a university of Moscow in 1970, Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the journal Al-Karmel. Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1996 he was permitted to return from exile to visit friends and family in Israel and Palestine. Mahmoud Darwish’s early work of the 1960s and 1970s reflects his unhappiness with the occupation of his native land. Carolyn Forché and Runir Akash noted in their introduction to Unfortunately It Was Paradise (2003) that “as much as [Darwish] is the voice of the Palestinian Diaspora, he is the voice of the fragmented soul.” Forché and Akash commented also on his 20th volume, Mural: “Assimilating centuries of Arabic poetic forms and applying the chisel of modern sensibility to the richly veined ore of its literary past, Darwish subjected his art to the impress of exile and to his own demand that the work remain true to itself, independent of its critical or public reception.” Poet Naomi Shihab Nye commented on the poems in Unfortunately It Was Paradise: “[T]he style here is quintessential Darwish—lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people.” Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. The Adam of Two Edens: Selected Poems . Syracuse. 0. Syracuse University Press. 9780815607106. Edited by Munir Akash & Daniel Moore. 216 pages. paperback. All the poems included appeared variously in several issues of Jusoor.
DESCRIPTION - This collection of poems by renowned Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish ranges from dreamy reflections to bitter longings for the Palestine that was lost when Israel was created in 1948.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France. In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling between villages without a permit. Considered a “resistance poet,” he was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned into a protest song. After spending a year at a university of Moscow in 1970, Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the journal Al-Karmel. Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1996 he was permitted to return from exile to visit friends and family in Israel and Palestine. Mahmoud Darwish’s early work of the 1960s and 1970s reflects his unhappiness with the occupation of his native land. Carolyn Forché and Runir Akash noted in their introduction to Unfortunately It Was Paradise (2003) that “as much as [Darwish] is the voice of the Palestinian Diaspora, he is the voice of the fragmented soul.” Forché and Akash commented also on his 20th volume, Mural: “Assimilating centuries of Arabic poetic forms and applying the chisel of modern sensibility to the richly veined ore of its literary past, Darwish subjected his art to the impress of exile and to his own demand that the work remain true to itself, independent of its critical or public reception.” Poet Naomi Shihab Nye commented on the poems in Unfortunately It Was Paradise: “[T]he style here is quintessential Darwish—lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything less than free—what he would dream for all his people.” Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems. Berkeley. 2003. University of California Press. 0520237536. Translated from the Arabic & Edited by Munir Akash & Carolyn Forche with Sinan Antoon & Amira El-Zein. paperback Edition - 0520237544 - $16. 95. 191 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - These translations of Mahmoud Darwish's marvelous poems reveal the lifelong development of a major world poet. The book is a gift to other poets and lovers of poetry. It's also an important contribution to current and future discourse on culture and politics.'-Adrienne Rich, author of Fox: Poems, 1996-2000 ‘At this critical moment in world relations, cultural, creative projects feel more necessary than ever. Celebrate this most comprehensive gathering of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry ever translated into English. Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people, and the collaboration between translators Akash and Forche is a fine mingling of extraordinary talents. The style here is quintessential Darwish-lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant-and never anything less than free-what he would dream for all his people.'-Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Fuel. CONTENTS - Introduction Munir Akash and Carolyn Forche; FROM Fewer Roses (1986) - I Will Slog over This Road; Another Road in the Road; Were It Up to Me to Begin Again; On This Earth; I Belong There; Addresses for the Soul, outside This Place; Earth Presses against Us; We Journey towards a Home; We Travel Like All People; Athens Airport; I Talk Too Much; We Have the Right to Love Autumn; The Last Train Has Stopped; On the Slope, Higher Than the Sea, They Slept; He Embraces His Murderer; Winds Shift against Us; Neighing on the Slope; Other Barbarians Will Come; They Would Love to See Me Dead; When the Martyrs Go to Sleep; The Night There; We Went to Aden; Another Damascus in Damascus; The Flute Cried; In This Hymn; FROM I See What I Want to See (1993) - The Hoopoe; FROM Why Have You Left the Horse Alone? (1995) - I See My Ghost Coming from Afar; A Cloud in My Hands; The Kindhearted Villagers; The Owl's Night; The Everlasting Indian Fig; The Lute of Ismael; The Strangers' Picnic; The Raven's Ink; Like the Letter ‘N' in the Qur'an; Ivory Combs; The Death of the Phoenix; Poetic Regulations; Excerpts from the Byzantine Odes of Abu Firas; The Dreamers Pass from One Sky to Another; A Rhyme for the Odes (Mu'allaqat); Night That Overflows My Body; The Gypsy Woman Has a Tame Sky; FROM A Bed for the Stranger (1999) - We Were without a Present; Sonnet II; The Stranger Finds Himself in the Stranger; The Land of the Stranger, the Serene Land; Inanna's Milk; Who Am I, without Exile?; Lesson from the Kama Sutra; Mural (2000); Mural; Three Poems (before 1986); A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips; As Fate Would Have It; Four Personal Addresses; Glossary. Mahmoud Darwish is the author of twenty books of poems, including Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (California, 1995), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), and Psalms (1994). He received the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. Munir Akash is editor of Jusoor, The Arab American Journal of Cultural Exchange, and coeditor of The Adam of Two Edens (2001) and Post Gibran: Anthropology of New Arab American Writing (2000). Carolyn ForchE is Professor of English at George Mason University and author of The Angel of History (1994). Sinan Antoon is coeditor of Arab Studies Journal. Amira El-Zein is the author of Bedouin of Hell (1992) and The Book of Palm Trees (1973). 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. He is a living legend whose 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 an impressive range of expression and form. A splendid team of translators has collaborated with the poet on these new translations, which capture Darwish's distinctive voice and spirit. Mahmoud Darwish is the author of twenty books of poems, including Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (California, 1995), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), and Psalms (1994). He received the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. Munir Akash is editor of Jusoor, The Arab American Journal of Cultural Exchange, and coeditor of The Adam of Two Edens (2001) and Post Gibran: Anthropology of New Arab American Writing (2000). Carolyn ForchE is Professor of English at George Mason University and author of The Angel of History (1994). Sinan Antoon is coeditor of Arab Studies Journal. Amira El-Zein is the author of Bedouin of Hell (1992) and The Book of Palm Trees (1973). .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 - 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting ‘the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry'.
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Darwish, Mahmoud. Why Did You Leave the Horses Alone?. Brooklyn. 2006. Archipelago Books. 0976395010. Translated from the Arabic by Jeffrey Sacks. 198 pages. paperback. Cover art - ‘Don’t Forsake The Steed’ by Tamam Al Akhal. Translation of لماذا تركت الحصان وح.
DESCRIPTION - At once an intimate autobiography and a collective memory of the Palestinian people, Mahmoud Darwish's interlinked poems are collective cries, songs, and glimpses of the human condition. The collection - widely considered his chef-d'oeuvre - is a poetry of myth and history, of exile and suspended time, of an identity bound to the Arabic language and his displaced people. Darwish's poems - specific and symbolic, simple and profound - are historical glimpses, existential queries, chants of pain and injustice of a people separated from their land.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Poet, journalist, and advocate for the Palestinian people, Darwish was born in 1941 in Birwa (near Akko). He has written over four volumes of poetry and several books of essays, including ‘Memory for Forgetfulness' (U of Cal Press 1995). Jeffrey Sacks received a doctorate from NYU in Arabic literature, and has translated essays of Darwish. His translations and scolarly work has appeared in a variety of literary journals.
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Faqir, Fadia. Nisanit. Henley-On-Thames. 1987. Aidan Ellis Publishing. 0856281697. 208 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A powerful socio-political novel, Nisanit, depicts love, compassion, sacrifice, suffering and lost innocence in an atmosphere of conflict, hatred and oppression. Nisanit's three entwined narrative lines show the Arab-Israeli conflicts through the eyes of Shadeed, the Palestinian guerrilla fighter; David, his Israeli interrogator; and Iman, the young Arab woman in love with Shadeed. The three main characters are seen as vicitms of history and geography who are grappling with the human cost of the Arab-Israeli and Arab-Arab conflicts.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fadia Faqir (born 1956) is a Jordanian-British author. Faqir was born in Amman and educated in Jordan and England.
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Fawal, Ibrahim. The Disinherited. Athens. University of Georgia Press. 9781588382597. 288 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - In this sequel to Ibrahim Fawal's critically acclaimed On the Hills of God (winner of the PEN Oakland Award), the young Palestinian Yousif Safi searches throughout Jordan for Salwa, his bride, from whom he was separated during their forced exodus after the catastrophe (Nakba) of 1948. Amidst the squalor of refugee camps, and beside himself with anxiety for Salwa, Yousif joins his countrymen in trying to exist while waiting to be restored to their homeland. Why, they ask, did this tragedy befall their country and its people? Why had the holy land been turned into a battleground? And now they've become a people without a land. As weeks turn to months and months to years, the Palestinians' hopes dim, yet Yousif does find his beloved Salwa, and they joyfully begin their new life together. The Disinherited follows the young couple as expatriate workers in Kuwait, then as students in Cairo. Always they are working and organizing, joining with their fellows to develop schools, newspapers, and increasingly militant organizations. Their dream is to unite the Palestinian people around the world, and to regain their homeland. In measured, epic storytelling, Fawal masterfully weaves a second chapter in the story of the Palestinian diaspora.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - IBRAHIM FAWAL was born in Ramallah, Palestine. He moved to the United States to pursue his education, receiving a master's degree in film from UCLA. He worked with renowned director David Lean as the "Jordanian" first assistant director on the classic Lawrence of Arabia. Fawal permanently resides in Birmingham, Alabama, where he teaches film and literature at Birmingham-Southern College and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His first novel, On the Hills of God, won the PEN Oakland Award for Excellence in Literature; The Disinherited is the sequel to that work.
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Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict - Second Edition. London/New York. 2003. Verso. 9781859844427. 287 pages. paperback. Cover photograph: ‘Ramallah, September 10, 2000’, Ikka Uimonen, Magnum Photos. Cover design: Alan Hill Design, New York.
DESCRIPTION - Norman Finkelstein opens this acclaimed study with a theoretical discussion of Zionism, locating it as a romantic form of nationalism that assumed the bankruptcy of liberal democracy. He goes on to look at the demographic origins of the Palestinians, with particular reference to the work of Joan Peters, and develops critiques of the influential studies of both Benny Morris and Anita Shapira. Reviewing the diplomatic history with Aban Eban‘s oeuvre as his foil, Finkelstein closes by demonstrating that the casting of Israel as the innocent victim of Arab aggression in the June 1967 and October 1973 wars is not supported by the documentary record. This new edition critically reexamines dominant popular and scholarly images in the light of the current failures of the peace process. “An impressive analysis of Zionist ideology and a searing. indictment of Israel’s treatment of the Arabs since 1948” through a survey of popular and scholarly images (London Review of Books). “The most revealing study of the historical background of the conflict.” —Noam Chomsky.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, professor and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007. In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision.
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Habiby, Emile. The Secret Life of Saeed,The Ill-Fated Pessoptimist. Columbia. 1985. Readers International. 0862323991. Translated from the Arabic by Salma Khadra Jayyusi & Trevor Le Gassick. 192 pages. hardcover. Translation of الوقائع الغريبة في اختفاء سعيد أبي.
DESCRIPTION - This contemporary classic, the story of a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, combines fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy. Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian-no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness. The author's own anger and sorrow at Palestine's tragedy and his acquaintance with the absurdities of Israeli politics (he was once a member of Israel's parliament himself) are here transmuted into satire both biting and funny.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Imil (Emile) Shukri Habiby (28 January 1922 - 2 May 1996) was a Palestinian and Israeli Arab writer of Arabic expression and a communist politician, son of a Christian family. Habibi was born in Haifa on 29 August 1922, into an Anglican Palestinian Arab family. His family had originally belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem but converted to Anglicanism due to disputes within the Orthodox church. In his early life, he worked on an oil refinery and later was a radio announcer. Under the Mandate he became one of the leaders of the Palestine Communist Party. When the 1948 Arab-Israeli War began, he stayed in Haifa while many others chose or were forced to leave the country by the Israeli Army. Having stayed in Haifa, however, Habibi was eventually granted Israeli citizenship. After the war, he helped to create the Israeli Communist Party and established the communist paper Al-Ittihad. In 1956 he moved from Haifa to Nazareth and stayed there for the rest of his life. He died in 1996 in Nazareth and was buried according to his request in Haifa. His gravestone reads (at Habibi's own request): 'Emile Habibi - Remained in Haifa.' Habibi was one of the leaders of the Palestine Communist Party during the Mandate era. He supported the 1947 UN Partition Plan. When Israel became a state he helped form the Israeli Communist Party (Maki). He served in the Knesset between 1951 and 1959, and again from 1961 until 1972, first as a member of Maki, before breaking away from the party with Tawfik Toubi and Meir Vilner to found Rakah. In 1991, after a conflict about how the party should deal with the new policies of Mikhail Gorbachev, he left the party. Habibi began writing short stories in the 1950s, and his first story, 'The Mandelbaum Gate' was published in 1954. In 1972 he resigned from the Knesset in order to write his first novel: The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist, which became a classic in modern Arabic literature. The book depicts the life of an Palestinian, employing black humour and satire. It was based on the traditional anti-hero Said in Arab literature. In a playful way it deals with how it is for Arabs to live in the state of Israel, and how one who has nothing to do with politics is drawn in to it. He followed this by other books, short stories and a play. His last novel, published in 1992, was Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter. In it he has a character state: 'There is no difference between Christian and Muslim: we are all Palestinian in our predicament.' In 1990, Habibi received the Al-Quds Prize from the PLO. In 1992, he received the Israel Prize for Arabic literature. His willingness to accept both reflected his belief in coexistence. Though after accepting the Israel Prize a debate set off among the Arabic intellectual community. Habibi was accused of legitimizing the Israeli 'anti-Arab' policy. Habibi replied to the accusations: 'A dialogue of prizes is better than a dialogue of stones and bullets,' he said. 'It is indirect recognition of the Arabs in Israel as a nation. This is recognition of a national culture. It will help the Arab population in its struggle to strike roots in the land and win equal rights'
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Iskandar, Adel and Rustom, Hakem (editors). Edward Said: Emancipation and Representation. Berkeley. 2010. University of California Press. 9780520258907. 548 pages. paperback. 2000.
DESCRIPTION - This is conceived of as an indispensable resource on, and most rigorous account of, Edward Said's contribution to knowledge through the prism of the world's top scholars, critics, writers, and activists. This objective in itself sets this volume apart from all other books published about Said. Since this book will be the first to be both conceived and published after his death looking at his career in its entirety, both within and beyond the academy.Divided into several thematic sections, this volume includes at least one contribution about/from disciplines that were cultivated by Said's writings. Further, one section discusses his contribution to activism, an area that has not been adequately explored in academic books that review Said's work. Said's last project was the formation of Eastern/Western Divan with Daniel Barenboim. A chapter of the book examins his views on rapprochement in the Middle East conflict, and will include special interviews with artists, such as Barenboim, one of the world's leading conductors. There is also an original interview about Said with Noam Chomsky, the world-renown linguist and activist.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Adel Iskandar is Visiting Scholar at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Georgetown University. He is the author of Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism. Hakem Rustom is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
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Jabra, Jabra. The Ship. Washington DC. 1985. Three Continents Press. 0894103288. Translated from the Arabic by Adnan Haydar & Roger Allen. 200 pages. hardcover. Translation of السف.
DESCRIPTION - Jabra Jabra's highly acclaimed novel is a masterful exploration of the post-1948 Arab world, with its frustrations, yearnings for homeland, and struggle for survival. As his characters interact on a ship sailing from Beirut to Europe, Jabra exposes them to the elements of spiritual and physical displacement. Some survive; others do not.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1919–1994) was a Palestinian Syriac-Orthodox author, born in Bethlehem at the time of the British Mandate. Educated in Jerusalem and, later, at Cambridge University, he settled in Iraq following the events of 1948. Poet, novelist, painter, translator and literary critic, he has also translated some English works into Arabic, including James Frazer's The Golden Bough and some of the work of T. S. Eliot. He has produced around 70 books consisting of novels and translated material, and his own work has been translated into more than twelve languages.
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Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. New York. 2020. Metropolitan Books. 9781627798556. 321 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history. In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years' War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rashid Khalidi is the author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (Beacon Press, 2013) and six other books about the Middle East--Sowing Crisis, The Iron Cage, Resurrecting Empire, Origins of Arab Nationalism, Under Siege, and the award-winning Palestinian Identity. He is the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He has written more than eighty articles on Middle Eastern history and politics, including pieces in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and many journals. Professor Khalidi has received fellowships and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the Rockefeller Foundation; he was also the recipient of a Fulbright research award. Professor Khalidi has been a regular guest on numerous radio and TV shows, including All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Morning Edition, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and Nightline.
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Kramer, Gudrun. A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel. Princeton. 2008. Princeton University Press. 9780691118970. Translated from the German by Graham Harman & Gudrun Kramer. 376 pages. hardcover. Translation of Geschichte Palästinas: Von der osmanischen Eroberung bis zur Gründung des Staates Israel.
DESCRIPTION - It is impossible to understand Palestine today without a careful reading of its distant and recent past. But until now there has been no single volume in English that tells the history of the events - from the Ottoman Empire to the mid-twentieth century - that shaped modern Palestine. The first book of its kind, A History of Palestine offers a richly detailed interpretation of this critical region's evolution. Starting with the prebiblical and biblical roots of Palestine, noted historian Gudrun Krämer examines the meanings ascribed to the land in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions. Paying special attention to social and economic factors, she examines the gradual transformation of Palestine, following the history of the region through the Egyptian occupation of the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman reform era, and the British Mandate up to the founding of Israel in 1948. Focusing on the interactions of Arabs and Jews, A History of Palestine tells how these connections affected the cultural and political evolution of each community and Palestine as a whole.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gudrun Krämer is professor of Islamic studies at Free University Berlin and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Her books include A History of Islam and The Jews in Modern Egypt.
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Lockman, Zachary and Beinin, Joel (editors). Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Aganst Israeli Occupation. Boston. 1989. South End Press. 0896083632. 423 pages. paperback. Cover photo by George Azar.
DESCRIPTION - This collection of critical essays includes eyewitness accounts from the West Bank and Gaza, discussions of Palestinian society and politics, and analyses of the role of the United States.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Zachary Lockman is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and of History at New York University. He is the author of Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004, 2010). Joel Beinin (born November 21, 1948) is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University. From 2006 to 2008 he served as Director of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at the American University in Cairo.
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Nasrallah, Ibrahim. Time of White Horses: A Novel. Cairo. 2016. Hoopoe/American University in Cairo Press. 9789774167577. Hoopoe imprint. Translated by Nancy Roberts. 652 pages. paperback. Cover painting by Tamam al-Akhal. Translation of زمن الخيول البيض.
DESCRIPTION - Spanning the collapse of Ottoman rule and the British Mandate in Palestine, this is the story of three generations of a defiant family from the Palestinian village of Hadiya before 1948. Through the lives of Mahmud, chief elder of Hadiya, his son Khaled, and Khaled's grandson Naji, we enter the lives of a tribe whose fate is decided by one colonizer after another. Khaled's remarkable white mare, Hamama, and her descendants feel and share the family's struggles and as a siege grips Hadiya, it falls to Khaled to save his people from a descending tyranny.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ibrahim Nasrallah is considered one of the most influential voices of his generation. Raised in a refugee camp to Palestinian parents, he became a journalist before turning to creative writing. His work includes fourteen novels. He lives in Amman, Jordan. An award-winning translator of Naguib Mahfouz, Ghada Samman, and Mohamed el-Bisatie, Nancy Roberts lives in Amman, Jordan.
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Pappe, Ilan. The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700–1948. Berkeley. 2011. University of California Press. 9780520268395. Copub: Saqi Books. 15 b/w photographs, 2 line illustrations. 399 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Ilan Pappe is Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian.' -John Pilger, author of Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire. In this deeply researched political biography, Ilan Pappe traces the rise of the Husayni family of Jerusalem, who dominated Palestinian history from the early 1700s until the second half of the twentieth century. Viewing this sweeping saga through the prism of one family, the book sheds new light on crucial events - the invasion of Palestine by Napoleon, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, World War I, western colonialism, and the advent of Zionism - and provides an unforgettable picture of the Palestinian tragedy in its entirety. The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty is the history of Palestinian politics before national movements and political parties: at the height of the Husaynis' influence, positions in Jerusalem and Palestine could only be obtained through the family's power base. In telling the story of one family, the book highlights the continuity between periods customarily divided into pre-modern and modern, pre-Zionist and Zionist, illuminating history as it was actually lived.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ilan Pappe holds the Chair in History at the University of exeter and is Co-Director of the exeter Centre for ethno-Political Studies. He is the author of many influential books on the Middle east, including A History of Modern Palestine.
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Patai, Raphael. Stranger in My Own Land: Palestine, Israel and One Family's Story of Home. New York. 2023. Oxford University Press. 9781787387812. 40 pp color illustrations. 392 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Raphael Patai' s (1910-1996) lifeL fascination with Arab folktales began on a Ramadan night in 1933, at a cafe in Jerusalem where, for the first time, he heard a famous qassas, a storyteller, tirelessly relate story after story from his vast repertoire of Arab folktales. In Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel, a collection of twenty-eight tales gathered in Palestine and Israel and one of Patai's last books, Patai explores this rich cultural tradition. He studies tales from three separate times: those recorded by a German scholar in 1910-11, those read over Jerusalem Radio in the winter of 1946-47, and those recorded by the Israeli scholar Yoel Perez in 1982-84. These fables, part of the cultural heritage of a small corner of the Arab world, are translated into an English that remains faithful to the original Arabic text, presenting to foreign readers a sense of the original style and a picture of traditional Arab life and customs, attitudes, social and cultural norms, psychology, and values. Providing insight into Arab culture, Patai offers extensive notes and commentary on particular Arabic phrases and images, as well as the ways of speaking and thinking found among the Arab population, especially the Bedouins, in Palestine and Israel. Patai also places the stories in the context of global folktales, and traces the transformations in the art of storytelling. This collection as a whole presents a colorful slice of traditional Arab life, values, customs, attitudes, and sociocultural patterns.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer and editor who has written on life as a Palestinian in Israel and the West Bank. She contributed to Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a Washington Post bestseller on fifty years of Israeli occupation, and Amputated Tongue, a Hebrew-language anthology of Palestinian literature.
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Said, Edward W. Freud and the Non-European. London. 2003. Verso. 1859845002. Introduction by Christopher Bollas. Response by Jacqueline Rose. 84 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alan Hill.
DESCRIPTION - Using an impressive array of material from literature, archaeology and social theory, Edward Said's essay is an exploration of the profound implications in Sigmund Freud's MOSES AND MONOTHEISM for Middle-East politics today. Demonstrating an abiding interest in Freud's work and its influence upon his own, Said proposes that Freud's assumption that Moses was an Egyptian undermines any simple ascription of a ‘pure' identity, and further that identity itself cannot be thought or worked through without the recognition of the limits inherent in it. Said suggests that such an unresolved, nuanced sense of identity might, if embodied in political reality, have formed the basis for a new understanding between Jews and Palestinians. Instead, Israel's relentless march towards an exclusively Jewish state denies any sense of a more complex, inclusive past.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. Out of Place: A Memoir. New York. 1999. Knopf. 0394587391. 320 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - From one of the most important intellectuals of our time comes an extraordinary story of exile and a celebration of an irrecoverable past. A fatal medical diagnosis in 1991 convinced Edward Said that he should leave a record of where he was born and spent his childhood, and so with this memoir he rediscovers the lost Arab world of his early years in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt. Said writes with great passion and wit about his family and his friends from his birthplace in Jerusalem, schools in Cairo, and summers in the mountains above Beirut, to boarding school and college in the United States, revealing an unimaginable world of rich, colorful characters and exotic eastern landscapes. Underscoring all is the confusion of identity the young Said experienced as he came to terms with the dissonance of being an American citizen, a Christian and a Palestinian, and, ultimately, an outsider. Richly detailed, moving, often profound, Out of Place depicts a young man's coming of age and the genesis of a great modern thinker.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. Peace and Its Discontents. New York. 1996. Vintage Books. 0679767258. Preface by Christopher Hitchens. Paperback Original. 224 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Ever since Yasir Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn, Israel and the Palestinian people have been engaged in what commentators persist in calling ' the peace process '. Yet Israel remains racked by violence and continuing land seizures, and Palestinians are more demoralized than ever before. Now in this probing and impassioned book, one of our foremost Palestinian-American intellectuals explains why the much-vaunted process has yet to produce peace - and is unlikely to as presently constituted. Whether Edward Said is addressing the fatal flaws in the PLO's bargain, denouncing fundamentalists on both sides of the religious divide, or calling our attention to the distortions in official coverage of the Arab world, he offers insights beyond the conventional wisdom and a sympathy that extends to both Israelis and Palestinians. He does so with an incisiveness, clarity, and fairness that make Peace and Its Discontents essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of the Middle East. In works such as Culture and Imperialism, Said has compelled us to question our culture's most privileged myths. Now with this impassioned and incisive book, our foremost Palestinian-American intellectual challenges the official version of the Middle East peace process.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. The Edward Said Reader. New York. 2001. Vintage Books. 0375709363. Paperback Original. 472 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Edward Said, the renowned literary and cultural critic and passionately engaged intellectual, is one of our era's most formidable, provocative, and important thinkers. For more than three decades his books, which include Culture and Imperialism, Peace and Its Discontents, and the seminal study Orientalism, have influenced not only our worldview but the very terms of public discourse. The Edward Said Reader includes key sections from all of Said's books, from the groundbreaking 1966 study of Joseph Conrad to his new memoir, Out of Place. Whether he is writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Edward Said Reader will prove a joy to the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars of politics, history, literature, and cultural studies: in short, of all those fields that his work has influenced and, in some cases, transformed.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York. 2000. Pantheon Books. 0375409300. 368 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Edward Said demonstrates why he is considered the preeminent observer and critic of the Middle East peace process in this collection of fifty essays, written mostly for Arab and European newspapers in the last five years and previously not readily available to American readers. Said uncovers the political mechanism that advertises reconciliation in the Middle East while keeping peace out of the picture. He cites the imbalance of power that forces Palestinians and Arab states to accept the concessions of the United States and Israel, thus prohibiting real negotiations and promoting the second-class treatment of Palestinians. He critiques Arafat's self-interested leadership and the oppressive Palestinian Authority, criticizes the general quiescence of Palestinian life, and denounces Israel's refusal to recognize Palestine's past. In this unflinching cry for civic justice and self-determination, Said promotes not a political agenda but a transcendent alternative: the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews enjoying equal rights and shared citizenship.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-determination, 1969-1993. New York. 1994. Pantheon Books. 0679430571. 450 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Ever since the appearance of his groundbreaking The Question of Palestine, Edward Said has been America's most outspoken advocate for Palestinian self-determination. As these collected essays amply prove, he is also our most intelligent and bracingly heretical writer on affairs involving not only Palestinians but also the Arab and Muslim worlds and their tortuous relations with the West. In The Politics of Dispossession Said traces his people's struggle for statehood through twenty-five years of exile, from the PLO's bloody 1970 exile from Jordan through the debacle of the Gulf War and the ambiguous 1994 peace accord with Israel. As frank as he is about his personal involvement in that struggle, Said is equally unsparing in his demolition of Arab icons and American shibboleths. Stylish, impassioned, and informed by a magisterial knowledge of history and literature, The Politics of Dispossession is a masterly synthesis of scholarship and polemic that has the power to redefine the debate over the Middle East.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York. 1979. Times Books. 0812908325. 265 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - When it was first published in this country in 1977, this original and deeply provocative book made Palestine the subject of a serious debate--one that is now more critical than ever. Still a basic and indespensible account of the Palestinian question, updated to include the most recent developments in the Middle East- from the intifada to the Gulf war to the historic peace conference in Madrid.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a Palestinian American literary theorist and public intellectual who helped found the critical-theory field of postcolonialism. Born a Palestinian in Jerusalem in Mandatory Palestine, he was an American citizen through his father. Said spent his childhood in Jerusalem and Cairo, where he attended elite British and American schools. Subsequently he left for the United States, where he obtained a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate in English literature from Harvard. Said then joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he became professor of English and comparative literature in 1991. As a cultural critic, Said is best known for the 1978 book Orientalism. In it, he analyses the cultural representations that are the basis of Orientalism, a term he redefined to refer to the West's patronizing perceptions and depictions of Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies - 'the East‘. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was, and remains, inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, which makes much of the work inherently political, servile to power, and thus intellectually suspect. Orientalism is based upon Said's knowledge of colonial literature, literary theory, and poststructuralism. Said vigorously discussed and debated the cultural subjects comprised by Orientalism, especially as applied to history and area studies; nonetheless, some mainstream academics disagreed with the theory, most notably Bernard Lewis. As a public intellectual, Said discussed culture, literature, music and contemporary politics. Drawing from his family experiences as Palestinian Christians in the Middle East around the time Israel was established in 1948, Said argued for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Further, he was an advocate for equal political and human rights for Palestinians in Israel, and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to grant and respect these rights. Said was described by journalist Robert Fisk as the Palestinian people's ‘most powerful political voice'. Nevertheless, he also criticized the Arab and Muslim regimes who acted against the interests of their peoples. Intellectually active until the last months of his life, he died of leukemia in late 2003.
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Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. New York. 1989. Harper Perennial. 0060915838. Translated from the Hebrew by Vivian Eden. 263 pages. paperback. PL1583. Translation of Arabesques.
DESCRIPTION - Arabesques is a classic, complex novel of identity, memory, and history in the Middle East and points beyond--including Iowa and New York City. Anton Shammas, the first Arab to write a novel in Hebrew, has given us a riveting look at a people we hear too little about: Palestinian Christians. Arabesques was chosen as one of the best books of 1988 by the editors of the New York Times Book Review. The first important Palestinian author to write in Hebrew presents a sophisticated, experimental novel about Arab village life.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anton Shammas born 1950), is a Palestinian writer, poet and translator of Arabic, Hebrew and English. Anton Shammas was one of six children born to a Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother, who moved to Fassuta in the north of the British Palestine in 1937 to teach at the local girls' school. In 1962, the family moved to Haifa where Shammas studied in an integrated Jewish-Arab high school. In 1968, Shammas moved to Jerusalem and studied English and Arabic literature and art history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shammas left Jerusalem in 1987 and now lives in the United States, where he is a professor of Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. Shammas was one of the founders of the Arabic magazine "The East", which he edited from 1971 to 1976. His first poem was published in the literary supplement of Haaretz newspaper. In 1974, Shammas published his first collection of poetry in Arabic, "Imprisoned in my Own Awakening and Sleep", as well as a collection of Hebrew poems, "Hardcover". In 1979, he published his book of poems "No Man's Land". He also wrote for some Hebrew newspapers. Some of his articles explored the problem of Arab identity in a Jewish state. Shammas is known mainly for his writing in Hebrew and Hebrew translations of Arabic literature, such as the novels of Emile Habibi. His acclaimed Hebrew novel Arabesques (1986) was translated into eight languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, although it has never appeared in Arabic. It was reviewed upon its American publication on the front page of The New York Times Book Review (by William Gass), on April 17, 1988. It was chosen later by the editors of The New York Times Book Review as one of the best seven fiction works of 1988. Shammas has also translated Arabic poetry into Hebrew and English.
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Shukair, Mahmoud. Jerusalem Stands Alone. Syracuse. 2018. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611035. Translated from the Arabic by Nicole Fares. 96 pages. paperback. Originally published in Arabic as Al-Quds waḥda-hâk (Beirut: Hachette Antoine, 2010).
DESCRIPTION - By turns bleak, nostalgic, and lighthearted, Jerusalem Stands Alone explores the interconnected lives of its mostly Palestinian cast. This series of quick moving vignettes tells the story of occupied Jerusalem-tales of the daily tribulations and personal revelations of its narrators. The stories, entwined around themes of family and identity, diverge in viewpoint and chronology but ultimately unite to reveal the tapestry of Palestinian Jerusalem. The settings evoke the past-churches, alleys, and people who are gone but whose spirits yearn to be remembered. The characters are sons and mothers, soldiers and wives, all of whom unveil themselves in sometimes poignant, sometimes bittersweet memories. As its history rises up through the present struggles and hopes of its people, the deepest, most personal layers of Jerusalem are revealed.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Shukair is a Palestinian writer of short stories and novels for adults and teenagers. He is the author of forty-five books, six television series, and four plays. His stories have been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Chinese, Mongolian, and Czech. In 2011, he was awarded the Mahmoud Darwish Prize for Freedom of Expression. He has spent his life between Beirut, Amman, and Prague and now lives in Jerusalem. Nicole Fares teaches world literature at the University of Arkansas and is a doctoral candidate in comparative literature and cultural studies. She has translated novels, short stories, and poetry from Arabic to English, including the novel 32, by Sahar Mandour.
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Spanos, William V. The Legacy of Edward W. Said. Urbana. 2009. University of Illinois Press. 9780252075728. 320 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - “A brilliant intervention that is bound to enhance the quality of future debates over the usability of humanism. The Legacy of Edward W. Said is thoroughly original, trenchantly insightful, learnedly polemical, wise in its erudition, worldly because theory-rich, theoretical on the basis of worldliness.” — R. Radhakrishnan, author of History, the Human, and the World Between. “Precisely because this work clarifies the debate around Said and his legacy, it makes a major contribution to critical theory, literary study, the humanities, and the public sphere. Anyone who is concerned about the course of intellectual life and the foreign policies of the U.S. government will appreciate this work.” —Daniel T. O’Hara, author of Empire Burlesque: The Fate of Critical Culture in Global America. With the untimely death of Edward W. Said in 2003, various academic and public intellectuals worldwide have begun to reassess the writings of this powerful oppositional intellectual. Figures on the neoconservative right have already begun to discredit Said’s work as that of a subversive intent on slandering America’s benign global image and undermining its global authority. On the left, a significant number of oppositional intellectuals are eager to counter this neoconservative vilification, proffering a Said who, in marked opposition to the “anti-humanism” of the great poststructuralist thinkers who were his contemporaries—Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Michel Foucault—reaffirms humanism and thus rejects poststructuralist theory. In this provocative assessment of Edward Said’s lifework, William V. Spanos argues that Said’s lifelong anti-imperialist project is actually a fulfillment of the revolutionary possibilities of poststructuralist theory. Spanos examines Said, his legacy, and the various texts he wrote—including Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and Humanism and Democratic Criticism—that are now being considered for their lasting political impact.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William V. Spanos is a Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature at Binghamton University. A founding editor of the critical journal boundary 2, he is the author of several books, including America’s Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire.
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SAUDI ARABIA
[ SAUDI ARABIA - Autobiography ]Bogary, Hamza. The Sheltered Quarter: A Tale of a Boyhood in Mecca. Austin. 1991. Center For Middle Eastern Studies/University of Texas. 0292727526. Translated from the Arabic by Olive Kenny and Jeremy Reed. 141 pages. paperback. Translation of: Saqīfat al-Ṣafā.
DESCRIPTION - Hamza Bogary describes a bygone way of life that has now irreversibly disappeared. He speaks of life in Mecca before the advent of oil. Only partly autobiographical, the memoir is nevertheless rich in remembered detail based on Bogary's early observations of life in Mecca. He has transformed his knowledge into art through his sense of humor, empathy, and remarkable understanding of human nature. This work not only entertains; it also informs its readers about the Arabia of the first half of the twentieth century in a graphic and fascinating way. The narrator, young Muhaisin, deals with various aspects of Arabian culture, including education, pilgrimages, styles of clothing, slavery, public executions, the status of women, and religion. Muhaisin is frank in his language and vivid in his humor. The reader quickly comes to love the charming and mischievous boy in this universal tale.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hamza Bogary was born in Mecca in 1932. As an adult, he worked in broadcasting and eventually became deputy minister of information in Saudi Arabia. He wrote and published many stories and essays in Arabic. Saqifat al-Safa, the original of The Sheltered Quarter, was Bogary's last tribute to his own culture and to Arabic literature before his death in 1984.
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SYRIA
[ SYRIA - Poetry ]Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said). The Blood of Adonis. Pittsburgh. 1971. University of Pittsburgh Press. 082293213x. Winner Of Syria-Lebanon Award Of The International Poetry Forum. Translated from the Arabic by Samuel Hazo. 54 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Samuel Hazo's translations of the Syrian/Lebanese poet's prize-winning works. Adonis has long been on the shortlist for the Nobel Prize
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist, and translator. He has written more than twenty books and volumes of poetry in the Arabic language as well as translated several works from French. Imprisoned in Syria in the mid-1950s as a result of his beliefs, Adunis settled abroad and has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been regularly nominated for the award since 1988 and has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.
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Adonis. An Introduction To Arab Poetics. Austin. 1990. University of Texas Press. 0292738595. Translated from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham. 108 pages. hardcover. Translation of: Muqaddimah lil-shiʻr al-ʻArabī. Consists of four essays delivered as lectures at the Collège de France in 1984.
DESCRIPTION - Poetry is the quintessence of Arab culture. In this book one of today's foremost Arab poets reinterprets a rich and ancient heritage. He examines the oral tradition of the pre-Islamic poetry of Arabia and the relationship between Arabic poetry and the Qur'an, and between poetry and thought. He also assesses the challenges of modernism and the impact of Western culture on the Arab poetic tradition. Stimulating in their originality, eloquent in their treatment of a wide range of poetry and criticism, these reflections open up fresh perspectives on one of the world's greatest--and least explored--literatures.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist, and translator. He has written more than twenty books and volumes of poetry in the Arabic language as well as translated several works from French. Imprisoned in Syria in the mid-1950s as a result of his beliefs, Adunis settled abroad and has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been regularly nominated for the award since 1988 and has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.
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Adonis. A Time Between Ashes and Roses . Syracuse. 4. Syracuse University Press. 9780815608288. Translated by Shawkat M. Toorawa. Middle East Literature in Translation. 228 pages. paperback. Translation of Waqt bayna al-rimād wa-al-ward.
DESCRIPTION - In this noted anthology, the poet Adonis evokes the wisdom of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (which he liberally excerpts and remolds), the modernism of William Carlos Williams, and the haunting urban imagery of Baudelaire, Cavafy, and Lorca. Three long poems allow him to explore profoundly the human condition, by examining language and love, race and favor, faith and dogma, war and ruin. In the lyrical "This Is My Name " and "Introduction to the History of the Petty Kings, " Adonis ponders Arab defeat and defeatism. In "A Grave for New York, " he focuses on Vietnam-era America. Originally published in 1970 to widespread acclaim, the collection has been reprinted often but has never before appeared in English. Enhanced by Shawkat M. Toorawa's bilingual edition of the Arabic and English on facing pages, an afterword, and assisted by a critical bibliography of Adonis's works, this book is a crucial reference for all students and scholars of modern and Middle Eastern poetry and culture. Noted Syrian intellectual Nasser Rabbat offers a compelling foreword.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis, is a Syrian poet, essayist, and translator. He has written more than twenty books and volumes of poetry in the Arabic language as well as translated several works from French. Imprisoned in Syria in the mid-1950s as a result of his beliefs, Adunis settled abroad and has made his career largely in Lebanon and France. A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been regularly nominated for the award since 1988 and has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.
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Al Naamani, Houda K. Rim of the Lock . Syracuse. 2009. Syracuse University Press. 9780615287683. 103 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Lebanese poet and artist Houda K. Al Naamani writes of pain and violence yet insists on the sympathy of love. Throughout the Lebanese Civil War, even in moments of great despair and sadness, she wrote of love and the human capacity to transcend everyday dread. "Rim of the Lock" introduces her work to a wider audience as her first collection of poetry composed in English.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Huda Naamani (also known as Houda Naamani, Hoda Naamani,or Houda K. Al-Naamani) is a Damascus-born Arab feminist writer, poet, publisher, and artist. After moving to Beirut, Naamani wrote poetry that revolves around establishing womanhood and citizenship. She is most widely known for her contributions to poetry during the Lebanese Civil War. Naamani is a Lebanese citizen. Born in Damascus, Syria on June 2, 1930, into a family of Turkish origin, she is related to the old bourgeoisie ruling family; her relative Said al-Ghazzi served as the Prime Minister of Syria during the rule of Shukri al-Quwatli. Her father, Fouad Al-Naamani, died when she was eight years old, in 1938, and she was raised by her mother, Salwa al-Ghazzi. Naamani was influenced by Sufi Islam, which allowed her to learn more about mysticism and express these ideas through poetry. Her education began at French primary and secondary schools called the Lycée-Francias and the Franciscan's school, respectively. Naamani studied at the Tahjiz, a Syrian institution of learning, to earn her baccalaureate. Following the completion of her studies at the Tahjiz, Naamani chose to study law by matriculating in the Syrian University's law school. Naamani later married her cousin, Abdel Kader Naamani who became the Dean at the American University in Cairo. There, she matriculated in the School of Oriental Studies. She had two sons with Abdel Kader Naamani while she was studying in Egypt. Naamani returned to Beirut, Lebanon in 1968. Namaani's true stimulation for writing about the struggles of women in the Arab World results from her experiences during the Lebanese Civil War, which took place from 1975-1990. Her works typically focus on expressing women's revolt and strength against males during the war. She describes the conditions of the country and the challenge for women to oppose the patriarchal society. Some of her poetic works include "Adkuru Kuntu Nuqtah Kuntu Da'ira" (1978) translating to "I Remember I was a Point, I was a Circle" as well as "Other" and "I" in which she illustrates the instability of the Middle East while expressing optimism for peace, love, and unity for the region and women within the region. Also, in her poems from "Tumbling on the Snow," Naamani further addresses the inequality among men and women in society as well as a woman's attempt to break such a barrier through her own power. One of Naamani's most famous works is Rim of the Lock in which Naamani explores individuality of the Lebanese society based on the Lebanese Civil War. She writes of the pain, violence, and atrocities that occurred during this chaotic time, while suggesting that there are tangible solutions to reach tranquility in the country. It is in poetic form and attempts to employ pathetic appeal as well as spiritual allusions to assert her vision of sadness, but also her hope for the future. Her words have also been incorporated within another book,War's Other Voices: Women Writers on the Lebanese Civil War where Naamani is described by the writer, Miriam Cooke, as "generous" and "courageous" along with other Lebanese women writers identified as "The Beiruit Decentrist."
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Kahf, Mohja. E-mails from Scheherazad. Gainesville. 2003. University Press of Florida. 9780813026213. Contemporary Poetry Series, 6 x 9. 128 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - 'Perhaps Kahf's most impressive accomplishment is her ability to bring together beauty and pain in the same breath, to write poems that encompass history and human endurance as well as joy, that testify to the fragility and power of the human heart. This is Kahf's ultimate message: that religion and ethnicity and color and nationality are as nothing in the face of simple humanity; that spirituality and life are beyond all of these, that no creed or ideology may be taken as justification for harm. '--Lisa Suhair Majaj. Kahf establishes herself as a new voice in the tradition of ethnic American poets, blending the experiences of recent Arab-American immigrants into contemporary American scenery. In her poems, Muslim ritual and Qur'anic vocabulary move in next door to the idiom of suburban Americana, and the legendary Scheherazad of the Thousand and One Nights shows up in New Jersey, recast as a sophisticated postcolonial feminist. Kahf's carefully crafted poems do not speak only to important issues of ethnicity, gender, and religious diversity in America, but also to universal human themes of family and kinship, friendship, and the search for a place to pray. She chronicles the specific griefs and pleasures of the immigrant and writes an amulet for womanly power in the face of the world's terrors. Her poetic energy is provocative and sassy, punctuated now and then with a darker poem of elegiac sadness or refined rage.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mohja Kahf is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas.
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Kahf, Mohja. Hagar Poems. Fayetteville. 2016. University of Arkansas Press. 9781682260005. Foreword by Amina Wadud. 6 × 9. 160 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Mohja Kahf's Hagar Poems is brilliantly original in its conception, thrillingly artful in its execution. Its range is immense, its spiritual depth is profound, it negotiates its shifts between archaic and the contemporary with utmost skill.There's lyricism, there's satire, there's comedy, there's theology of a high order in this book.' - Alicia Ostriker, author of For the Love of God:The Bible as an Open Book. ‘This brilliant collection captures all the ‘patient threading of relationship' between Hagar and Sarah as between women, and then between women and men, between human and God. .At every turn of the page [Kahf] refuses complacency and circumstance but opts instead for exposing the tenuousness of threads that tie and bind and then come loose before our eyes.' - From the foreword by Amina Wadud. The central matter of this daring new collection is the story of Hagar,Abraham, and Sarah - the ancestral feuding family of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These poems delve into the Hajar story in Islam.They explore other figures from the Near Eastern heritage, such as Mary and Moses, and touch on figures from early Islam, such as Fatima and Aisha. Throughout, there is artful reconfiguring. Readers will find sequels and prequels to the traditional narratives, along with modernized figures claimed for contemporary conflicts. Hagar Poems is a compelling shakeup of not only Hagar's story but also of current roles of all kinds of women in all kinds of relationships.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mohja Kahf was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1967 to parents who immigrated to the United States in 1971. She is the author of a poetry book, E-mails from Scheherazad, and a novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf.
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Kugler, Olivier. Escaping Wars and Waves: Encounters with Syrian Refugees. University Park. 2018. Penn State University Press. 9781637790632. Series: Graphic Medicine. 11.5 x 8.8. Copublished with Myriad Editions. 80 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - While on assignment between 2013 and 2017, often for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Olivier Kugler interviewed and photographed Syrian refugees and their caregivers in camps, on the road, and in provisional housing in Iraqi Kurdistan, Greece, France, Switzerland, and England. Escaping Wars and Waves is the astonishing result of that record keeping—a graphic novel that brings to life the improvised living conditions of the refugees, along with the stories of how they survived. Kugler captures the chaotic energy of the camps through movement-filled drawings, based on the photos he took in the field, that depict figures, locations, and seemingly random details that take on their own resonance. He also gives precedence to the voices of the refugees themselves by incorporating excerpts from his many interviews and portraits sketched from thousands of reference photos. What emerges is a complicated and intense narrative of loss, sadness, fear, and hope and an indelible impression of the refugees as individual humans with their own stories, rather than a faceless mass. Escaping War and Waves is an unnervingly close and poignant look at the lives of those affected by the Syrian war and the doctors and volunteers who tend to them.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Olivier Kugler is a reportage illustrator based in London and has won many awards, including a Victoria & Albert Museum Illustration Award in 2011 and a World Illustration Award in 2015. His reportage drawings have appeared in The Guardian, Harper's, Le Monde diplomatique, Port, XXI, and other publications.
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Tamer, Zakaria. Sour Grapes. Syracuse. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611547. Translated from the Arabic by Alessandro Columbu and Mireia Costa Capallera. 168 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Set in the Syrian neighborhood of al-Qaweyq, Sour Grapes is a collection of fifty-nine wry, satirical short stories loosely connected by a cast of rotating characters living at society’s margins. Tamer captures their everyday lives, weaving the attendant cruelties and ironies of living under an oppressive regime with the residents’ irreverence and small acts of defiance. Inspired by the heroines of Arab mythology, the women of al-Qaweyq navigate the patriarchal community with brash confidence and dark humor while the younger generation of children inherit a bitter cynicism from their fathers. Evoking under-ripened and immature fruit, the collection’s title serves as a bittersweet metaphor for a world that possesses the seeds of change but is unprepared for the harvest. Considered a master of the short story, Zakaria Tamer is one of the Arab world’s most prominent and widely read writers. Columbu and Capallera’s fluid translation gives English readers access to Tamer’s original and provocative voice.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Zakaria Tamer is a Syrian writer. He is the author of numerous short story collections including Breaking Knees: Modern Arabic Short Stories from Syria and Tigers on the Tenth Day. Alessandro Columbu is a lecturer in Arabic at the University of Westminster in London. He is the author of Zakariyya Tamir and the Politics of the Syrian Short Story. Mireia Costa Capallera is a professional translator. She has a masters degree in Contemporary Arabic Studies and speaks six languages.
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Tamer, Zakaria. Tigers On the Tenth Day and Other Stories. London. 1985. Quartet Books. 0704324652. Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies. 123 pages. hardcover. Translation of النمور في اليوم الع.
DESCRIPTION - Satirical stories of Syria and the Arab world that look at the abuse of power by men over women, the rich over the poor, and the strong over the weak. The short, tightly told title story of this collection, Tigers on the Tenth Day, is an allegory that recounts with control how even the strongest of us can be gradually broken and tamed by those who wield the whip of power. Most of Zakaria Tamer's stories deal with man's inhumanity to man likewise to woman the oppression of the poor by the rich and of the weak by the strong. The political and social problems of his own country, Syria, and of the contemporary Arab world, are reflected in the stories and sketches in the sharply satirical style typical of his writing. For his Western readers, often puzzled by the complexities of the Middle East, Zakaria Tamer's stories, in the words of his translator, "provide a revealing peep behind the scenes" in this first volume of his work in the English language.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Zakaria Tamer (born January 2, 1931 in Damascus, Syria) is an influential master of the Arabic-language short story. He is one of the most important and widely read and translated short story writers in the Arab world, as well as being the foremost author of children's stories in Arabic. He also writes children's stories and works as a freelance journalist, writing satirical columns in newspapers. His volumes of short stories, are often reminiscent of folktales, and are renowned for their relative simplicity on the one hand and the complexity of their many potential references on the other. They often have a sharp edge and are often a surrealistic protest against political or social oppression and exploitation. Most of Zakaria Tamer's stories deal with people's inhumanity to each other, the oppression of the poor by the rich and of the weak by the strong. The political and social problems of his own country, Syria, and of the Arab world, are reflected in the stories and sketches in the satirical style typical of his writing. His first stories were published in 1957. Since then he has published eleven collections of short stories, two collections of satirical articles and numerous children's books. His works have been translated into many languages, with two collections in English, Tigers on the Tenth Day (translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, Quartet 1985) and Breaking Knees, published June 2008. In 2009 he won the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary prize
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TURKEY
[ TURKEY - Literature ]Ahyan, Ece. The Blind Cat Black and Orthodoxies. Los Angeles. 1997. Sun & Moon Press. 1557131023. Translated from the Turkish & with an Afterword by Murat Nemet-Nejat. 81 pages. paperback. Cover - Joan Brown, ‘The Invitation,’ 1979.
DESCRIPTION - Born in 1931, the important Turkish poet Ece Ayhan worked from 1962 to 1966 as head officer in different districts of the provincial administration. In 1996 he quit his position, returning to Istanbul, where he worked as a translator for the Turkish edition of the French dictionary Larousse (Meydan Larousse) and archives section of the Turkish Cinemateque Association. During all this period Ayhan continued also to write poetry, publishing major works such as MISS KINAR'S WATERS (1959), A BLIND CAT BLACK (1965), and ORTHODOXIES (1968). In the last two works, published here, Ayhan takes the reader through the dark streets of the Galata district of Istanbul, an area where European minorities lived historically side by side with red light sexual activities. Like a modern-day Rimbaud, Ayhan, in this amazing translation, explores linguistically and thematically what Turkish culture and authorities have forbidden. A daring innovator, Ayhan uses language not as a rational word-carrier, but as an instrument to unveil new insights into the world of his visions.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ece Ayhan Çağlar (1931, Muğla - July 13, 2002, İzmir) was a contemporary Turkish poet. He used the name Ece Ayhan in his poems. He is one of the prominent figures of the II. New Movement, however he didn't accept this name and preferred Civilian Poetry. He was openly gay.
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Ali, Sabahattin. Madonna in a Fur Coat. New York. 2021. Penguin Books. 9780241422267. Translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. 192 pages. B-format Paperback. Translation of Kürk Mantolu Madonna.
DESCRIPTION - The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time. 'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul. 'Passionate but clear. Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sabahattin Ali was born in 1907 in the Ottoman town of Egridere (now Ardino in southern Bulgaria) and was killed on the Bulgarian border in 1948 as he attempted to leave Turkey. A teacher, writer, and journalist, he owned and edited a popular weekly newspaper called Marko Pasa and was imprisoned twice for his political views.
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Arjouni, Jakob. And Still Drink More!: A Kayankaya Mystery. New York. 1994. Fromm International. 0880641614. Translated from the German by Anselm Hollo. 156 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Harold Wortsman. Jacket photograph by Fernando Natalici. Translation of Mehr Bier.
DESCRIPTION - Four members of a radical ecological group are accused of having murdered the director of a chemical plant near Frankfurt, Germany. While they admit to having blown up a wastepipe, they deny any involvement in the killing. According to witnesses, five people participated in the act of sabotage, but there is no trace of the fifth man. The defendants' lawyer hires Kemal Kayankaya to find him. Born in Turkey but raised in Germany, Kayankaya encounters more than one dangerous obstacle in his search - not only because he is a Turk, but also because his biting wit spares no one, not even the powers that be who try to silence him. A tough, sharp-tongued and hard-drinking P.I. reminiscent of Sam Spade and Philip Mar1owe, Kayankaya is determined to solve the complex riddle at the heart of this engrossing mystery.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jakob Arjouni (born 8 October 1964 in Frankfurt am Main) is a German author. He received the 1992 German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Jakob Arjouni ended his university studies and published his first novel Happy Birthday, Türke! at the age of 22. Later he wrote his first play Die Garagen. He became famous after publishing his criminal novel Kayankaya, which was then translated into 10 different languages. In 1987, he received the Baden-Württembergischen Autorenpreis für das deutschsprachige Jugendtheater for his play Nazim schiebt ab. In 1992, he received the German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Arjouni's works are usually about the comtemporary problems, and he writes about the environment which he is familiar with. Detective Kemal Kayankaya, the protagonist in his detective novel Kayankaya, lives in Frankfurt am Main where Arjouni resided. Although Kayankaya was adopted and brought up by a German family, he subjected to racism due his ethnic Turkish appearance, and the others made fun of him. Kismet, another detective novel about Kayankaya, is about the Yugoslav civil war. In his works Magic Hoffmann, Hausaufgaben and Edelsmanns Tochter, he talks about the rising nationalism, historical revisionism and anti-Semitism in the reunified Germany. His novel Chez Max takes place in Paris in the year 2064. In this novel, he writes on the future of the society, which would be closely monitored to enhance security as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks. One can easily relate Chez Max with the scenes in George Orwell's novel 1984. In one of his latest novels, Der heilige Eddy (2009), Arjouni departed from the previously serious themes and wrote a lightweight contemporary picaresque. Peter Henning, a critic from the German newspaper Die Zeit, commented that it is a ‘German screwball prose with 246 floating slightly staged pages'. His thriller novel Cherryman jagt Mr. White (2011) has got an 18 years old protagonist in rural Bandenburg who has to face brutal violence by young nazi guys of his own village. To overcome his subdued feelings he puts them into cartoon adventures of hero ‘Cherryman' and gangster ‘Mr. White'.
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Arjouni, Jakob. Happy Birthday,Turk!: A Kayankaya Mystery. New York. 1993. Fromm International. 0880641487. Translated from the German by Anselm Hollo. 154 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Linda Kosarin. Translation of Happy birthday, Türke!.
DESCRIPTION - A Turkish worker is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red-light district - certainly no reason for the police to work overtime, Kemal Kayankaya, however, has a different attitude. A 26-year-old of Turkish birth but German upbringing, he doesn't speak Turkish but looks it, has a German passport and first-hand experience of resentment against foreigners. He is also a private investigator, hired to find the killer and the motive for the crime. Like his literary forefathers Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade, he is a loner, but as a Turk, not because he has an option. Yet he is not unarmed; with an irreverent and hilarious sense of humor Kayankaya goes about his search, all the while drinking too much, encountering obnoxious policemen and easy women, After twists and turns he finally runs into a drug ring built on the exploitation of Turkish immigrants. The influence of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett on Jakob Arjouni is impossible to miss; the plot moves quickly, the action thrills, the characters are unforgettable, and the milieu is painted so realistically that it immediately comes to life for the reader. Jakob Arjouni was born in Frankfurt, West Germany, in 1964. After having spent several years in France, he recently moved to Berlin. He is the author of novels, plays, and radio plays. With the publication of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TURK! Arjouni was immediately recognized as Germany's outstanding mystery writer, Already translated into eight languages, this is the first volume of the best-selling Kayankaya series to be published by Fromm international.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jakob Arjouni (born 8 October 1964 in Frankfurt am Main) is a German author. He received the 1992 German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Jakob Arjouni ended his university studies and published his first novel Happy Birthday, Türke! at the age of 22. Later he wrote his first play Die Garagen. He became famous after publishing his criminal novel Kayankaya, which was then translated into 10 different languages. In 1987, he received the Baden-Württembergischen Autorenpreis für das deutschsprachige Jugendtheater for his play Nazim schiebt ab. In 1992, he received the German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Arjouni's works are usually about the comtemporary problems, and he writes about the environment which he is familiar with. Detective Kemal Kayankaya, the protagonist in his detective novel Kayankaya, lives in Frankfurt am Main where Arjouni resided. Although Kayankaya was adopted and brought up by a German family, he subjected to racism due his ethnic Turkish appearance, and the others made fun of him. Kismet, another detective novel about Kayankaya, is about the Yugoslav civil war. In his works Magic Hoffmann, Hausaufgaben and Edelsmanns Tochter, he talks about the rising nationalism, historical revisionism and anti-Semitism in the reunified Germany. His novel Chez Max takes place in Paris in the year 2064. In this novel, he writes on the future of the society, which would be closely monitored to enhance security as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks. One can easily relate Chez Max with the scenes in George Orwell's novel 1984. In one of his latest novels, Der heilige Eddy (2009), Arjouni departed from the previously serious themes and wrote a lightweight contemporary picaresque. Peter Henning, a critic from the German newspaper Die Zeit, commented that it is a ‘German screwball prose with 246 floating slightly staged pages'. His thriller novel Cherryman jagt Mr. White (2011) has got an 18 years old protagonist in rural Bandenburg who has to face brutal violence by young nazi guys of his own village. To overcome his subdued feelings he puts them into cartoon adventures of hero ‘Cherryman' and gangster ‘Mr. White'.
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Arjouni, Jakob. Idiots: Five Fairy Tales and Other Stories. New York. 2005. Other Press. 1590511573. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell. 269 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Getty Images. Cover design by Natalya Balnova. Translation of Idioten.
DESCRIPTION - Like a postmodern Aesop, internationally acclaimed Jakob Arjouni casts a sardonic eye on European life, Arjouni is one of the most prominent new voices in German literature since the fall of the Berlin wall. His work carries the exuberance of his country's newfound cultural renaissance and its ensuing disaffection for corporate culture. In this collection of short stories, he wittily punctures pretension and self-deception in a place unlike any we have seen before. Herein, we find a domineering mother whose rock star son fails to appreciate her efforts on his behalf; a hopeful young movie director with a bad case of writer's block; and an aging author of pulp fiction trying to write one good, serious book before he dies. They are all visited by a fairy who offers to grant one wish, with the exceptions of immortality, health, money, and love. Their wishes, once granted, have stinging consequences-the resolutions of which read like an updated version of the Brothers Grimm, A would-be novelist, whose marriage is on the rocks, longs for excitement and soon finds himself taken hostage by a woman bank robber; and a mysterious old man who comes to a village to end his days in peace winds up the close acquaintance of the local drunk. CONTENTS: Idiots -- Defeated -- Self-defense -- In the valley of death -- Happy ending -- A friend -- The inner man -- The Rudolf family does good works -- At peace.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jakob Arjouni (born 8 October 1964 in Frankfurt am Main) is a German author. He received the 1992 German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Jakob Arjouni ended his university studies and published his first novel Happy Birthday, Türke! at the age of 22. Later he wrote his first play Die Garagen. He became famous after publishing his criminal novel Kayankaya, which was then translated into 10 different languages. In 1987, he received the Baden-Württembergischen Autorenpreis für das deutschsprachige Jugendtheater for his play Nazim schiebt ab. In 1992, he received the German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Arjouni's works are usually about the comtemporary problems, and he writes about the environment which he is familiar with. Detective Kemal Kayankaya, the protagonist in his detective novel Kayankaya, lives in Frankfurt am Main where Arjouni resided. Although Kayankaya was adopted and brought up by a German family, he subjected to racism due his ethnic Turkish appearance, and the others made fun of him. Kismet, another detective novel about Kayankaya, is about the Yugoslav civil war. In his works Magic Hoffmann, Hausaufgaben and Edelsmanns Tochter, he talks about the rising nationalism, historical revisionism and anti-Semitism in the reunified Germany. His novel Chez Max takes place in Paris in the year 2064. In this novel, he writes on the future of the society, which would be closely monitored to enhance security as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks. One can easily relate Chez Max with the scenes in George Orwell's novel 1984. In one of his latest novels, Der heilige Eddy (2009), Arjouni departed from the previously serious themes and wrote a lightweight contemporary picaresque. Peter Henning, a critic from the German newspaper Die Zeit, commented that it is a ‘German screwball prose with 246 floating slightly staged pages'. His thriller novel Cherryman jagt Mr. White (2011) has got an 18 years old protagonist in rural Bandenburg who has to face brutal violence by young nazi guys of his own village. To overcome his subdued feelings he puts them into cartoon adventures of hero ‘Cherryman' and gangster ‘Mr. White'. ANTHEA BELL'S translations include the works of the Brothers Grimm, Clemens Brentano, Wilhelm Hauff, Christian Morgenstern, and E.T.A. Hoffmann. In 2002, her translation of W.G. Sebald's AUSTERLITZ won the Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize from the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes.
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Arjouni, Jakob. Kismet: A Kayankaya Thriller. Brooklyn. 2010. Melville House. 9781935554233. Translated from the German by Anthea Bell. 255 pages. paperback. Cover design by Kelly Blair. Translation of Kismet.
DESCRIPTION - Introducing Kemal Kayankaya, a wise-cracking private detective in Frankfurt - aka, ‘the ugliest town in Germany.' As a Turkish immigrant raised by Germans, he's regularly subjected to racism in the gritty, working-class city, and getting work isn't easy. So when his friend Romario asks Kayankaya to protect him against thugs demanding protection money from his restaurant business, the down-and-out Kayankaya takes the job. Except these are no ordinary thugs. They turn out to be battle-hardened Croatian nationalists looking to take over the rackets in Frankfurt, and they do not take kindly to Kayankaya's interference with their plans. But try as he might, Kayankaya just can't seem to stay out of their way. What ensues is a brilliant novel about organized crime, immigration, the fallout from the Balkan wars, and the madness of nationalism from one of Europe's finest crime writers.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jakob Arjouni was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1964. He has written numerous books, including the novel MAGIC HOFFMAN, which was shortlisted for the IMPAC Award. But he's best known for his four books about private detective Kemal Kayankaya, which have been bestsellers throughout Europe and been awarded the German Thriller Prize. Arjouni divides his time between Berlin and Languedoc, France. Anthea Bell is the recipient of the Schlegel Tieck Prize for translation from German, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize in 2002 for the translation of W. G. Sebald's AUSTERLITZ, and the 2003 Austrian State Prize for Literary Translation. She lives in Cambridge, England.
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Arjouni, Jakob. One Death To Die: A Kayankaya Mystery. New York. 1997. Fromm International. 0880641703. Translated from the German by Anselm Hollo. 183 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & illustration by Carmine Vecchio. Translation of Ein Mann, ein Mord.
DESCRIPTION - ‘A zippy, deliciously dirty tour of legal fleshpots and low-down scams victimizing illegal aliens. plotted with verve and written with passion.' - Kirkus Reviews. Kemal Kayankaya, the private investigator with an attitude, is back! Sri Dao, a Thai girl smuggled into Frankfurt for its flourishing sex trade, has vanished without a trace, and her fiancE is desperate to find her. Kayankaya, the orphaned son of a Turkish locksmith turned German garbage collector, is as hardboiled as Philip Marlowe, as smart-mouthed as Easy Rawlins. As Kayankaya unravels the mystery of Sri Dao's disappearance, he leads the reader on a breathless chase through the seedy underbelly of a modern metropolis - its world of illegal aliens, corrupt cops, hustlers, and pimps no different from that of the urban jungle in any major US city, its hapless ‘undocumented' victims subject to the same heartless pattern of greed and hate. And who else but Kayankaya, himself the butt of the racist taunts of his compatriots, would know how to respond to the challenges of trying to survive in the margins of society? Crackling with intelligence and blistering wit, ONE DEATH TO DIE confirms the arrival of a new star on the international mystery scene.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jakob Arjouni (born 8 October 1964 in Frankfurt am Main) is a German author. He received the 1992 German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Jakob Arjouni ended his university studies and published his first novel Happy Birthday, Türke! at the age of 22. Later he wrote his first play Die Garagen. He became famous after publishing his criminal novel Kayankaya, which was then translated into 10 different languages. In 1987, he received the Baden-Württembergischen Autorenpreis für das deutschsprachige Jugendtheater for his play Nazim schiebt ab. In 1992, he received the German Crime Fiction Prize for One Man, One Murder. Arjouni's works are usually about the comtemporary problems, and he writes about the environment which he is familiar with. Detective Kemal Kayankaya, the protagonist in his detective novel Kayankaya, lives in Frankfurt am Main where Arjouni resided. Although Kayankaya was adopted and brought up by a German family, he subjected to racism due his ethnic Turkish appearance, and the others made fun of him. Kismet, another detective novel about Kayankaya, is about the Yugoslav civil war. In his works Magic Hoffmann, Hausaufgaben and Edelsmanns Tochter, he talks about the rising nationalism, historical revisionism and anti-Semitism in the reunified Germany. His novel Chez Max takes place in Paris in the year 2064. In this novel, he writes on the future of the society, which would be closely monitored to enhance security as a result of the 911 terrorist attacks. One can easily relate Chez Max with the scenes in George Orwell's novel 1984. In one of his latest novels, Der heilige Eddy (2009), Arjouni departed from the previously serious themes and wrote a lightweight contemporary picaresque. Peter Henning, a critic from the German newspaper Die Zeit, commented that it is a ‘German screwball prose with 246 floating slightly staged pages'. His thriller novel Cherryman jagt Mr. White (2011) has got an 18 years old protagonist in rural Bandenburg who has to face brutal violence by young nazi guys of his own village. To overcome his subdued feelings he puts them into cartoon adventures of hero ‘Cherryman' and gangster ‘Mr. White'.
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Aykol, Esmahan. Baksheesh. London. 2013. Bitter Lemon Press. 9781908524041. Translated by Ruth Whitehouse. 253 pages. paperback. Translation of Kelepir ev.
DESCRIPTION - Kati Hirschel, the owner of Istanbul's only mystery bookstore, is fed up. It all started when her lover Selim insisted that she behave like the Turkish wife of a respectable lawyer. Looking demure and making witty small talk were the only requirements. Then her landlord announced an outrageous rent increase on her Istanbul apartment. She has no desire to move in with Selim. She'd rather learn the art of bribing government officials in order to find a new place. Kati is offered a large apartment with a view over the Bosphorus at a bargain price. Too good to be true until a man is found murdered there and she becomes the police's prime suspect. In her second novel Esmahan Aykol takes us to the alleys and boulevards of cosmopolitan Istanbul, to posh villas and seedy basement flats, to the property agents and lawyers, to Islamist leaders and city officials--in fact everywhere that baksheesh helps move things along. Praise for the first Kati Hirschel Istanbul mystery: "The heroine is an offbeat amateur sleuth with a distinctive narrative voice. Fans of such female detectives as Amanda Cross's Kate Fansler and Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher will find a lot to like."--Publishers Weekly
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She lives in Istanbul and Berlin. During her law studies she was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender she turned to fiction writing. She has written three Katie Hirschel novels. Hotel Bosphorus is the first and has been published in Turkish, German, French and soon in Italian. Ruth Whitehouse worked as a violinist in Ankara. She pursued her interest in Turkish culture and literature by doing by obtaining a PhD in Turkish Literature at SOAS in London. This is her first translation of a full novel but her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2010 in a series called Young Turks, featuring translations of work by young Turkish writers.
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Aykol, Esmahan. Hotel Bosphorus. London. 2011. Bitter Lemon Press. 9781904738688. Translated by Ruth Whitehouse. 246 pages. paperback. Translation of Kitapçı Dükkânı.
DESCRIPTION - "What matters is that [Esmahan] Aykol uses the genre to tell us a little more about the world than we're used to hearing from more commercial writers."--Newsday "A wonderful novel about Istanbul. The Turkish way of life, prejudices, men, politics, corruption--Esmahan Aykol writes about all these with a light and humorous touch."--Petros Markaris, author of Che Committed Suicide and Zone Defence "Bubbling with hedonism, enthusiasm, love of life and books, this should be mandatory reading for those holidaying in Turkey, visitors to Istanbul, and lovers of crime novels."--Hamburger Abendblatt This debut by a young Turkish woman novelist is set in her beloved Istanbul. The heroine, Kati Hirschel, is a foreigner and proud owner of the only mystery bookshop in town. When the director of a film starring an old school friend is found murdered in his hotel room, Kati cannot resist the temptation to start her own maverick investigation. After all, her friend Petra is the police's principal suspect, and reading all those detective novels must have taught Kati something. This suspenseful tale of murder features a heroine who is funny, feisty and undresses men in her mind more often than she would like. It uses humor, social commentary, and even erotic fantasy to expose Western prejudices about Turkey, as well as Turkish stereotyping of other Europeans. Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender she turned to fiction writing. Hotel Bosphorus is her first novel and will be followed by two others featuring Kati Hirschel.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Esmahan Aykol was born in 1970 in Edirne, Turkey. She lives in Istanbul and Berlin. During her law studies she was a journalist for a number of Turkish publications and radio stations. After a stint as a bartender she turned to fiction writing. She has written three Katie Hirschel novels. Hotel Bosphorus is the first and has been published in Turkish, German, French and soon in Italian. Ruth Whitehouse worked as a violinist in Ankara. She pursued her interest in Turkish culture and literature by doing by obtaining a PhD in Turkish Literature at SOAS in London. This is her first translation of a full novel but her work has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2010 in a series called Young Turks, featuring translations of work by young Turkish writers.
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Bilbasar, Kemal. Gemmo. London. 1976. Peter Owen. 0720604249. Translated from the Turkish by Esin B. Rey with Mariana Fitzpatrick. 223 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Set in the mountains of Eastern Anatolia, Gemmo is the story of a Kurdish girl in the turbulent years of 1920s Turkey, when Kemal Pasha struggled to destroy Turkey's feudal system and to lead the country into the 20th century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kemal Bilbasar (born in 1910 in Çanakkale and died 21 January 1983 in Istanbul) was a Turkish teacher and writer, one of the representatives of the Turkish ‘village literature'. In stories and novels, he introduced mainly the daily concerns, beliefs and customs of people suffering from poverty and injustice residents of Anatolian steppe is, ‘often with humor, but never deviating from the critical social realism,' writes Olcay Önertay. Bilbasar preferred short sentences, clear and lively, and often colored with the style of local dialects. In 2006 the Turkish Ministry of Education praised his novels Cemo (1966) and Yonca Kiz (1971) in a list of recommended books for high school and primary school children including them in a list of 100 important literary works of the world. Bilbasar‘s father, police chief of Salonika, was murdered when his son was two years old. The young mother fled to Anatolia, where she married a civilian official. The privations of wartime forced Kemal and his step-siblings into child labor. Still, he managed to go to a teacher training college, where he graduated in 1929. After two years as a school teacher, he took up a study of history, which he completed in 1935. He married Bedia Bilge, a visual artist, and they had two children. After completing his military service Bilbasar taught history and geography at the Karatas University in Izmir. In 1937 Kemal received attention as a writer with the short story Çimaci Hasan. A year later he founded with friends the literary monthly magazine aramak (The Search). During the years 1945 to 1952, Kemal was persecuted because of his socialist beliefs. Between the years 1953 and 1971, he also wrote regularly for the opposition newspaper Democrat Izmir, in addition to numerous other journals and magazines. In 1961 he retired in order to devote himself fulltime to writing. Until his death in 1983 Bilbasar wrote several books, including the novel Cemo, for which he received a Turkish literary award in 1967. The novel was translated into English and published in London in 1976. Kemal Bilbasar enjoyed playing the violin.
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Erdoğan, Aslı. The Stone Building and Other Places. San Francisco. 2018. City Lights Books. 9780872867505. Translated by Sevinç Türkkan. 174 pages. paperback. Translation of Taş Bina ve Diğerleri.
DESCRIPTION - The Vaclav Havel Library Foundation Announces Asli Erdogan as the 2019 Winner, Disturbing the Peace Award to a Courageous Writer at Risk. Finalist for the 2019 PEN Translation Prize The New York Times calls Turkish writer Asli Erdogan one of the "11 Powerful Women We Met Around the World in 2017" "Aslı Erdoğan is an exceptionally perceptive and sensitive writer who always produces perfect literary texts."--Orhan Pamuk "One volume of short stories, The Stone Building and Other Places has become a bestseller in Turkey."--The New York Times "Beautifully written and honestly told, as tender as the tulip gardens of Istanbul and as brave as the human heart."--Elif Safak, author of The Forty Rules of Love Three interconnected stories feature women whose lives have been interrupted by forces beyond their control. Exile, serious illness, or the imprisonment of one's beloved are each met with versions of strength and daring, while there is no undoing what fate has wrought. These atmospheric, introspective tales culminate in an experimental, multi-voiced novella, whose "stone building" is a metaphor for the various oppressive institutions--prisons, police headquarters, hospitals, and psychiatric asylums--that dominate the lives of all of these characters. Here is a literary distillation of the alienation, helplessness, and controlled fury of exile and incarceration--both physical and mental--presented in a series of moving, allegorical portraits of lives ensnared by the structures of power. Aslı Erdoğan (Istanbul, 1967) was arrested and imprisoned by the Turkish government in a sweeping roundup of dissident voices after the failed coup attempt of July 2016. The subject of both PEN International and PEN America advocacy campaigns, she has published novels, collections of short stories and poetic prose, and selections from her political essays. As a journalist, she has covered controversial topics such as state violence, discrimination, and human rights, for which she has been persecuted in a variety of ways.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aslı Erdoğan (born 8 March 1967) is a prize-winning Turkish writer, author, human rights activist, and columnist for Özgür Gündem and formerly for Radikal, ex political prisoner, particle physicist. Her second novel has been published in English,and eight books translated into twenty languages. Aslı Erdoğan is a writer of literature and author of eight books, novels, novellas, collections of poetic prose and essays, translated into twenty languages including English, French, German, and published by various publishers such as Actes Sud, Penguin Germany, The City Lights among others. She has worked as a columnist in various national and international papers, and she was arrested in 2016 for her collaboration with the pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem. Aslı Erdoğan has received several prizes in literature, arts and human rights such as Simone de Beauvoir Prize or the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize. Her work has been adapted into theater and acted in Milan, Graz and Avignon, into classical ballet, radio, a short film and finally to opera. She is currently living in exile in Germany.
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Faik, Sait. A Dot On the Map. Bloomington. 1983. Indiana University Press Turkish Studies. Translated from the Turkish by Talat Sait Halman. 308 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - From the INTRODUCTION: FICTION OF A FLANEUR by Talat Sait Halman - Sait Faik lived the life of a flaneur - wandering through the city of Istanbul, absorbing its vivid impressions, eavesdropping on its people, and observing its daily drama. Standing media vitae, he was a reluctant voyeur who frequently found himself dragged into the comic episodes and the tragedies enacted on the street scene. This sensitive and often cynical idler-about-town gave his narrative accounts of Istanbul's human landscape in about 170 stories, two short novels, numerous interviews, and a handful of poems. Immediately after Sait Faik's death in 1954 at the age of 47, a newspaper reporter interviewed some of his non-literary friends and found that these ordinary people - fishermen, youngsters, loiterers, the owners, and patrons of coffeehouses - with whom he had spent a great deal of time through the years, had little or no idea about his fame and stature as a writer or even about his having been a writer at all. Sait Faik's persona, so dominant in his fiction, scrupulously shunned intrusion into the lives of his favorite characters in life. In a poem he expressed an aspect of the way he dealt creatively with his dramatis personae: ‘Some days at dusk I would sit/ And write stories/ Like mad/ And the people in my mind/ Would sail out to sea for fishing.' Turkish critics have often stressed Sait Faik's concern for the common man, for the man in the street, or - to use the term which was fashionable in the 1940s and 1950s - ‘the little man.' In the case of many writers such an infatuation results from a romantic attitude or an ideology. Sait Faik's stories seldom betray this type of romantic attitude or reveal any social cause per se. His characters are authentic individuals he knew on a personal basis. He did not set them up as symbols or metaphors; he refused to think of any of these as an eidos or topos. The way he saw and depicted them was free and clear of ideological bias. In transposing them from life to fiction, he preserved the integrity of the individual characters, making them live according to their own attributes, idiosyncracies and psychological motives. As the fifty stories in this volume will show, Sait Faik who was once referred to as ‘Turkey's Balzac,' an analogy that is difficult to endorse, approached his fiction as essentially a miniaturist and allowed his stories to create a broad panorama of the life of Istanbul. Although no unified structure emerges, it can safely be argued that his work is larger than the sum of its parts. This does not mean that the constituent parts lack inherent strength. A number of his stories can actually be counted among the best of their genre produced in Turkey. According to the Turkish critic Mustafa Kutlu, who published a study of Sait Faik's short stories in 1964, ‘Sait Faik, like his contemporaries, projects the image of a realist, but is a romantic in terms of style and the empathy, even love, he feels for the characters he delineates.' In his textual analyses of short stories published in 1979, Professor Mehmet Kaplan, one of Turkey's leading academic critics, comments: ‘Sait Faik is a realist in terms of his world-view and narrative style. But he does not merely deal with the external aspects of reality. Behind the exterior, he finds a kind spirit and a deep significance. His realism avoids shallowness, encompassing myth, poetry, sentiment, and fantasy; it has a unified view of ugliness and beauty, good and evil - it embraces all of humanity and the world as a whole. It is this profound, wide-ranging, sympathetic and tolerant view of life that makes Sait Faik's stories as richly endowed, complex and lovely as life itself.' Sait Faik's career, which spanned barely twenty-five years from about 1929 to 1954, yielded an output that displays considerable variety of themes and techniques although virtually all of his stories have certain similarities - his unmistakable style, the focal importance of the narrator, the preoccupation with social outcasts and marginal groups, an unfaltering ear for colloquial speech, etc. His stories, in their range of feeling and creative strategies, can be likened to many disparate works by some of his predecessors, contemporaries and successors outside Turkey. Occasionally one finds plots worthy of a de Maupassant, moods reminiscent of a Chekhov, and sometimes the lucidity of a Maugham, although none of these writers - not even some of the French writers he presumably read during his stay in Grenoble - seems to have had any direct influence on him. In some stories, the Turkish writer gives us a blend of fantasy and concrete fact, and the interplay of different levels of reality in the Faulknerian manner. In others, one finds a structural clarity and a crispness of language typical of Hemingway. Sait Faik's later stories occasionally read like Donald Barthelme's early work, sharing the same eery sensations of a foray into the realms of fantasy.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sait Faik Abasiyanik (18 November 1906 - 11 May 1954) was one of the greatest Turkish writers of short stories and poetry. Born in Adapazari, he was educated at the Bursa Erkek Lisesi. He enrolled in the Turcology Department of Istanbul University in 1928, but under pressure from his father went to Switzerland to study economics in 1930. He left school and lived for three years in Grenoble, France - an experience which made a deep impact on his art and character. After returning to Turkey he taught Turkish in Halicioglu Armenian School for Orphans, and tried to follow his father's wishes and go into business but was unsuccessful. He devoted his life to writing after 1934. He created a brand new language and brought new life to Turkish short story writing with his harsh but humanistic portrayals of labourers, fishermen, children, the unemployed, the poor. A major theme was always the sea and he spent most of his time in Burgazada (one of the Princes' Islands in the Marmara Sea). He was an honorary member of the International Mark Twain Society of St. Louis, Missouri. Sait Faik mostly published under the name Sait Faik, other pen names being Adali (‘Island dweller'), Sait Faik Adali, and S. F.
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Faik, Sait. A Useless Man: Selected Stories. Brooklyn. 2014. Archipelago Books. 9780914671077. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. 240 pages. paperback. Cover design by David Bullen. Cover art by Abidin Dino.
DESCRIPTION - Sait Faik Abasıyanık was born in Adapazarı in 1906 and died in Istanbul in 1954. In twelve books of short stories, two novels, and a book of poetry, Sait Faik's prose celebrates the natural world and renders in vivid detail the struggles of his characters: ancient coffeehouse proprietors and priests, dream-addled fishermen and poets of the Princes' Isles, lovers and wandering minstrels of another time. Many stories are loosely autobiographically and deal with Sait Faik's frustration with social convention, the relentless pace of westernization, and the slow yet steady ethnic cleansing of his city. Seemingly in keeping with the restrictions that the new Republic placed on language and culture, the fluid, limpid surfaces of these tales craftily veil the deeper truths lying in their subversive undercurrents. Sait Faik is greatly revered to this day, lending his name to Turkey's most prestigious short story award. Nearly every Turk knows by heart a line or a story by Sait Faik.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sait Faik Abasiyanik (18 November 1906 - 11 May 1954) was one of the greatest Turkish writers of short stories and poetry. Born in Adapazari, he was educated at the Bursa Erkek Lisesi. He enrolled in the Turcology Department of Istanbul University in 1928, but under pressure from his father went to Switzerland to study economics in 1930. He left school and lived for three years in Grenoble, France - an experience which made a deep impact on his art and character. After returning to Turkey he taught Turkish in Halicioglu Armenian School for Orphans, and tried to follow his father's wishes and go into business but was unsuccessful. He devoted his life to writing after 1934. He created a brand new language and brought new life to Turkish short story writing with his harsh but humanistic portrayals of labourers, fishermen, children, the unemployed, the poor. A major theme was always the sea and he spent most of his time in Burgazada (one of the Princes' Islands in the Marmara Sea). He was an honorary member of the International Mark Twain Society of St. Louis, Missouri. Sait Faik mostly published under the name Sait Faik, other pen names being Adali (‘Island dweller'), Sait Faik Adali, and S. F.
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Faik, Sait. Sleeping in the Forest: Stories and Poems . Syracuse. 2004. Syracuse University Press. 9780815608042. Edited by Talat S. Halman and Jayne Warner. Middle East Literature in Translation. 199 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Sait Faik may well be named "the Turkish Chekhov. " In Turkey, critics and readers regard him as their finest short story writer. Since his death in 1954 at the age of forty-eight, his stature has grown on the strength of his narrative art, which is both realistic and whimsical with a poetic touch. Süha Oguzertem, a premier authority on Turkish fiction, writes in his introduction to Sleeping in the Forest that "As an anti-bourgeois writer and fierce democrat, Sait Faik has always sided with the underdog" and that no characters remain " 'common' or 'ordinary' once they enter Sait Faik's stories; his piercing gaze and thoughtful vision transform them lovingly into unique beings. " Sait Faik's fiction ranges from the realistic to the surrealistic, from the romantic to the modern, from the cynical to the compassionate. With virtuosic skill, he captures the spirit and the spleen of the city of Istanbul and its environs. In evoking the mystery of that great metropolis through such ordinary characters as Armenian fishermen, Greek Orthodox priests, and the disillusioned and disfranchised, he creates for us a marvelous microcosm of tragicomedy. Few writers, in Turkey or elsewhere, command Sait Faik's mastery of the ironic. Sleeping in the Forest features twenty-two stories, an excerpt from a novella, and fifteen poems rendered into English by some of the best-known translators of Turkish literature. Sait Faik's chiaroscuro world is brought into focus by an introductory essay on utopian poetics and lyrical stylistics of this great Turkish writer. The book is a stimulating exploration into Turkish mood and milieu. CONTENTS: Guide to Turkish spelling and pronunciation -- Chronology: Sait Faik -- Introduction: Sait Faik's utopian poetics and the lyrical turn in Turkish fiction / by Sha Oğuzertem -- Stories -- World for sale -- A treasure hunter -- The kingdom -- The man with the bestial smile -- Life outside the city walls -- The Stelyanos Hrisopulos -- A tale of 1,476 nickel kuruş -- The gramophone and the typewriter -- The story that dropped in my lap -- The lower cabin -- From a cloud in the sky -- From the courtroom -- The tea thieves -- The lead from Sultan Mahmud's tomb -- The wiring of the Holy Virgin's lamp -- The battle -- Eftalikus's coffeehouse -- The hermit crab -- Who cares? -- Such a story -- Barba antimos -- Sleeping in the forest -- A man created by loneliness -- Stories of a shore -- Master Yani -- The Armenian fisherman and the lame seagull -- From the novella the source of livelihood: A fishing boat -- The friend -- Sundays -- Apple and fig -- Letter I -- Letter II -- Not to be able to write -- Naples -- Girl from İmroz -- Compote -- Sicilian forests -- Back when.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sait Faik Abasiyanik (18 November 1906 – 11 May 1954) was one of the greatest Turkish writers of short stories and poetry. Born in Adapazari, he was educated at the Bursa Erkek Lisesi. He enrolled in the Turcology Department of Istanbul University in 1928, but under pressure from his father went to Switzerland to study economics in 1930. He left school and lived for three years in Grenoble, France - an experience which made a deep impact on his art and character. After returning to Turkey he taught Turkish in Halicioglu Armenian School for Orphans, and tried to follow his father's wishes and go into business but was unsuccessful. He devoted his life to writing after 1934. He created a brand new language and brought new life to Turkish short story writing with his harsh but humanistic portrayals of labourers, fishermen, children, the unemployed, the poor. A major theme was always the sea and he spent most of his time in Burgazada (one of the Princes' Islands in the Marmara Sea). He was an honorary member of the International Mark Twain Society of St. Louis, Missouri. Sait Faik mostly published under the name Sait Faik, other pen names being Adali (‘Island dweller’), Sait Faik Adali, and S. F.
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Genç, Kaya (editor). An Istanbul Anthology: Travel Writing through the Centuries. Cairo/New York. 2015. American University in Cairo Press. 9789774167218. 160 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - For centuries following its reestablishment as Constantinople in AD 330, Istanbul served as the capital of three great empires: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman. The city's maze-like streets and high balconies, its steep alleys, flower gardens, and forested hillsides remain soaked in the vestiges of that imperial past, and it is to that past and to Istanbul's unearthly moods and waters that so many writers and diarists journeyed in search of escape, knowledge, happiness, or sheer wonderment. An Istanbul Anthology takes us on a nostalgic journey through the city with travelers' accounts of the sights, smells, and sounds of Istanbul's bazaars and coffeehouses, its grand palaces and gardens, crumbling buildings, and ancient churches and mosques, and the waters that so haunt and define it. With writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Loti, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Andre Gide, we discover and rediscover the many delights of this great city of antiquity, meeting point of East and West, and gateway to peoples and civilizations. About the series: The elegant, pocket-sized volumes in the AUC Press Anthology series feature the writings and observations of travel writers and diarists through the centuries. Vivid and evocative travelers' accounts of some of the world's great cities and regions are enhanced by the exquisite vintage design in small hardback format that make the books ideal gift books as well as perfect travel companions. Designed on cream paper stock and beautifully illustrated with line drawings and archival photographs. Contributors: Edmondo de Amicis, Hans Christian Andersen, Monsieur d'Andresel,Giacomo Casanova, Clara Erskine Clement, Master Thomas Dallam, Arthur Conan Doyle, Harrison Griswold Dwight, Grace Mary Ellison, Gustave Flaubert, Theophile Gautier, Andre Gide, Aaron Hill, Ernest Hemingway, Lady Emelia B.M. Hornby, Pierre Loti, Herman Melville, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Will Seymour Monroe, Georgina Adelaide Müller, Gerard de Nerval, Lady Hester Stanhope, Arthur Symons, Mark Twain.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kaya Genç is a novelist and essayist from Istanbul. His writing has appeared in The Believer, The Guardian, The Financial Times, and New Humanist, and he is a contributing editor at Index on Censorship.
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Halman, Talat S. A Brave New Quest – 100 Modern Turkish Poems . Syracuse. 6. Syracuse University Press. 9780815608400. Edited by Talat S. Halman and Jayne Warner. Translated by Talat S. Halman. Middle East Literature in Translation. 189 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - This anthology features a wide variety of poems about social justice, love, evocations of history, humanitarian concerns, and other themes. It contains stirring examples of the revolutionary romanticism of Nazi m Hikmet; the passionate wisdom of Fazil Hüsnü Daglarca; the wry and captivating humor of Orhan Veli Kanik; the intellectual complexity of Oktay Rifat and Melih Cevdet Anday; the modern mythology of Ilhan Berk; the subtle brilliance of Behçet Necatigil; the rebellious spirit of the socialist realists; the lyric flow of the neoromantics; and the diverse explorations of younger poets. These poems are infused with their own unique flavors while speaking in an unmistakably universal style.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Talat S. Halman, professor and chairman of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, is the author and editor of more than sixty books, including Contemporary Turkish Literature and Living Poets of Turkey. Jayne L. Warner is director of research at the Institute for Aegean Prehistory in New York.
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Hanioglu, M. Sukru. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire. Princeton. 2008. Princeton University Press. 9780691134529. 288 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire straddled three continents and encompassed extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity among the estimated thirty million people living within its borders. It was perhaps the most cosmopolitan state in the world - and possibly the most volatile. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire now gives scholars and general readers a concise history of the late empire between 1789 and 1918, turbulent years marked by incredible social change. Moving past standard treatments of the subject, M. Sükrü Hanioglu emphasizes broad historical trends and processes more than single events. He examines the imperial struggle to centralize amid powerful opposition from local rulers, nationalist and other groups, and foreign powers. He looks closely at the socioeconomic changes this struggle wrought and addresses the Ottoman response to the challenges of modernity. Hanioglu shows how this history is not only essential to comprehending modern Turkey, but is integral to the histories of Europe and the world. He brings Ottoman society marvelously to life in all its facets - cultural, diplomatic, intellectual, literary, military, and political - and he mines imperial archives and other documents from the period to describe it as it actually was, not as it has been portrayed in postimperial nationalist narratives. A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the legacy left in this empire's ruins - a legacy the world still grapples with today. M. Sükrü Hanioglu is professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. He is the author of Preparation for a Revolution and The Young Turks in Opposition. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - M. Sükrü Hanioglu is the Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton).
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Hanioglu, M. Sükrü. Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton. 2011. Princeton University Press. 9780691151090. 17 halftones. 320 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - THE IDEAS THAT SHAPED THE FOUNDER OF MODERN TURKEY. When Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the first president of Turkey in 1923, he set about transforming his nation from a feudal monarchy into a secular republic where nationalism sanctified by science - and by the personality cult Atatürk created around himself - would reign supreme as the new religion. This book provides the first in-depth look at the intellectual life of the Turkish Republic's founder. In doing so, it frames him within the historical context of the turbulent age in which he lived, and explores the uneasy transition from the late Ottoman imperial order to the modern Turkish state through his life and ideas. Shedding light on one of the most complex and enigmatic statesmen of the modern era, M. Sükrü Hanioglu takes readers from Atatürk's youth as a Muslim boy in the volatile ethnic cauldron of Macedonia, to his education in nonreligious and military schools, to his embrace of Turkish nationalism and the modernizing Young Turks movement. Who was this figure who sought glory as an ambitious young officer in World War I, defied the victorious Allies intent on partitioning the Turkish heartland, and defeated the last sultan? Hanioglu charts Atatürk's intellectual and ideological development at every stage in his life, demonstrating how he was profoundly influenced by the new ideas that were circulating in the sprawling Ottoman realm. He shows how Atatürk drew on a unique mix of scientism, materialism, social Darwinism, positivism, and other theories to fashion a grand utopian framework on which to build his new nation. ‘This is the best book on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ever written. Hanioglu deals with virtually every single aspect of Atatürk's biography without drowning in the partisan battles surrounding it. I am certain that this powerful book will become a classic.' - Cemil Aydin, author of The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - M. Sükrü Hanioglu is the Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. His books include A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton).
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Hikmet, Nazim. The Moscow Symphony. Chicago. 1971. Swallow Press. Translated by Tanner Baybars. Poetry Europe Series 13. 64 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - Nazim Hikmet was the greatest poet of modern times in Turkey, and this volume presents some of his most important work. His richly courageous personality shines through this volume, the poems transcend the usual conventions of literature to become a personal testament. Taner Baybars, who is responsible for the translation, was born in Nicosia, and is himself a poet. He is bi-lingual in English and Turkish. His thorough acquaintance with what is usually reputed to be one of the most difficult of languages has enabled him to produce an English version which exactly catches both the spirit and meaning of the originals.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nâzım Hikmet Ran (15 January 1902 - 3 June 1963), commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the 'lyrical flow of his statements'. Described as a 'romantic communist' and 'romantic revolutionary', he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.
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Hikmet, Nazim. Things I Didn't Know I Loved: Selected poems of Nazim Hikmet. New York. 1975. Persea Books. 0892550007. Translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk. 86 pages. hardcover.
DESCRIPTION - A selection of poems from Nazim Hikmet, born in 1902 in Salonika, Ottoman Empire (now Thessaloníki, Greece). The first modern Turkish poet, he is recognized around the world as one of the great international poets of the twentieth century. Hikmet was a prolific writer who was known for his political activism and his use of free verse in his poems. His work often dealt with themes of love, freedom and social justice. Despite facing censorship and persecution, he continued to write and publish his works, and was considered one of the most important poets of the 20th century. He was awarded numerous prizes and honors throughout his career, including the Lenin Peace Prize. Hikmet died in 1963 in Moscow.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nâzım Hikmet Ran (15 January 1902 - 3 June 1963), commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the 'lyrical flow of his statements'. Described as a 'romantic communist' and 'romantic revolutionary', he was repeatedly arrested for his political beliefs and spent much of his adult life in prison or in exile. His poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.
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Karasu, Bilge. Night. Baton Rogue. 1994. Louisiana State University Press. 0807118494. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun With The Author. 152 pages. hardcover. Translation of Gece.
DESCRIPTION - Both a political novel of deep sophistication and a dazzling meditation on the craft and meaning of fiction, Night explores the redemptive powers of the imagination as it shows us the mind of a world-class novelist at work. Night begins as a writer's notebook. It appears the narrative of a decent man, a writer of liberal sensibility who lives in a truly hellish place, where 'nightworkers' prowl the streets, savagely murdering victims at random and leaving cryptic inscriptions about the advent of some apocalyptic 'big night.' It is a world of ritual mass-murder, of unrelenting paranoia and terror for its own sake, a world rife with rumor and deception. The writer tells of being blackmailed through a supremely cynical political maneuver into attending a foreign conference as a showpiece delegate. The journey he relates begins in deceit and ends in disaster. Set alongside the writer's story is the story of the creation of the book itself. In asides and footnotes, the writer decides on one narrative strategy, second-guesses it, then tries another, as he works his way toward an ending he cannot quite imagine. The author presents the book-in-progress through the voices of four curiously complementary characters: the writer; his nemesis, a onetime school companion who has become an administrator in both the government and a paragovernmental organization; and two agents under the administrator's direction, a man named Sevinc and a woman named Sevim. Sevinc and the original narrator become lovers who keep being reunited, and Sevim, another former schoolmate and for a time the administrator's wife, finds herself in a struggle between strategy and conscience that ends in her murder. Ultimately the identities of the voices in Night fracture and blend, the footnotes seem to take on a life of their own, and the parallel narratives fuse in a nightmarish climax that is utterly unforgettable. Night is political in the most profound sense, in its exploration of the human condition.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bilge Karasu (1930–1995) was born in Istanbul and became the pre-eminent Turkish modernist writer. Besides short stories and novels he was also a well-known translator. A graduate of the philosophy department of the Faculty of Letters of Istanbul University, Mr. Karasu worked in the foreign broadcast department of Radio Ankara until a Rockefeller University scholarship made it possible for him to continue his studies in Europe. After returning to Turkey, he went to work at Hacettepe University, where he lectured in philosophy. In 1963, Mr. Karasu won the Turkish Language Institute's Translation Award with Olen Adam, for a translation of D. H. Lawrence's The Man Who Died. By that time, he had begun to experiment with new forms of expression in his collection of stories entitled Troya'da Olum Vardi (Death in Troy). He won the Sait Faik Story Award eight years later with Uzun Surmus Bir Gundu Aksami (Evening of a Long Day). By the beginning of the 1980s, he had tried an abstract form of expression in Gocmus Kediler Bahcesi (The Garden of Departed Cats) and incorporated other forms of art into his writing. He attempted different uses of form and content in works he styled 'texts' rather than 'stories.' His other works include Kismet Bufessi (Kiosk of Destiny), a collection of short stories; and Kilavuz (The Guide).
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Kemal, Yashar. Anatolian Tales. New York. 1968. Dodd Mead. 160 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Kenneth Farnhill. Translation of Üç Anadolu Efsanesi.
DESCRIPTION - In these powerful, passionate stories Yashar Kemal, regarded as Turkey's most brilliant writer, describes the savage, pitiful lives of peasants, victims of oppression and corruption in whom all hope of justice has been extinguished; the unavailing efforts of a young and innocent commissioner to outwit the brutal rice planters intent on robbing the peasants of their small share of the crop; and the violence, cruelty and lust which disease and hunger breed. The dark texture of these tales is shot through not only with hot indignation, but also with compassion at the survival of human love and emotions that no tyranny or cruelty can kill. Brilliant and vivid, indelibly etched, a protest against the oppression of all the helpless, these stories will not quickly be forgotten. YASHAR KEMAL is now considered the greatest living Turkish writer, and his books are published all over the world. He was born in 1922 in the small village of Hemite, Southern Anatolia - the countryside which supplies the background to these stories and to his best-selling first novel, MEMED, MY HAWK. His father's family originated from the Southern Caucasus, while on his mother's side he is descended from a line of part-time brigands. He had a very hard upbringing, and when he was only five years old, saw his father shot dead in a mosque. After this incident he developed a stutter which he overcame a few years later by the singing of folk music. Among his many occupations, he has worked on cotton and rice farms, in the army and as a clerk. His second novel, THE WIND FROM THE PLAIN, was published in this country in 1963, and he is currently at work on a third.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. Birds Have Also Gone. London. 1987. Collins Harvill. 0002710528. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. hardcover. Translation of Kuşlar da gitti.
DESCRIPTION - There is an ancient Turkish tradition which promises a place in paradise to anyone who sets a small bird free. Three boys start up a bird-catching business to enable people to free them in order to secure their place in heaven, but the city-dwellers have become sceptical, and tragedy lies in wait for the boys.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. Iron Earth, Copper Sky. New York. 1979. Morrow. 0688034438. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 220 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lydia Rosier. Originally published in Turkish as Yer Demir Gok Bakir, 1963 - Guven Yayinevi, Istanbul.
DESCRIPTION - The influence of mysticism and the occult upon the unsophisticated mind is a major theme in this powerful novel depicting a terrible winter endured by the Yalak villagers of THE UNDYING GRASS. After a bad cotton harvest, they are unable to pay their creditor, the shopkeeper, Adil Effendi; and such a break with age-old tradition overwhelms them with shame and guilt. They wait in terror for Adil to come, but he fails to appear and in his inexplicable absence his figure swells until it fills their minds and they become sick with apprehension, sure that some terrible disaster will befall them. In their extremity they turn to Tashbash, a brave man and one of their own, who has always stood up for them against the tyranny of Sefer, their Headman. They invest Tashbash with all the virtues, and to these miraculous power is gradually added. What this does to Tashbash, his innocent doubts and mental torment, and the fate that comes upon him result in a moving and eloquent story combining acute observation of human nature, lyrical beauty, and deep compassion.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising the Turkish racism against the minorities in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. Salman the Solitary. London. 1997. Harvill Press. 1860463894. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 311 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Chris Corr. Translation of Kanın Sesi.
DESCRIPTION - Fleeing invading Russian troops with his family, Ismail Agha, a Kurdish peasant in Turkey, comes upon Salman, a small child left for dead at the roadside. At the urgings of his mother, who treats Salman's wounds, Ismail agrees to take Salman with the family. When the family settles in a small village, Ismail raises Salman as his own son. Salman idolizes Ismail and imitates him in every way. Ismail dotes on the foundling, until his wife, Zero, becomes pregnant and bears him Mustafa. Suddenly, Salman is no longer the beloved only son, and a vicious rivalry blossoms between the boys. Salman's obsessive devotion to Ismail grows; at the same time, his anger at being replaced in his father's affections drives him to violence, first against Mustafa and, finally, against the very father whose love and approval he desperately needs. Chilling, bloody, relentlessly real, this highly emotional examination of the father-son bond and of jealousy between brothers is the work of a major Turkish novelist.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising the Turkish racism against the minorities in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. Seagull. New York. 1981. Pantheon Books. 039451856x. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 250 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Fred Marcellino. Translation of Al Gözüm Seyreyle Salih.
DESCRIPTION - With the mastery of a great modern chronicler and the enchantment of the Arabian taletellers, Turkey's foremost novelist enters into the mind of a young boy in a Black Sea village and explores the world as only a child sees it. For the last twenty years, Yashar Kemal has stirred readers with his portraits of the feudal world of modern-day Turkey, with strange and beautiful tales of his people, their undying struggles, and the mysteries and hardships of the wild land they live in. In Seagull, Kemal captures the jarring conflicts of old and new in a traditional fishing village suddenly invaded by tourists, smugglers, and television. This is a country meeting the modern age head-on, and the genius of Kemal is that the witness of the collision is a child. In his single-minded effort to save a wounded seagull, the young hero, Salih, combats the grim realities of his life in a poverty-stricken Third World village with the spellbinding fantasies of his own imagination. Gun-running smugglers and mythical pirates, modern-day heroes and snake princes, the broken-winged gull and Salih's own dreams of escape, are all woven together in this classic tale of a child's journey to adolescence.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. The Legend of Ararat. London. 1970. Collins Harvil. 0002614510. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. Illustrated by Abidin Dino. 157 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Jamieson. Translation of Ağrıdağı efsanesi.
DESCRIPTION - Up on the heights of Mount Ararat lies the small, very blue, lake of Küp. On its shore shepherds are singing the legend of this awe-inspiring mountain that has been known to wreak its wrath on those of whose actions it disapproves. Suddenly a small white bird swoops across the surface of the lake, dips one wing into its waters and flies away. The shepherds' song ceases and Yashar Kemal begins to tell the story of the love of Gülbahar and Ahmet. In it are assembled many of the elements of peasant folklore: the hero who resolutely upholds a tradition of his people, even though this may cost him his life. The anxious friends who devise means of saving him from his fate. The wicked overlord who is determined to destroy him. The Pasha's daughter, Gülbahar, beautiful and filled with pity. who falls in love with Ahmet and is cast into prison with him. The selfless warder, himself in love with Gülbahar, who releases the lovers, though he knows that this can only mean his death. The weakling who betrays the lovers. The tremendous feat by which, if he can perform it, Ahmet may still win his bride. All these belong to the realm of the fairy tale. But the end of the story has an unexpected twist which relates it to the body of Kemal's work, to his compassion for the misunderstanding and mistrust inherent in human beings. The Legend of Ararat is a strange, lyrical book of rare beauty.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. The Lords of Akchasaz: Murder in the Ironsmiths Market. New York. 1980. Morrow. 0688036082. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 448 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lydia Rosier. Translation of Demirciler Çarşısı Cinayeti.
DESCRIPTION - In this independent first part of a new trilogy, Yashar Kemal returns to the scene of many of his earlier novels: the fertile, cotton-producing Chukurova Plain of his native Turkey. The action is focused around two powerful and noble feudal lords, or Beys, their families and dependents. According to tradition, the lives of Dervish Bey and Mustafa Bey are governed by a blood feud that began generations ago with a long-forgotten offense. Indeed, as their world changes under the impact of industry and modernization, the blood feud is one of the last remnants of the proud traditions of the Beys from the days when they were the fiercely independent chieftains of nomadic Turcoman tribes. The sons of Mustafa Bey and Dervish Bey are more interested in tractors and income than in upholding a faded ideal of honor, and the old men know that the feud will die with them. While they live, however, it is everything, and so their days and nights are filled with feverish, frightening dreams of revenge, and sometimes bloody skirmishes, as this powerful, lyrical story from Turkey's most distinguished modern novelist builds to a shattering climax.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising the Turkish racism against the minorities in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. The Sea-Crossed Fisherman. New York. 1985. George Braziller. 0807611220. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 288 pages. hardcover. Cover illustration by Paul Wearing. Translation of Deniz Küstü.
DESCRIPTION - In a sudden, chance encounter in a coffee-house in a fishing village near Istanbul, Zeynel Celik shoots a local gangster. Only one man intervenes – the village outcast Fisher Selim – and in doing so inadvertently transfers the blame for the murder onto himself. From this one simple act, Zeynel becomes a legendary outlaw in the minds of the people, whereas Fisher Selim, passionate about the sea and haunted by a lost love, is cast as an eccentric oddball. Each is pursued by his own paranoia, memories of the past and hopes for the future, until their paths cross once again on Selim’s boat, and their obsessions come to a resolution. Reflective and lyrical, the novel offers insight into the Turkish mentality while drawing universally valid conclusions, and manages to be both brutally savage and deeply humane.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising the Turkish racism against the minorities in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. The Undying Grass. London. 1977. Collins Harvill. 0002618206. 322 pages. hardcover. Translation of Ölmez Otu.
DESCRIPTION - The first volume of a trilogy called 'Beyond the Mountain', which describes the Yalak villagers, who come down from the Taurus mountains each year to pick cotton on the hot Chukurova plain.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. The Wind From the Plain. New York. 1969. Dodd Mead. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 286 pages. hardcover. Cover: Salem Tamer. Translation of Ortadirek.
DESCRIPTION - Each year when the wind brings the news to old Halil's keen senses that the cotton is ripe for picking in the Anatolian plain, the entire population of his remote village in the Taurus Mountains set out on the arduous trek to earn by their toil enough to buy the necessities of life for the bitter highland winter. This year Halil finds himself too old to go on foot; so does Long Ali's mother Meryemdje, and both clamor for a place on the back of her son's broken-down nag. Halil's determination to stay on and Meryemdje's to get him off lead to a war of words and cunning which brightens with comedy the sombre drama of the march. But when the animal dies and the group falls behind the rest of the villagers, it is Ali who has to bear the burden of reconciling love for his mother with compassion for the old rogue Halil, while pressing doggedly on to reach the cotton fields before they are picked bare. Within this narrative, Yashar Kemal evokes the simple passions of the true folk novel and evidences why he is considered the greatest living Turkish writer.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the oppression of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising the Turkish racism against the minorities in Turkey, especially against the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. They Burn the Thistles. New York. 1977. Morrow. 0688031641. Translated from the Turkish by Margaret E. Platon. 412 pages. hardcover. Translation of İnce Memed 2.
DESCRIPTION - THEY BURN THE THISTLES is the story of a bitter war between the poor Turkish peasants of the Taurus Mountains of Anatolia and the greedy Aghas who covet their land and are prepared to go to any lengths including theft, arson and murder to get it. Ali Safa has determined to take possession of the village of Vayvay but its inhabitants will not sell, Then one named Hassan weakens, he is prepared to part with his few acres, though only in exchange for the Agha's best stallion, The deal is agreed but Ali Safa cannot forgive Hassan for having taken his much prized stallion and his men set fire to Hassan's house and stable, The horse escapes and Hassan is driven from the village. Ali Safa orders Adem, a crack shot, to pursue and kill the stallion who is now running wild, On the few occasions that Adem sees him, the stallion seems to be invulnerable to bullets, Adem loses his pride in his marksmanship and nearly his sanity; he begins to believe that the stallion must be under some supernatural protection. Parallel with the fate of the stallion is that of Slim Memed, a village boy who, as told in MEMED, MY HAWK, is the defender of the poor and the scourge of their oppressors. Having rid the country of a wicked Agha, he is now an outcast and, like the stallion, pursued by men who intend to kill him, The villagers did not have the heart to resist Ali Safa, but when they know that Memed is among them they take courage for he has become a legend. While hidden in a melon garden, recovering from a wound, doubts begin to assail Memed-was it of any use to kill a wicked Agha if one even more wicked succeeded him? He recovers his health and falls in love with the girl who has nursed him; his doubts vanish, The stallion, whose fate is so like his own, appears and becomes the mount on which he goes out with renewed faith to accomplish his destiny. The book has all the quality of a great epic, the lives of simple people are invested with grandeur and their problems are seen as those which confront all humanity. The writing is superb, not surprisingly, for Kemal's style has beep compared to that of Thomas Hardy and critics have described him as the first Turkish author to break the language barrier and become an international figure. Yashar Kemal was born in 1922 in the small village of Hemite which lies in the cotton growing plains of Chukur ova. His father's forbears were well-to-do feudal lords, his mother's brigands. When he was five, Kemal saw his father murdered while praying at the Mosque. The shock caused him to develop a severe stammer, and for several year. he was only free from it when he sang. As a result he began very early to improvise songs in the tradition of the Anatolian minstrels. When Kemal was nine he decided to walk daily to a distant village where he could learn to read and write. Eventually he went for three years to a secondary school at Adana. After this he labored in the rice and cotton fields, operated a threshing machine and became a factory worker, he also taught. His championship of the poor peasants caused him to be hounded out of every job; nevertheless he managed to save enough money to buy a typewriter and set himself up as a public letter writer in the small town of Kadirli. In 1950 he was arrested and tried for alleged communist propaganda but was acquitted. He then went to Istanbul and became a reporter on the newspaper Cumhuriyet. His articles, written in a style new to Turkish readers, won him the Journalists' Association Prize for Good Reporting. In 1952 he published a book of short stories: YELLOW HEAT. In 1955 came his first novel Ince Memed, published in English under the title MEMED, MY HAWK. This won the Varlik Prize for the best novel of the year. It has sold a quarter of a million copies in Turkey and has been translated into many languages. Yashar Kemal is married; his wife has translated several of his novels into English. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Turkish Workers' Party, now banned. In 1971 he was held in prison for 26 days, then released without being charged. In another action brought against him it connection with a translation of a left wing book, he. was sentenced to 18 months in prison. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Kemal, Yashar. To Crush the Serpent. London. 1991. Harvill Press. 0002711117. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. 82 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Khalilov. Translation of Yılanı Öldürseler.
DESCRIPTION - A staggering, shattering novel from Turkey's greatest novelist. Since Halil was shot dead in his own home by his wife Esme's former suitor, the village has pointed the finger of guilt at the dead man's beautiful widow: she must have arranged the murder. The task of vengeance falls on Esme's little son, Hassan: year after year he is groomed for it, his devotion to his mother sapped with talk of the unavenged ghost of Halil and his father, doomed to roam the countryisde as a translucent red snake, an insect, a bird. Hassan hears tales against his mother. How long will her innocence protect her? The stark tale of cruelty and vendetta is told in a narrative of relentless tension, reminiscent of Greek tragedy. it is one of Yashar Kemal's most beautiful and haunting novels.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Yaşar Kemal (born Kemal Sadık Gökçeli; 6 October 1923 - 28 February 2015) was a Turkish writer and human rights activist. He was one of Turkey's leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk. An outspoken intellectual, he often did not hesitate to speak about sensitive issues, especially those concerning the problems of the Kurdish people. He was tried in 1995 under anti-terror laws for an article he wrote for German magazine Der Spiegel accusing the Turkish army of destroying Kurdish villages. He was released but later received a suspended 20-month jail sentence for an article he wrote criticising racism against minorities in Turkey, especially the Kurds.
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Marzolph, Ulrich. Relief after Hardship: The Ottoman Turkish Model for The Thousand and One Days. Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 9780814351154. The Donald Haase Series in Fairy-Tale Studies. 164 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Western tales of the marvelous and the strange have dominated much of the narrative literatures of the premodern Muslim world. The quintessential collection, The Thousand and One Days, was first published in the early eighteenth century by French Orientalist scholar François Pétis de la Croix. Research has found that The Thousand and One Days actually had an earlier start, as it is an adapted translation of a fifteenth-century, anonymous, Ottoman Turkish collection titled Relief after Hardship, which is, in turn, the enlarged translation of an equally anonymous Persian collection of tales that likely dates back to as early as the thirteenth century. Ulrich Marzolph now provides a detailed assessment of the Ottoman Turkish compilation and its Persian precursor. Based upon Andreas Tietze’s unpublished German translation of the Ottoman Turkish Ferec ba'd es-sidde, it traces the origins of the collection’s various tales in premodern Persian and Arabic literatures and its impact on Middle Eastern and world tradition and folklore. As the concept of "relief after hardship" has the same basic structure as the European fairy tale, Marzolph contends that the early reception of these tales from Muslim narrative tradition might well have had an inspiring impact on the nascent genre of the European fairy tale as we know it today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ulrich Marzolph is a retired professor of Islamic studies at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen, Germany. His field of expertise is the narrative culture of the Muslim world. He is the author of 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition and the editor of The Arabian Nights Reader and The Arabian Nights in Transnational Perspective (all Wayne State University Press).
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McGaha, Michael. Autobiographies of Orhan Pamuk: The Writer in His Novels. Salt Lake City. 2008. University of Utah Press. 9780874809305. Utah Series in Turkish and Islamic Studies. 200 pages. hardcover. Cover photo of Orhan Pamuk by William Vasta. Jacket design by Jinni Fontana.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Pamuk is a writer who shares my reverence for the great art of the novel. He takes the novel seriously in a way that is perhaps no longer possible for Western writers, boldly describing it as European civilization's greatest invention.' - Michael McGaha. TURKISH NOVELIST ORHAN PAMUK is a prominent voice in Turkish literature, speaking to the country's history, culture, and politics. In 2006, he became the first Turkish writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF ORHAN PAMUK is the first book-length study of the life and writings of Pamuk and provides historical and cultural context to help readers better understand and appreciate both the man and his work. It begins with a brief biography, outlines Pamuk's contributions to Turkish literature and history, and then examines how his art has evolved over the past thirty years, discussing some of the writers who provided inspiration. In addition to a thorough analysis of his seven published novels, including SNOW and MY NAME IS RED, an entire chapter is devoted to his first two novels, CEVDET BEY AND SONS and THE SILENT HOUSE, which have yet to be translated into English. Though his books deal with specifically Turkish issues, like all great literature the themes they explore are universal. This is a comprehensive examination of the Nobel laureate's work, free of jargon and of interest to anyone who enjoys good books.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael McGaha is the Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professor of Modern Languages Emeritus at Pomona College. He has published fourteen previous books, including Coat of Many Cultures: The Story of Joseph in Spanish Literature, 1200–1492.
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Mungan, Murathan. Valor: Stories. Evanston. 2022. Northwestern University Press. 9780810145245. Translated by David Gramling and Aron Aji. 280 pages. paperback. Originally published in Turkish under the title Cenk Hikâyeleri.
DESCRIPTION - Among Murathan Mungan’s signature works, Cenk Hikayeleri (Valor: Stories) has long been considered a milestone of twentieth-century Turkish literature. The six short stories in the collection reflect the author’s multiethnic background (which includes Kurdish, Arab, and Turkish heritage) and represent his lush poetics, literary breadth, and sociopolitical commitments. Valor reimagines Shahmaran, a mythical half-human, half-snake figure that commonly appears in the folklore of Turkey’s southeastern provinces. Legend interweaves with the contemporary realities of ethnicity, religious dogma, gender, and sexuality. Uncovering hidden narratives within a rich and complicated culture, Mungan’s stories depict self-realization and sexual awakening as they showcase one of Turkey’s most popular literary voices.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MURATHAN MUNGAN is a Turkish short-story writer, playwright, and poet. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Osmanlıya Dair Hikâyat (Stories about Ottomans), Yaz Geçer (Summer Passes), and Metal. An acclaimed fiction writer, his short-story collections include Kırk Oda (Forty Rooms) and Paranın Cinleri (Genies of Money). Mungan’s plays Mahmud ile Yezida (Mahmud and Yezida) and Taziye (Condolence) are frequently staged in Turkey, and he wrote the screenplay for the 1984 film Dağınık Yatak (Messy Bed). Valor: Stories is his first work to be translated into English. Openly gay, Mungan is a prominent advocate for LGBTQ rights in Turkey. ARON AJI is the director of the MFA in Literary Translation program at the University of Iowa. A native of Turkey, he has translated works by Bilge Karasu, Murathan Mungan, Elif Shafak, Latife Tekin, and other Turkish writers, including three book‑length works by Karasu: Death in Troy; The Garden of Departed Cats, winner of the 2004 National Translation Award; and A Long Day’s Evening, which was short‑listed for the 2013 PEN Translation Prize. He also edited Milan Kundera and the Art of Fiction: Critical Essays. DAVID GRAMLING is a literary translator working in German, Turkish, Spanish, and English. He wrote The Invention of Multilingualism, The Invention of Monolingualism, and the forthcoming Literature in Late Monolingualism. He currently serves as head of the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, on unceded Musqueam land.
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Ozdamar, Emine Sevgi. Mother Tongue. Toronto. 1994. Coach House Press. 0889104646. A Turkish Woman Writing In German. Translated from the German by Craig Thomas. 160 pages. paperback. Translation of Mutterzunge.
DESCRIPTION - Four stories on the lives of Turkish immigrants in Germany. One of them, Blackeye in Germany, is narrated by a man's donkey, while A Charwoman's Career draws on the author's own experiences before she went on to better things: stagehand, actress, playwright, theater director and now novelist.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Emine Sevgi Özdamar is a writer, director, and actress of Turkish origin who resides in Germany and has resided there for many years. Özdamar's art is unique in that it is influenced by her life experiences, which straddle the countries of Germany and Turkey throughout times of turmoil in both. One of her most notable accomplishments is winning the 1991 Ingeborg Bachmann Prize. Özdamar's literary work has received much recognition and scholarly attention. A lover of poetry, she found great inspiration in the works of Heinrich Heine and Bertolt Brecht, especially from an album of the latter's songs which she had bought in the 1960s in Berlin.
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Pamuk, Orhan. A Strangeness in My Mind. New York. 2015. Knopf. 9780307700292. Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap. 200 pages. hardcover. With 2 illustrations. Jacket and case art by Orhan Pamuk. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of Kafamda Bir Tuhaflık.
DESCRIPTION - From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red: a soaring, panoramic new novel--his first since The Museum of Innocence--telling the unforgettable tale of an Istanbul street vendor and the love of his life. Since his boyhood in a poor village in Central Anatolia, Mevlut Karata? has fantasized about what his life would become. Not getting as far in school as he'd hoped, at the age of twelve, he comes to Istanbul--'the center of the world'--and is immediately enthralled both by the city being demolished and the new one that is fast being built. He follows his father's trade, selling boza (a traditional Turkish drink) on the street, and hoping to become rich, like other villagers who have settled the desolate hills outside the booming metropolis. But chance seems to conspire against him. He spends three years writing love letters to a girl he saw just once at a wedding, only to elope by mistake with her sister. And though he grows to cherish his wife and the family they have, his relations all make their fortunes while his own years are spent in a series of jobs leading nowhere; he is sometimes attracted to the politics of his friends and intermittently to the lodge of a religious guide. But every evening, without fail, he still wanders the streets of Istanbul, selling boza and wondering at the 'strangeness' in his mind, the sensation that makes him feel different from everyone else, until fortune conspires once more to let him understand at last what it is he has always yearned for. Told from the perspectives of many beguiling characters, A Strangeness in My Mind is a modern epic of coming of age in a great city, and a mesmerizing narrative sure to take its place among Pamuk's finest achievements.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist, is author of SNOW, MY NAME IS RED, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, and other works. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Pamuk, Orhan. Istanbul: Memories and the City. New York. 2005. Knopf. 1400040957. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. With 206 photographs. 385 pages. hardcover. Front-of jacket photograph by Selahattin Giz. Spine-of-jacket photograph courtesy of the author, Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of İstanbul: Hatıralar ve Şehir.
DESCRIPTION - A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's great cities, by its foremost man of letters, author of the acclaimed novels SNOW and MY NAME IS RED. Blending reminiscence with history; family photographs with portraits of poets and pashas; art criticism, metaphysical musing, and, now and again, a fanciful tale, Orhan Pamuk invents an ingenious form to evoke his lifelong home, the city that forged his imagination. He begins with his childhood among the eccentric extended Pamuk family in the dusty, carpeted, and hermetically sealed apartment building they shared. In this place came his first intimations of the melancholy awareness that binds all residents of his city together: that of living in the seat of ruined imperial glories, in a country trying to become ‘modern' at the dizzying crossroads of East and West. This elegiac communal spirit overhangs Pamuk's reflections as he introduces the writers and painters (among the latter, most particularly the German Antoine-Ignace Melling) through whose eyes he came to see Istanbul. Against a background of shattered monuments, neglected villas, ghostly back streets, and, above all, the fabled waters of the Bosphorus, he presents the interplay of his budding sense of place with that of his predecessors. And he charts the evolution of a rich, sometimes macabre, imaginative life, which furnished a daydreaming boy refuge from family discord and inner turmoil, and which would continue to serve the famous writer he was to become, It was, and remains, a life fed by the changing microcosm of the apartment building and, even more, the beckoning kaleidoscope beyond its walls. As much a portrait of the artist as a young man as it is an oneiric Joycean map of the city, Istanbul is a masterful evocation of its subject through the idiosyncrasies of direct experience as much as the power of myth-the dazzling book. Pamuk was born to write. Orhan Pamuk's work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Istanbul. .
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. My Name Is Red. New York. 2001. Knopf. 0375406956. Translated from the Turkish by Erdag M. Goknar. 419 pages. hardcover. Front-of-jacket images (left to right): Sultan Mehmet I (detail), Turkey, sixteenth century. Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York; Horseman drawing his bow (detail), Ottoman miniature, fifteenth century, Istanbul. Giraudon/Art Resource, New York; Miniatur. Translation of Benim Adım Kırmızı.
DESCRIPTION - From one of the most important and acclaimed writers at work today, a thrilling new novel-part murder mystery; part love story-set amid the perils of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul. When the Sultan commissions a great book to celebrate his royal self and his extensive dominion, he directs Enishte Effendi to assemble a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can he deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed, and no one in the elite circle can know the full scope or nature of the project. Panic erupts when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears, and the Sultan demands answers within three days. The only clue to the mystery - or crime - lies in the half-finished illuminations themselves. Has an avenging angel discovered the blasphemous work? Or is a jealous contender for the hand of Enishte's ravishing daughter, the incomparable Shekure, somehow to blame? Orhan Pamuk's MY NAME IS RED is at once a fantasy and a philosophical puzzle, a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex, and power.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. Other Colors: Essays & Stories. New York. 2007. Knopf. 9780307266750. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freeley. 434 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograpg by Ara Guler. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of Öteki Renkler: Seçme Yazılar ve Bir Hikaye.
DESCRIPTION - Orhan Pamuk's first book since winning the Nobel Prize, OTHER COLORS is a dazzling collection of essays on his life, his city, his work, and the example of other writers. Over the last three decades, Pamuk has written, in addition to his seven novels, scores of pieces - personal, critical, and meditative - the finest of which he has brilliantly woven together here. He opens a window on his private life, from his boyhood dislike of school to his daughter's precocious melancholy, from his successful struggle to quit smoking to his anxiety at the prospect of testifying against some clumsy muggers who fell upon him during a visit to New York City. From ordinary obligations such as applying for a passport or sharing a holiday meal with relatives, he takes extraordinary flights of imagination; in extreme moments, such as the terrifying days following a cataclysmic earthquake in Istanbul, he lays bare our most basic hopes and fears. Again and again Pamuk declares his faith in fiction, engaging the work of such predecessors as Laurence Sterne and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, sharing fragments from his notebooks, and commenting on his own novels. He contemplates his mysterious compulsion to sit alone at a desk and dream, always returning to the rich deliverance that is reading and writing. By turns witty, moving, playful, and provocative, OTHER COLORS glows with the energy of a master at work and gives us the world through his eyes, assigning every radiant theme and shifting mood its precise shade in the spectrum of significance.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. Silent House. New York. 2012. Knopf. 9780307700285. Translated from Turkish by Robert Finn. 341 pages. hardcover. Front-of-jacket photograph by Pegaz/Alamy. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of Sessiz Ev.
DESCRIPTION - Never before published in English, Orhan Pamuk's second novel is the story of a Turkish family gathering in the shadow of the impending military coup of 1980. In an old mansion in Cennethisar, a former fishing village near Istanbul, a widow, Fatma, awaits the annual summer visit of her grandchildren. She has lived in the village for decades, ever since her husband, an idealistic young doctor, ran afoul of the sultan's grand vizier and arrived to serve the poor fishermen. Now mostly bedridden, she is attended by her constant servant Recep, a dwarf - and the doctor's illegitimate son. Despite mutual dependency, there is no love lost between mistress and servant, who have very different recollections - and grievances - from the early years, before Cennethisar grew into a high- class resort surrounding the family house, now in shambles. Though eagerly anticipated, Fatma's grandchildren bring little consolation. The eldest, Faruk, a dissipated historian, wallows in alcohol as he laments his inability to tell the story of the past from the kaleidoscopic pieces he finds in the local archive; his sensitive leftist sister, Nilgun, has yet to discover the real-life consequences of high-minded politics; and Metin, a high school nerd, tries to keep up with the lifestyle of his spoiled society schoolmates while he fantasizes about going to America - an unaffordable dream unless he can persuade his grandmother to tear down her house. But it is Recep's nephew Hasan, a high school dropout lately fallen in with right-wing nationalists, who will draw the visiting family into the growing political cataclysm issuing from Turkey's tumultuous century-long struggle for modernity. By turns deeply moving, hilarious, and terrifying, SILENT HOUSE pulses with the special energy of a great writer's early work even as it offers beguiling evidence of the mature genius for which Orhan Pamuk would later be celebrated the world over.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. Snow. New York. 2004. Knopf. 0375406972. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. 432 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph courtesy of the author. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of Kar.
DESCRIPTION - From the acclaimed author of MY NAME IS RED comes a spellbinding tale of disparate yearnings-for love, art, power, and God-set in a remote Turkish town, where stirrings of political Islamism threaten to unravel the secular order. Following years of lonely political exile in Western Europe, Ka, a middle-aged poet, returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral. Only partly recognizing this place of his cultured, middle-class youth, he is even more disoriented by news of strange events in the wider country: a wave of suicides among girls forbidden to wear their head scarves at school. An apparent thaw of his writer's curiosity-a frozen sea these many years-leads him to Kars, a far-off town near the Russian border and the epicenter of the suicides. No sooner has he arrived, however, than we discover that Ka's motivations are not purely journalistic; for in Kars, once a province of Ottoman and then Russian glory, now a cultural gray-zone of poverty and paralysis, there is also Ipek, a radiant friend of Ka's youth, lately divorced, whom he has never forgotten. As a snowstorm, the fiercest in memory, descends on the town and seals it off from the modern, westernized world that has always been Ka's frame of reference, he finds himself drawn in unexpected directions: not only headlong toward the unknowable Ipek and the desperate hope for love-or at least a wife-that she embodies, but also into the maelstrom of a military coup staged to restrain the local Islamist radicals, and even toward God, whose existence Ka has never before allowed himself to contemplate. In this surreal confluence of emotion and spectacle, Ka begins to tap his dormant creative powers, producing poem after poem in untimely, irresistible bursts of inspiration. But not until the snows have melted and the political violence has run its bloody course will Ka discover the fate of his bid to seize a last chance for happiness. Blending profound sympathy and mischievous wit, SNOW illuminates the contradictions gripping the individual and collective heart in many parts of the Muslim world. But even more, by its narrative brilliance and comprehension of the needs and duties felt in hearts everywhere, this novel confirms Pamuk as a literary master of the highest order.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The Black Book. New York. 1994. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374113947. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun. 400 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Bruno Barbey. Translation of Kara Kitap.
DESCRIPTION - With the publication of THE WHITE CASTLE, Orhan Pamuk earned, according to The New York Times Book Review, the right to comparisons with Borges and Calvino. His second novel to appear in English, THE BLACK BOOK, is his tour de force, a stunning tapestry of Middle Eastern and Islamic culture, which confirms Pamuk's reputation as a writer of international stature. Galip is an Istanbul lawyer, and his wife (as well as first cousin), Ruya, has vanished. Could she be hiding out with her half brother (who also happens to be Galip's first cousin), Jelal, a newspaper columnist whose fame Galip envies? And if so, why isn't anyone in Jelal's flat? As Galip plays the part of private investigator, he assumes the identity of Jelal himself, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even faking his wry columns, which he passes off as the work of the missing journalist. But the amateur sleuth bungles his undercover operation, and with dire consequences. Richly atmospheric and Rabelaisian in scope, THE BLACK BOOK is a labyrinthine novel suffused with the sights, sounds, and scents of Istanbul. An unforgettable evocation of the city where East meets West. THE BLACK BOOK is a boldly unconventional mystery that plumbs the elusive nature of identity, fiction, interpretation, and reality. Orphan Pamuk is the author of THE WHITE CASTLE. He lives with his wife and daughter in Istanbul.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE. Translator Guneli Gun is the author of BOOK OF TRANCES and ON THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD, and the translator of NIGHT by Bilge Karasu She lives in Oberlin, Ohio.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The Black Book. New York. 2006. Vintage Books. 1400078652. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freeley. 466 pages. paperback. Cover photograph by Ara Guler. Cover design by John Gall. Translation of Kara Kitap.
DESCRIPTION - Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel-loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband, Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl ‘s identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst. With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, THE BLACK BOOK is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity. For Turkish literary readers it is the cherished cult novel in which Orhan Pamuk found his original voice, but it has largely been neglected by English-language readers. Now, in Maureen Freely's beautiful new translation, they, too, may encounter all its riches. Orhan Pamuk's novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The Museum of Innocence. New York. 2009. Knopf. 9780307266767. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely. 537 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Ahmet Isikci; collage by Orhan Pamuk. Jacket design by Chip Kidd. Translation of Masumiyet Müzesi.
DESCRIPTION - ‘It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn't know it.' So begins the new novel, his first since winning the Nobel Prize, from the universally acclaimed author of Snow and My Name Is Red.It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city's wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. Once the long-lost cousins violate the code of virginity, a rift begins to open between Kemal and the world of the Westernized Istanbul bourgeosie - a world, as he lovingly describes it, with opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, restaurant rituals, picnics, and mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay - until finally he breaks off his engagement to Sibel. But his resolve comes too late.For eight years Kemal will find excuses to visit another Istanbul, that of the impoverished backstreets where Füsun, her heart now hardened, lives with her parents, and where Kemal discovers the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television. His obsessive love will also take him to the demimonde of Istanbul film circles (where he promises to make Füsun a star), a scene of seedy bars, run-down cheap hotels, and small men with big dreams doomed to bitter failure.In his feckless pursuit, Kemal becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his lovelorn progress and his afflicted heart's reactions: anger and impatience, remorse and humiliation, deluded hopes of recovery, and daydreams that transform Istanbul into a cityscape of signs and specters of his beloved, from whom now he can extract only meaningful glances and stolen kisses in cars, movie houses, and shadowy corners of parks. A last change to realize his dream will come to an awful end before Kemal discovers that all he finally can possess, certainly and eternally, is the museum he has created of his collection, this map of a society's manners and mores, and of one man's broken heart. A stirring exploration of the nature of romantic attachment and of the mysterious allure of collecting, The Museum of Innocence also plumbs the depths of an Istanbul half Western and half traditional - its emergent modernity, its vast cultural history. This is Orhan Pamuk's greatest achievement. About the Author - Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He lives in Istanbul.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist. Cambridge. 2010. Harvard University Press. 9780674050761. Translated from the Turkish by Nazim Dikbas. The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 2009. 200 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - ‘After the Ball’ (oil on canvas), Ramon Casa i Carbo (1866-1932). Translation of Saf ve Düşünceli Romancı.
DESCRIPTION - What happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a novel create its unique effects, so distinct from those of a painting, a film, or a poem? In this inspired, thoughtful, deeply personal book, Orhan Pamuk takes us into the worlds of the writer and the reader, revealing their intimate connections. Pamuk draws on Friedrich Schiller's famous distinction between ‘naive' poets - who write spontaneously, serenely, unselfconsciously - and ‘sentimental' poets: those who are reflective, emotional, questioning, and alive to the artifice of the written word. Harking back to the beloved novels of his youth and ranging through the work of such writers as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul, he explores the oscillation between the naive and the reflective, and the search for an equilibrium, that lie at the center of the novelist's craft. He ponders the novel's visual and sensual power - its ability to conjure landscapes so vivid they can make the here-and-now fade away. In the course of this exploration, he considers the elements of character, plot, time, and setting that compose the ‘sweet illusion' of the fictional world. Anyone who has known the pleasure of becoming immersed in a novel will enjoy, and learn from, this perceptive book by one of the modern masters of the art.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist, is author of SNOW, MY NAME IS RED, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, and other works. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The New Life. New York. 1997. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374221294. Translated from the Turkish by Guneli Gun. 296 pages. hardcover. Translation of Yeni Hayat.
DESCRIPTION - Osman, a young university student, becomes obsessed with a magical book that delves into the dangerous nature of love and self. He turns his back on home and family, abandons his studies, and falls in love. With the beautiful Janan, he goes on a search for the meaning of the book's darker secrets. Their odyssey takes them on restless bus trips through the arid heartland of Turkey, into lost provincial towns where danger lurks on every street and where love is no longer any guarantee of refuge. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul where he lives with his family. His books have been translated into fifteen languages and The New Life is the fastest selling book in Turkish history.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The Red-Haired Women. London. 2017. Faber & Faber. 9780571330294. Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap. 253 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Faber. Translation of Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın.
DESCRIPTION - From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red, a fable of fathers and sons and the desires that come between them. On the outskirts of a town thirty miles from Istanbul, a master well digger and his young apprentice are hired to find water on a barren plain. As they struggle in the summer heat, excavating meter by meter, the two will develop a filial bond neither has known before –not the poor middle-aged bachelor nor the middle-class boy whose father disappeared after being arrested for politically subversive activities. The pair will come to depend on each other and exchange stories reflecting disparate views of the world. But in the nearby town, where they buy provisions and take their evening break, the boy will find an irresistible diversion. The Red-Haired Woman, an alluring member of a travelling theatre company, catches his eye and seems as fascinated by him as he is by her. The young man's wildest dream will be realized, but, when in his distraction a horrible accident befalls the well digger, the boy will flee, returning to Istanbul. Only years later will he discover whether he was in fact responsible for his master's death and who the redheaded enchantress was.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist, is author of SNOW, MY NAME IS RED, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, and other works. He was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Pamuk, Orhan. The White Castle. New York. 1991. George Braziller. 0807612642. Translated from the Turkish by Victoria Holbrook. 161 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by John Atwood.Jacket photograph by Decembre Ingres. Translation of Beyaz Kale.
DESCRIPTION - A young Italian scholar sailing from Venice to Naples is captured by the Turks, He saves himself from life as a galley slave by claiming to be a doctor. In Constantinople, he becomes half-astrologer, half-doctor to a Turkish savant who is eager to learn about scientific and intellectual advances in the West. Set in the seventeenth century The White Castle is the story of these two men. They are doubles, a fact which intrigues and terrifies them. They work on projects to entertain the jaded Sultan and they also raid each other's minds learning everything the other knows, appropriating each other's pasts, sins, and secrets. Then together they build an unwieldy war-engine to gain greater favor with the Sultan in his war against the Poles. They set off with the Sultan's army, and attempt to storm the White Castle. THE WHITE CASTLE introduces to American readers one of the most interesting and important younger writers of international fiction. Orhan Pamuk's exploration of identity, of the strained relations between a devout, superstitious East and a ‘rational' West, and of the fate of the intellectual as court jester to power and wealth is profound and timely. At the same time, the magic of his storytelling makes THE WHITE CASTLE a highly entertaining and moving novel.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ORHAN PAMUK won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel MY NAME IS RED won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than sixty languages. Orhan Pamuk's other books include THE BLACK BOOK, ISTANBUL, THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE, MY NAME IS RED, THE NAIVE AND THE SENTIMENTAL NOVELIST, OTHER COLORS, SNOW, and THE WHITE CASTLE. Victoria Holbrook lived in Istanbul for five years and is currently Assistant Professor of Turkish Literature at The Ohio State University.
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Savas, Aysegul. Walking on the Ceiling. New York. 2019. Riverhead books. 9780525537410. 210 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and art; Jaya Micelli.
DESCRIPTION - A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past and her complicated relationship with a famous British writer. After her mother's death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city. M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother's silence and anger, her father's death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu's fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she's told to protect herself from her memories. A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman's coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can't escape.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ayşegül Savaş grew up in Turkey and Denmark. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Guernica, and elsewhere, and was shortlisted for the Glimmer Train Fiction Prize and the Graywolf Emerging Writers Award. She has an MFA from the University of San Francisco. She teaches at the Sorbonne and lives in Paris.
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Shafak, Elif. Black Milk: On Writing, Motherhood, and the Harem Within. New York. 2011. Viking Press. 9780670022649. Translated from the Turkish by Hande Zapsu. 269 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Ebru Bilun Akyildiz. Jacket design by Jim Tierney. Translation of Siyah Süt.
DESCRIPTION - Elif Shafak, Turkey's leading female author, has won worldwide acclaim for lyrical, imaginative, and innovative novels that combine Eastern and Middle Eastern styles of storytelling with Western literary forms. In BLACK MILK, she speaks very candidly and with great humor and irony about her experiences in attempting to balance a writer's life with a mother's life. After the birth of her first child in 2006, Elif Shafek suffered a long and draining depression that triggered a profound personal crisis. Infused with guilt, anxiety, and bewilderment about whether she could ever be a good mother, Shafak stopped writing for the first time in her life, losing her faith in words altogether. In this elegantly written memoir, she retraces her journey from free-spirited, nomadic artist to dedicated but emotionally wrought mother. Identifying a constantly bickering harem of six women who live inside of her, each with her own characteristics - the cynical intellectual who is deeply attached to the world of books and literature, the goal-oriented go-getter who hates everything maternal, the practical-rational, the deeply spiritual, the motherly, and the shamelessly carnal - she craves harmony, or at least a unifying identity. Shafak interweaves her own experience with a look at what other prominent female writers - from Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Zelda Fitzgerald and Ayn Rand to Simone de Beauvoir, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros - have had to say about navigating the conflict between motherhood and artistic creation. BLACK MILK is a thoughtful, playful and intelligent treatment of the identity crisis that being a mother engenders. With searing emotional honesty and an incisive examination of cultural mores within patriarchal societies, Shafak has rendered an important work about literature, motherhood, and spiritual well-being.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Shafak, Elif. The Architect’s Apprentice. New York. 2015. Viking Press. 9780525427971. 424 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and illustration by Jaya Miceli.
DESCRIPTION - From the acclaimed author of The Bastard of Istanbul, a colorful, magical tale set during the height of the Ottoman Empire. In her latest novel, Turkey's preeminent female writer spins an epic tale spanning nearly a century in the life of the Ottoman Empire. In 1540, twelve-year-old Jahan arrives in Istanbul. As an animal tamer in the sultan's menagerie, he looks after the exceptionally smart elephant Chota and befriends (and falls for) the sultan's beautiful daughter, Princess Mihrimah. A palace education leads Jahan to Mimar Sinan, the empire's chief architect, who takes Jahan under his wing as they construct (with Chota's help) some of the most magnificent buildings in history. Yet even as they build Sinan's triumphant masterpieces - the incredible Suleymaniye and Selimiye mosques - dangerous undercurrents begin to emerge, with jealousy erupting among Sinan's four apprentices. A memorable story of artistic freedom, creativity, and the clash between science and fundamentalism, Shafak's intricate novel brims with vibrant characters, intriguing adventure, and the lavish backdrop of the Ottoman court, where love and loyalty are no match for raw power.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Shafak, Elif. The Bastard of Istanbul. New York. 2007. Viking Press. 9780670038343. 360 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jesse Marinoff Reyes. Original title - Baba ve Piç.
DESCRIPTION - From one of Turkey's most acclaimed and outspoken writers, a novel about the tangled histories of two families. In her second novel written in English, Elif Shafak confronts her country's violent past in a vivid and colorful tale set in both Turkey and the United States. At its center is the ‘bastard' of the title, Asya, a nineteen-year-old woman who loves Johnny Cash and the French Existentialists, and the four sisters of the Kazanci family who all live together in an extended household in Istanbul: Zehila, the zestful, headstrong youngest sister who runs a tattoo parlor and is Asya's mother; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; Cevriye, a widowed high school teacher; and Feride, a hypochondriac obsessed with impending disaster. Their one estranged brother lives in Arizona with his wife and her Armenian daughter, Armanoush. When Armanoush secretly flies to Istanbul in search of her identity, she finds the Kazanci sisters and becomes fast friends with Asya. A secret is uncovered that links the two families and ties them to the 1915 Armenian deportations and massacres. Full of vigorous, unforgettable female characters, THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL is a bold, powerful tale that will confirm Shafak as a rising star of international fiction. Elif Shafak is the author of five previous novels including, most recently, THE GAZE and THE SAINT OF INCIPIENT INSANITIES. She splits her time between Istanbul and Tucson, Arizona, where she is an assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at the University of Arizona. Her op-ed pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and she has been featured on National Public Radio.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Shafak, Elif. The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi. New York. 2010. Viking Press. 9780670021451. 355 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jen Wang. Original title - Aşk.
DESCRIPTION - An American housewife is transformed by an intriguing manuscript about the Sufi mystic poet Rumi In this lyrical, exuberant follow-up to her 2007 novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, acclaimed Turkish author Elif Shafak unfolds two tantalizing parallel narratives- one contemporary and the other set in the thirteenth century, when Rumi encountered his spiritual mentor, the whirling dervish known as Shams of Tabriz-that together incarnate the poet's timeless message of love. Ella Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams's search for Rumi and the dervish's role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams's lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi's story mir-rors her own and that Zahara-like Shams-has come to set her free.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Shafak, Elif. The Gaze. London/New York. 2006. Marion Boyars. 0714531219. Translated from the Turkish by Brendan Freely. 264 pages. paperback. Cover design by Eleanor Rose. Translation of Mahrem.
DESCRIPTION - ‘What about me then? What's the picture into which I'm least likely to fit?' He looked at me lovingly. ‘Most probably the clouds. For someone as fat as you the sky has to be the most unlikely place.' I nodded my head. I had fallen in love. An obese woman and her lover, a dwarf, are sick of being stared at wherever they go and so decide to reverse roles. The man goes out wearing makeup and the woman draws a moustache on her face. But whilst the woman wants to hide away from the world, the man meets the stares from passers-by head on, compiling his ‘Dictionary of Gazes' to explore the boundaries between appearance and reality. The narrative of The Gaze is intertwined with the dwarf's dictionary entries and the story of a bizarre freak-show organized in Istanbul in the 1880s as the author considers the damage which can be inflicted by our simple desire to look at other people. Elif Shafak is an outstanding name amongst young Turkish authors.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Shafak, Elif. The Saint of Incipient Insanities. New York. 2004. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374253579. 353 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Charlotte Strick. Original title - Araf.
DESCRIPTION - THE SAINT OF INCIPIENT INSANITIES is the comic and heartbreaking story of a group of twenty-something friends, and their never-ending quest for fulfillment. Omer, Abed and Piyu are roommates, foreigners all recently arrived in the United States. Omer, from Istanbul, is a Ph.D. student in political science who adapts quickly to his new home, and falls in love with the bisexual, suicidal, intellectual chocolate maker Gail. Gail is American yet feels utterly displaced in her homeland and moves from one obsession to another in an effort to find solid ground. Abed pursues a degree in biotechnology, worries about Omer's unruly ways, his mother's unexpected visit, and stereotypes of Arabs in America; he struggles to maintain a connection with his girlfriend back home in Morocco. Piyu is a Spaniard, who is studying to be a dentist in spite of his fear of sharp objects, and is baffled by the many relatives of his Mexican-American girlfriend, Algre, and in many ways by Algre herself. Keenly insightful and sharply humorous, THE SAINT OF INCIPIENT INSANITIES is a vibrant exploration of love, friendship, culture, nationality, exile and belonging. Elif Shafak is the author of five previous books. THE SAINT OF INCIPIENT INSANITIES is the first of her novels to be written in English. She teaches at the University of Michigan.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elif Safak (or Shafak, born 25 October 1971, Strasbourg, France) is an outspoken Turkish author, columnist, speaker and academic. ‘As Turkey's bestselling female writer, Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist, and an ambitious novelist who infuses her magical-realist fiction with big, important ideas. .'.Critics have named her as ‘one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Turkish and world literature'. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries, and she was awarded the honorary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010. Shafak has published thirteen books, nine of which are novels. She writes fiction in both Turkish and English. Shafak blends Western and Eastern traditions of storytelling, bringing out the myriad stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, youth and global souls. Her writing draws on diverse cultures and literary traditions, reflecting a deep interest in history, philosophy, Sufism, oral culture, and cultural politics. Shafak also has a keen eye for black humour, with ‘a particular genius for depicting backstreet Istanbul.'
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Soysal, Sevgi. Dawn. 2022. Archipelago Books. 9781953861382. Translated by Maureen Freely. 350 pages. paperback. Translation of Şafak.
DESCRIPTION - A searing autobiographical novel about a single night in prison suggests how broken spirits can be mended, and dreams rebuilt through imagination and human kindness "Like Pamuk's Snow, Dawn is the Turkish tragedy writ small. In contrast to Snow, it places gender at its heart." --Maureen Freely In Dawn, translated into English for the first time, legendary Turkish feminist Sevgi Soysal brings together dark humor, witty observations, and trenchant criticism of social injustice, militarism, and gender inequality. As night falls in Adana, köftes and cups of cloudy raki are passed to the dinner guests in the home of Ali - a former laborer who gives tight bear hugs, speaks with a southeastern lilt, and radiates the spirit of a child. Among the guests are a journalist named Oya, who has recently been released from prison and is living in exile on charges of leftist sympathizing, and her new acquaintance, Mustafa. A swift kick knocks down the front door and bumbling policemen converge on the guests, carting them off to holding cells, where they'll be interrogated and tortured throughout the night. Fear spools into the anxious, claustrophobic thoughts of a return to prison, just after tasting freedom. Bristling snatches of Oya's time in prison rush back - the wild curses and wilder laughter of inmates, their vicious quarrels and rapturous belly-dancing, or the quiet boon of a cup of tea. Her former inmates created fury and joy out of nothing. Their brimming resilience wills Oya to fight through the night and is fused with every word of this blazing, lucid novel.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sevgi Soysal was born in Istanbul in 1936. Her work is inspired by her childhood in Ankara, youth and student movements in Turkey, revolutionary dreams, and experiences of leftist intellectuals in prison and in exile. In 1974, Soysal won the prestigious Orhan Kemal Award for Best Novel for Noontime in Yenişehir, which she wrote while in prison. Dawn was published in 1975, a beautiful thematic companion to her memoirs of prison life. She wrote a brilliant set of endearing and illuminating story collections, novels, and memoirs before she died at the age of 40 of cancer in 1976. She left behind an incomplete novel, Welcome, Death! Widely regarded as the foremost translator of Turkish literature, Maureen Freely was born in the US, raised in Turkey, and educated at Harvard. Her translated works include five works by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. Sevgi Soysal was the first writer she ever translated.
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Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi. A Mind at Peace. Brooklyn. 2008. Archipelago Books. 9780979333057. Translated from the Turkish by Erdag Goknar. 451 pages. hardcover. Cover design by David Bullen Design. Translation of Huzur.
DESCRIPTION - A MIND AT PEACE, originally published in 1949, is a Turkish ULYSSES and a poetic homage to Istanbul, a historical novel of ideas as well as a love story set in the ‘city of two continents.' A Turkish parliamentary leader chose Tanpinar's chef d'ouevre to present to President Obama so that he ‘might better understand the Turkish people. and in it find the nuances of our culture and our identity.' Mümtaz has survived the childhood trauma of his parents' untimely deaths in the early skirmishes of World War I as well as the tumultuous cultural revolutions following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the early Turkish Republic. He takes refuge in the fading past, immersing himself in literature and music, even as he faces an uncertain future with his beloved, Nuran. Can their love save them both from the turbulent times, or will inner obsessions, along with powerful social and political forces, tear the couple apart?
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (June 23, 1901, Constantinople Vilayet - January 24, 1962, Istanbul, Turkey) has been noted as the most prominent Turkish novelist of the twentieth century. Born in Istanbul, he traveled widely in Anatolia before returning to Istanbul in 1919, after the First World War, to study literature with the poet laureate Yahya Kemal. Deeply influenced by Paul Valery and Bergson, Tanpinar created a cultural universe in his work, bringing together Western forms of writing and the sensibilities of a decadent Ottoman culture. He taught aesthetics, mythology, and literature at the University of Istanbul. Erdag Göknar is assistant professor of Turkish Studies at Duke University. He holds an MFA in creative writing and a Ph.D. in Near and Middle East Studies. He received, with Orhan Pamuk, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his English translation of Pamuk's MY NAME IS RED in 2003. He is also the recipient a Fulbright fellowship and an NEA translation grant for A MIND AT PEACE.
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Tanpinar, Ahmet Hamdi. The Time Regulation Institute. New York. 2014. Penguin Books. 9780143106739. Translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe. Introduction by Pankaj Mishra,. 401 pages. paperback. Cover art: Jim Tierney, (Equation Clock) Science Museum/Getty Images. Translation of Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü.
DESCRIPTION - A literary discovery: an uproarious tragicomedy of modernization, in its first-ever English translation. Perhaps the greatest Turkish novel of the twentieth century, being discovered around the world only now, more than fifty years after its first publication, The Time Regulation Institute is an antic, freewheeling send-up of the modern bureaucratic state. At its center is Hayri Irdal, an infectiously charming antihero who becomes entangled with an eccentric cast of characters - a television mystic, a pharmacist who dabbles in alchemy, a dignitary from the lost Ottoman Empire, a “clock whisperer” - at the Time Regulation Institute, a vast organization that employs a hilariously intricate system of fines for the purpose of changing all the clocks in Turkey to Western time. Recounted in sessions with his psychoanalyst, the story of Hayri Irdal's absurdist misadventures plays out as a brilliant allegory of the collision of tradition and modernity, of East and West, infused with a poignant blend of hope for the promise of the future and nostalgia for a simpler time. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. “Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar is undoubtedly the most remarkable author in modern Turkish literature. With The Time Regulation Institute, this great writer has created an allegorical masterpiece, which makes Turkey's attempts to westernize and its delayed modernity understandable in all its human ramifications.” - Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962) is considered one of the most significant Turkish novelists of the twentieth century. Also a poet, short-story writer, essayist, literary historian, and professor, he created a unique cultural universe in his work, combining a European literary voice with the Ottoman sensibilities of the Near East. Maureen Freely (translator) is the principal translator of Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize–winning Turkish novelist. She lives in England. Alexander Dawe (translator) is an American translator of French and Turkish. He lives in Istanbul. Pankaj Mishra (introducer) is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose writing appears frequently in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and the London Review of Books. He was born in North India and now lives in London.
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Toptas, Hasan Ali. Reckless. New York. 2015. Bloomsbury Books. 9781632860613. Translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely and John Angliss. 326 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Steve Leard. Translation of Heba.
DESCRIPTION - Thirty years after completing his military service, Ziya flees the spiraling turmoil and perplexing chaos of the city where he lives to seek a peaceful existence in a remote village--of which he has heard dreamlike tales. Greeted by his old friend from the army, Kenan, who has built and furnished a vineyard house for him, Ziya grows accustomed to his new surroundings and is welcomed by Kenan's family. However, the village does not provide the serenity Ziya yearns for, and old memories of his military service on the treacherous Syrian/Turkish border flood his thoughts. As he battles specters of the past, his rejection of village life provokes an undercurrent of ill feeling among the locals, not least towards Kenan, who has incurred heavy debts by his generosity to the man who may have saved his life. Toptas masterfully blurs the borders between dreams and reality, truth and memory in this gripping tale. Like Turkey itself, the writer sits between the traditions of the East and the West, creating bold new literature. In his own country he sits comfortably on the shelf beside Orhan Pamuk, and his first novel in English is poised to enchant those same readers.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hasan Ali Toptaş (born 15 October 1958) is a prominent Turkish novelist and short story writer. His first short story book Bir Gülüşün Kimliği (The Identity of A Laughter) was published in 1987. An important Turkish scholar, Yıldız Ecevit nicknames him "a postmodern modernist" and calls him "a Kafka in Turkish literature", in her work Türk Romanında Postmodernist Açılımlar (The Postmodernist Expansion in Turkish Literature). In fact, Hasan Ali Toptaş's 1999 Cevdet Kudret Literature Award winner Bin Hüzünlü Haz is, on the one hand, a postmodern novella in terms of pluralism, metafiction and intertextuality. On the other hand, it contains a lot of kafkaesque elements in terms of depicting an absurd, surreal and paradoxically mundane reality.
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Yavuz, Hilmi. Seasons of the Word: Selected Poems . Syracuse. 6. Syracuse University Press. 9780815608790. Translated from the Turkish by Walter G. Andrews. Middle East Literature in Translation. 117 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - Hilmi Yavuz is among Turkey's most celebrated poets. His poetry, at once cerebral and intensely emotional, has been translated into several languages but never, until now, into English. Walter G. Andrews's translations bring to the English-speaking world a glimpse into the complex and expressive poetry of Yavuz, introducing traditional Ottoman forms and themes into a familiar poetic landscape and opening a door of understanding to Western readers. While each poem included in this volume can be enjoyed as a unique poetic entity, these poems read together reveal the organic and developmental relationship between Yavuz's figurative language and his self-expression. Barry Tharaud provides an insightful afterword, discussing Yavuz's work within the world of Turkish poetry and making a convincing plea for the importance of literature in translation. This volume will be of significant interest to anthologists, cultural and literary historians, and poetry lovers alike.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hilmi Yavuz is the author of more than thirty books. He has won major literary prizes for his poetry including a medal of honor awarded by the president of Chile for his translations of Pablo Neruda. Walter G. Andrews has authored, coauthored, or edited seven books on Ottoman literature and has published numerous articles on Turkish literature, literary theory, and literary history as well as many translations of Modern Turkish and Ottoman poetry.
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Zarinebaf, Fariba. Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700-1800. Berkeley. 2011. University of California Press. 9780520262218. 287 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - This vivid revisionist history exposes the underworld of the largest metropolis of the early modern Mediterranean and through it the entire fabric of a complex, multicultural society. Fariba Zarinebaf maps the history of crime and punishment in Istanbul over more than one hundred years, tracing how the state controlled and punished its unruly population. Taking us through the city's streets, workshops, and houses, she gives voice to ordinary people: the man accused of stealing, the woman accused of prostitution, and the vagabond expelled from the city. She finds that Istanbul in this period remains mischaracterized - in part by the sensational and exotic accounts of European travelers who portrayed it as the embodiment of Ottoman decline. Zarinebaf argues that in fact Istanbul had much more in common with other emerging modern cities in Europe, and even in America. A Fletcher Jones Foundation Humanities Book. 9 b/w photographs, 2 maps.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fariba Zarinebaf is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California at Riverside.
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UZBEKISTAN
[ UZBEKISTAN - Literature ]Ismailov, Hamid. Gaia, Queen of Ants. Syracuse. 2019. Syracuse University Press. 9780815611158. Middle East Literature in Translation. Translated from the Uzbek by Shelley Fairweather-Vega. 224 pages. paperback.
DESCRIPTION - From Uzbek author-in-exile Hamid Ismailov comes a dark new parable of power, corruption, fraud, and deception. Ismailov narrates an intimate clash of civilizations as he follows the lives of three expatriates living in England. Domrul is a young Turk with vague and painful memories of ethnic strife in the Uzbekistan of his childhood. His Irish girlfriend Emer struggles with her own adolescent trauma from growing up in war-torn Bosnia. Domrul is the caretaker for Gaia, the eighty-year-old, powerful wife of a Soviet party boss with a mysterious past. One of Ismailov's few novels written in Uzbek, Gaia, Queen of Ants offers a rare portrait of a complex and little-known part of the world. A plot centered on political corruption and ethnic conflict is punctuated with Sufi philosophy and religious gullibility. As Ismailov's characters grapple with questions of faith, power, sex, and family, Gaia, Queen of Ants presents a moving tale of universal themes set against a Central Asian backdrop in the twenty-first century.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hamid Ismailov is an Uzbek novelist and poet who lives in exile in London. He is a journalist and project manager with the BBC World Service. A prolific writer of poetry and prose, Ismailov has been published in Uzbek, Russian, French, German, Turkish, English, and other languages. He is the author of many novels, including The Railway and The Underground. Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a freelance translator in Seattle, Washington. She translates several novels, poetry, and short stories for children and adults.
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