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The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction
This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south.
Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid.
Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid.
512 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 2006
18 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
About the author
Denys Johnson-Davies
100 books50 followersDenys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (1922-2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has 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.
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has 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 is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written 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 to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured 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", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has 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 is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written 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 to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured 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", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 13, 2022
One of my first encounters with translated literature was in a college course. I was training to become a dentist in my native homeland of Egypt, and the coursework for the freshman year included a class on “Modern Arabic Literature”. And, though it is probably strange having a literature course as part of the requirements to a dental certificate, I like to think that it isn’t really much of a departure from tongues, teeth and occasional inflictions of disease.
The short story as a literary device is not considered a fairly new art form in the Arab world. Although its modern structure is partially influenced by great Western authors of the 20th century, the indigenous Maqāmah, which originates in 10th century C.E., predates several western literary models. The most famous example is Maqamat Al-Hariri, that remains, to this day, unchallenged as one of the great canons of Arabic literature. Deemed an “untranslatable” work of Arabic poetry and prose, Maqamat al-Hariri has recently been interpreted into an English work by Micheal Cooperson entitled Impostures that was hailed as one of the Wall Street Journal's top 10 books of the year 2020, a winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for translation, and a 2021 finalist for the PROSE Award in the literature category.
Therefore, the short stories you will encounter in this anthology are a hybrid between the medieval Arabic Maqāmah and the great Western literature of the 20th century. Perhaps the prudent reader can understand that this collection cannot work in comparison to one or the other, rather it is to be appreciated as in a genre of its own.
The novel, short story, and play along with the Diwans of Arabic poetry that had dominated Arab literature for centuries, create the dense library of Arabic literature we know of today. First appearing and transmitted as part of an oral tradition, Arabic poetry was committed to writing as early as the 4th century C.E., packing dense volumes known as Diwans with rich poems that aren’t shy of diversity in content and style. From the Ghazal (love poem) to the Ritha (elegy), Hamasah (valour of war poem), Hija (satirical poem), and many other forms that glorified the Arabic language as the truest vessel for Arab culture and identity.
The beauty of the Arabic language lends a lot to imagery of poetry. The richness of the Arabic lexicon allows endless experimentation with wordplay and rhythm, the same root words in Arabic sprout hundreds of different meanings, its ability to convey meaning in a brevity, even the art of calligraphy which dominates the aestheticism of the Islamic world, all add to a transcendence meant to be conveyed through the faculty of poetry. Mosques are heavily adorned in masterful contortions of Arabic in verses from the Holy Q’uran. Sung from the minarets and echoed in its chambers, words give presence to the invisible divine. Walls bare with human depictions but impregnated with words gives a clear message: sainthood here belongs to the Word of God and not to people.
As opposed to our Christian cousins who were later wholly comfortable with anthropomorphic depictions of God, prophets, and saints, the acceptance of a literary form that was highly character-dependent, though not unprecedented in the Islamic world, was still sometimes met with skepticism by religious purists. The act of creating characters that inhibit worlds of their own almost seemed analogous to claims of divinity, which is laughable to suggest humans were ever capable of creation. Internal and external forces worked together to limit the representation of modern Arabic literature on the global scene.
In the introduction, editor and translator Denys Johnson-Davies, along with religious prejudices on native soil, highlights several other difficulties that sadly remain an obstacle to sparking international interest in Arabic literature.
Denys Johnson-Davies quotes orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb in his scathing statement, “All of these productions, however, short stories, novels and plays, remained bounded by the horizons and conventions of the Arab world; when translated into other languages they are often more interesting as social documents than as literary achievements.”
Classical Arabic interchangeable with Modern Standard Arabic (Al-Fusha), up until recently, was studied in the West as a dead language, much like Latin, though it remains the primary written language of the Arab world. It is used by several countries in mass media, academia, print, legislation and is taught in schools. Though it adapted to incorporate modern vernacular such as “internet”, it remains to a large degree unchanged (but highly adaptive). The reason for that is the holy book of Islam, the Q’uran, is only regarded holy in its original Arabic, preservation of its language is essential to its miracle, which means that a Q’uran in Indonesia that speaks Indonesian, or in Iran that speaks Persian is identical to a Q’uran in Morocco that speaks Arabic. Prayers, supplications, readings of the Q’uran and rituals are all performed in the original Arabic. Translations of the Q’uran are void of sanctity and to be regarded only as mere human interpretations/theological studies.
Perhaps it’s why, even under centuries of shifting sands, Arabic stands as a sign of a diehard resistance.
Still, if not for a handful of dedicated authors and translators, battling both local and international hostilities, modern Arabic literature would have not made it farther than the notebooks of a few impassioned ravers. Dedication, the like of which lead to, Egyptian author, Naguib Mahfouz, winning the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.
If you want to complicate things, there are a number of Arabic works written entirely in regional dialects, or sometimes mixed in with classical Arabic. The Arabic here is colloquial, and while it adds character and authenticity to the work, it is absolutely lost in translation, and perhaps, to those Arabic speakers that are unfamiliar with a certain dialect, hard to interpret, therefore, classical Arabic still remains the more popular choice for authors.
This anthology spans 14 countries, includes 79 authors from different backgrounds (men, women, rural, urban, muslim, christian), that share a love for storytelling, and are bound by a single language, yet represent the diverse fabric of the Arabic speaking world. Denys includes a brief introduction to the background of the author before their work is presented. You will find in their backgrounds, sadly, a common theme, sometimes of persecution, jail, exile, and immigration.
I wouldn’t consider this a necessarily happy anthology. The social fabric that envelopes the lives of the authors cannot be separated from their work. The all-too-common question of separating the artist from his art cannot, in most cases, apply to these works. Perhaps it is why this anthology is hard to appreciate without understanding the socioeconomic and political conditions the work was conceived under. Those who have lived in Arabic speaking countries would probably be more informed about these stories, people who are familiar to the customs, values, traditions, history and the psyche of the Arabic speaker. Take for example the preconception that Arab men are inherently “sexist”. In comparative terms, where one culture deems another has having “lesser” values with regards to something, because it doesn’t share the same ideas about its nature, or people’s worldview, their desires and ambitions, with preconceptions and a shallow reading that statement might at first seem true. Though the claim that the Arab world is free from misogyny is ridiculous, the view that Arab men are inherently “sexist” is equally as ridiculous. In many of the stories, like Mohamed Choukri’s “Flower Crazy”, Alaa El-Aswany’s “The Yacoubian Building”, Brahim Darghouthi’s “Apples of Paradise”, Ibrahim Samouiel’s “My Fellow Passenger”, Sabri Moussa’s “Benevolence“, all men make light of the plight of women in stark or “graphic” terms, forced into prostitution or sexual assault, even sentenced to death under poverty, which speaks of the ills of a trade in which women are degraded or taken advantage of, trafficked and objectified. The adoration of many of the male characters of women, which borders on obsession, can be seen as “sexist”, while in many cases, it acts as some distraction from the wretchedness surrounding them, almost as if the women represent the image of an unattainable Eden. The betrayal of women to each other is also addressed. Likewise, in this anthology, Arabic women speak strongly for themselves, with stories like Nawal AlSaadawi’s “She Has No Place in Paradise”, Alifa Rifaat’s “An Incident in the Ghobashi Household”, Salwa Bakr’s “Dotty Noona”, women condemn a society that exploits them, while highlighting the conditions that cause this type of exploitation. The wise reader understands that what can be seen as “sexism” can also be seen as a symptom of poverty, ignorance and harsh religious interpretations that feed off each other and, that turns, even blood against itself, and that can plague any group of people regardless of religion, creed or ethnicity.
It’s that close and delicate reading, and the lack of preconceptions that will make this a rewarding read, almost as if the voices open up to you. Perhaps it is also why these can sometimes be dismissed as “social documents”, because they thrive best under academic dissection, or under the mercy of dedication. However, its ambition is admirable. Denys insistence on the inclusion of so many works, styles, and voices, even random novel excerpts, while understandably confusing, with all the different characters, and with some translations being quite “on-the-nose”, it is still able to showcase the immense diversity stemming from a single seed: Arabic.
It remains true that most of the collected stories are considered “resistance literature”. Recurring motifs that dominate most of the work include, war, faith, tradition, poverty, class disparity, love, complex relationships, and others. Though if one word can summarise the theme of this entire collection, and by proxy, the Arabic speaking world of today, I would say it would be “identity crisis”.
Mohamed Barrada’s “Life by Installments” is a prime example of the identity crisis that shackles the Arabic speaking world. Failure to identify itself outside its colonialists, its golden past (Pharaonic/Islamic), the failures of present governments and revolutions, nationalism and propaganda, the gaze of the West and talks of “progressiveness” among an ever widening class disparity (ultra-rich/ultra-poor), gated communities surrounded by slums, voices of diaspora, the shackles of modern day occupation, ethnic cleansing, religious extremism, sectarian violence, civil wars and petty conflicts. Major groups all fighting to instil their own made up identities, like in Mohamed El-Bisatie’s “Drought”.
I’m certainly resisting the urge to discuss every single short story and excerpt in this collection, so I will end here with a quote from Yahya Hakki’s “A Story from Prison”:
“Neither the lamp with its hissing, nor the singer with his fiddle, was able to disperse any of the sadness that oppressed the universe. Was night the corpse of day and this sadness the hymn of death? Or was the world in mourning because it sensed it was perishing little by little? Or perhaps it was the result of the thousands of oriental souls created by God sad and sore of heart that wander about this vast expanse? This very same sky, when covering the north, is perhaps the epitome of joy, fulfilment, and ecstasy, and the flickering of its stars a dance.”
The short story as a literary device is not considered a fairly new art form in the Arab world. Although its modern structure is partially influenced by great Western authors of the 20th century, the indigenous Maqāmah, which originates in 10th century C.E., predates several western literary models. The most famous example is Maqamat Al-Hariri, that remains, to this day, unchallenged as one of the great canons of Arabic literature. Deemed an “untranslatable” work of Arabic poetry and prose, Maqamat al-Hariri has recently been interpreted into an English work by Micheal Cooperson entitled Impostures that was hailed as one of the Wall Street Journal's top 10 books of the year 2020, a winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for translation, and a 2021 finalist for the PROSE Award in the literature category.
Therefore, the short stories you will encounter in this anthology are a hybrid between the medieval Arabic Maqāmah and the great Western literature of the 20th century. Perhaps the prudent reader can understand that this collection cannot work in comparison to one or the other, rather it is to be appreciated as in a genre of its own.
The novel, short story, and play along with the Diwans of Arabic poetry that had dominated Arab literature for centuries, create the dense library of Arabic literature we know of today. First appearing and transmitted as part of an oral tradition, Arabic poetry was committed to writing as early as the 4th century C.E., packing dense volumes known as Diwans with rich poems that aren’t shy of diversity in content and style. From the Ghazal (love poem) to the Ritha (elegy), Hamasah (valour of war poem), Hija (satirical poem), and many other forms that glorified the Arabic language as the truest vessel for Arab culture and identity.
The beauty of the Arabic language lends a lot to imagery of poetry. The richness of the Arabic lexicon allows endless experimentation with wordplay and rhythm, the same root words in Arabic sprout hundreds of different meanings, its ability to convey meaning in a brevity, even the art of calligraphy which dominates the aestheticism of the Islamic world, all add to a transcendence meant to be conveyed through the faculty of poetry. Mosques are heavily adorned in masterful contortions of Arabic in verses from the Holy Q’uran. Sung from the minarets and echoed in its chambers, words give presence to the invisible divine. Walls bare with human depictions but impregnated with words gives a clear message: sainthood here belongs to the Word of God and not to people.
As opposed to our Christian cousins who were later wholly comfortable with anthropomorphic depictions of God, prophets, and saints, the acceptance of a literary form that was highly character-dependent, though not unprecedented in the Islamic world, was still sometimes met with skepticism by religious purists. The act of creating characters that inhibit worlds of their own almost seemed analogous to claims of divinity, which is laughable to suggest humans were ever capable of creation. Internal and external forces worked together to limit the representation of modern Arabic literature on the global scene.
In the introduction, editor and translator Denys Johnson-Davies, along with religious prejudices on native soil, highlights several other difficulties that sadly remain an obstacle to sparking international interest in Arabic literature.
Denys Johnson-Davies quotes orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb in his scathing statement, “All of these productions, however, short stories, novels and plays, remained bounded by the horizons and conventions of the Arab world; when translated into other languages they are often more interesting as social documents than as literary achievements.”
Classical Arabic interchangeable with Modern Standard Arabic (Al-Fusha), up until recently, was studied in the West as a dead language, much like Latin, though it remains the primary written language of the Arab world. It is used by several countries in mass media, academia, print, legislation and is taught in schools. Though it adapted to incorporate modern vernacular such as “internet”, it remains to a large degree unchanged (but highly adaptive). The reason for that is the holy book of Islam, the Q’uran, is only regarded holy in its original Arabic, preservation of its language is essential to its miracle, which means that a Q’uran in Indonesia that speaks Indonesian, or in Iran that speaks Persian is identical to a Q’uran in Morocco that speaks Arabic. Prayers, supplications, readings of the Q’uran and rituals are all performed in the original Arabic. Translations of the Q’uran are void of sanctity and to be regarded only as mere human interpretations/theological studies.
Perhaps it’s why, even under centuries of shifting sands, Arabic stands as a sign of a diehard resistance.
Still, if not for a handful of dedicated authors and translators, battling both local and international hostilities, modern Arabic literature would have not made it farther than the notebooks of a few impassioned ravers. Dedication, the like of which lead to, Egyptian author, Naguib Mahfouz, winning the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.
If you want to complicate things, there are a number of Arabic works written entirely in regional dialects, or sometimes mixed in with classical Arabic. The Arabic here is colloquial, and while it adds character and authenticity to the work, it is absolutely lost in translation, and perhaps, to those Arabic speakers that are unfamiliar with a certain dialect, hard to interpret, therefore, classical Arabic still remains the more popular choice for authors.
This anthology spans 14 countries, includes 79 authors from different backgrounds (men, women, rural, urban, muslim, christian), that share a love for storytelling, and are bound by a single language, yet represent the diverse fabric of the Arabic speaking world. Denys includes a brief introduction to the background of the author before their work is presented. You will find in their backgrounds, sadly, a common theme, sometimes of persecution, jail, exile, and immigration.
I wouldn’t consider this a necessarily happy anthology. The social fabric that envelopes the lives of the authors cannot be separated from their work. The all-too-common question of separating the artist from his art cannot, in most cases, apply to these works. Perhaps it is why this anthology is hard to appreciate without understanding the socioeconomic and political conditions the work was conceived under. Those who have lived in Arabic speaking countries would probably be more informed about these stories, people who are familiar to the customs, values, traditions, history and the psyche of the Arabic speaker. Take for example the preconception that Arab men are inherently “sexist”. In comparative terms, where one culture deems another has having “lesser” values with regards to something, because it doesn’t share the same ideas about its nature, or people’s worldview, their desires and ambitions, with preconceptions and a shallow reading that statement might at first seem true. Though the claim that the Arab world is free from misogyny is ridiculous, the view that Arab men are inherently “sexist” is equally as ridiculous. In many of the stories, like Mohamed Choukri’s “Flower Crazy”, Alaa El-Aswany’s “The Yacoubian Building”, Brahim Darghouthi’s “Apples of Paradise”, Ibrahim Samouiel’s “My Fellow Passenger”, Sabri Moussa’s “Benevolence“, all men make light of the plight of women in stark or “graphic” terms, forced into prostitution or sexual assault, even sentenced to death under poverty, which speaks of the ills of a trade in which women are degraded or taken advantage of, trafficked and objectified. The adoration of many of the male characters of women, which borders on obsession, can be seen as “sexist”, while in many cases, it acts as some distraction from the wretchedness surrounding them, almost as if the women represent the image of an unattainable Eden. The betrayal of women to each other is also addressed. Likewise, in this anthology, Arabic women speak strongly for themselves, with stories like Nawal AlSaadawi’s “She Has No Place in Paradise”, Alifa Rifaat’s “An Incident in the Ghobashi Household”, Salwa Bakr’s “Dotty Noona”, women condemn a society that exploits them, while highlighting the conditions that cause this type of exploitation. The wise reader understands that what can be seen as “sexism” can also be seen as a symptom of poverty, ignorance and harsh religious interpretations that feed off each other and, that turns, even blood against itself, and that can plague any group of people regardless of religion, creed or ethnicity.
It’s that close and delicate reading, and the lack of preconceptions that will make this a rewarding read, almost as if the voices open up to you. Perhaps it is also why these can sometimes be dismissed as “social documents”, because they thrive best under academic dissection, or under the mercy of dedication. However, its ambition is admirable. Denys insistence on the inclusion of so many works, styles, and voices, even random novel excerpts, while understandably confusing, with all the different characters, and with some translations being quite “on-the-nose”, it is still able to showcase the immense diversity stemming from a single seed: Arabic.
It remains true that most of the collected stories are considered “resistance literature”. Recurring motifs that dominate most of the work include, war, faith, tradition, poverty, class disparity, love, complex relationships, and others. Though if one word can summarise the theme of this entire collection, and by proxy, the Arabic speaking world of today, I would say it would be “identity crisis”.
Mohamed Barrada’s “Life by Installments” is a prime example of the identity crisis that shackles the Arabic speaking world. Failure to identify itself outside its colonialists, its golden past (Pharaonic/Islamic), the failures of present governments and revolutions, nationalism and propaganda, the gaze of the West and talks of “progressiveness” among an ever widening class disparity (ultra-rich/ultra-poor), gated communities surrounded by slums, voices of diaspora, the shackles of modern day occupation, ethnic cleansing, religious extremism, sectarian violence, civil wars and petty conflicts. Major groups all fighting to instil their own made up identities, like in Mohamed El-Bisatie’s “Drought”.
I’m certainly resisting the urge to discuss every single short story and excerpt in this collection, so I will end here with a quote from Yahya Hakki’s “A Story from Prison”:
“Neither the lamp with its hissing, nor the singer with his fiddle, was able to disperse any of the sadness that oppressed the universe. Was night the corpse of day and this sadness the hymn of death? Or was the world in mourning because it sensed it was perishing little by little? Or perhaps it was the result of the thousands of oriental souls created by God sad and sore of heart that wander about this vast expanse? This very same sky, when covering the north, is perhaps the epitome of joy, fulfilment, and ecstasy, and the flickering of its stars a dance.”
July 20, 2021
This 2006 anthology collects approximately one hundred pieces of Arabic fiction translated into English -- including many translated by the editor -- bringing together work by seventy-nine authors from fourteen countries. So far, so good. Indeed, so far, so excellent. I set out hoping to reduce my ignorance of Arabic fiction, and this book answered.
However, I had one overarching difficulty with the book, though it's not one that will bother every reader: roughly half of the pieces of fiction are extracts from novels. (The other half are complete short stories.) I would have far preferred if there had been fewer novel extracts and more complete stories. And if there were to be so many novel extracts, I would have wished them to consist only of the beginnings of the novels in question, rather than skipping to the middle (or even the end), leaving me uncertain about the context.
That aside, much of the book fascinated me. I loved the wealth of experiences, the variations in storytelling, the descriptions of cities I've never seen, the mentions of the call to prayer, the glimpses of a different landscape: plants, sheep, desert. I note that a minority of the stories struck me as sexist, a few of them rather creepily so.
My personal favorites were as follows.... Radwa Ashour's "I Saw the Date-Palms" about a woman who finds meaning through plants. Mohamed Khudayir's "Clocks Like Horses" about clocks, sailors, horses, and a way of life now gone. Mohamed Makhzangi's short and brutal description of duck hunting, "The Pilot". Nawal El Saadawi's strong but upsetting piece, "She Has No Place in Paradise." And, lastly, the extract from Bahaa Taher's novel "Love in Exile," which is another strong but upsetting piece.
Many other stories had parts that I loved. Here, for instance, are two sentences from "Nights of Musk" by Haggag Hassan Oddoul that stayed with me:
3.5 out of 5 translated stars.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
However, I had one overarching difficulty with the book, though it's not one that will bother every reader: roughly half of the pieces of fiction are extracts from novels. (The other half are complete short stories.) I would have far preferred if there had been fewer novel extracts and more complete stories. And if there were to be so many novel extracts, I would have wished them to consist only of the beginnings of the novels in question, rather than skipping to the middle (or even the end), leaving me uncertain about the context.
That aside, much of the book fascinated me. I loved the wealth of experiences, the variations in storytelling, the descriptions of cities I've never seen, the mentions of the call to prayer, the glimpses of a different landscape: plants, sheep, desert. I note that a minority of the stories struck me as sexist, a few of them rather creepily so.
My personal favorites were as follows.... Radwa Ashour's "I Saw the Date-Palms" about a woman who finds meaning through plants. Mohamed Khudayir's "Clocks Like Horses" about clocks, sailors, horses, and a way of life now gone. Mohamed Makhzangi's short and brutal description of duck hunting, "The Pilot". Nawal El Saadawi's strong but upsetting piece, "She Has No Place in Paradise." And, lastly, the extract from Bahaa Taher's novel "Love in Exile," which is another strong but upsetting piece.
Many other stories had parts that I loved. Here, for instance, are two sentences from "Nights of Musk" by Haggag Hassan Oddoul that stayed with me:
We don't know where the days come from.
And we don't know where they go.
3.5 out of 5 translated stars.
About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).
December 7, 2018
about 12 stories were phenomenal, a few I even wrote down to reference later. Most are okay, some are downright unreadable, could be a translation issue, though. Definitely recommend if you have any cultural interest in the Arab world.
March 27, 2022
There are never enough women in these anthologies. A diverse collection of stories, though I really only enjoyed a few.
October 11, 2024
I was inspired to get this book because a Moroccan guide who had studied literature. This was the only audio source for his favorite author, and I enjoyed reading many others in this collection
November 1, 2020
I think this book is interesting because it shows you that this dazzling books is anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south.
Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid. I would recommend this book to my classmates because it has so much information and so much knowledge of modern Arabic. I give this book a 5 stars review!
Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid. I would recommend this book to my classmates because it has so much information and so much knowledge of modern Arabic. I give this book a 5 stars review!
August 23, 2021
The first of four anthologies of Arabic fiction I am reading in August and September, this contains selections by 79 authors; 13 countries are represented, although Egypt predominates with about half the authors (39) being from that country. The selections are divided evenly between short stories and excerpts from novels; I don't really like that decision because novels aren't meant to be read in excerpts without context and because, since the excerpts are often the climax of the book, they are all spoilers if I ever were to read the actual books they are taken from (I skipped the selections from Mahfouz because the novels are on my list for next month.)
The selections were very diverse, both in content -- although there were many which dealt with political struggles and war, it was not as prominent as in the anthology of Palestinian writings I finished last week, and there were many that were love stories, coming-of-age stories, and other domestic sorts of stories -- and in style, with realist and romantic stories balanced by modernist and surreal stories. The selections were alphabetical by author rather than chronological or geographical; unlike the anthologies edited by Salma Jayyusi, there was no general introduction, although each author was prefaced by a one or two paragraph biography.
The selections were very diverse, both in content -- although there were many which dealt with political struggles and war, it was not as prominent as in the anthology of Palestinian writings I finished last week, and there were many that were love stories, coming-of-age stories, and other domestic sorts of stories -- and in style, with realist and romantic stories balanced by modernist and surreal stories. The selections were alphabetical by author rather than chronological or geographical; unlike the anthologies edited by Salma Jayyusi, there was no general introduction, although each author was prefaced by a one or two paragraph biography.
March 5, 2021
There were some keepers in the collection, and several authors I'd like to read more of. It brings together a wide range of style, voice, setting and tone from throughout the region. It's interesting to see the small bits of life and culture that come through in each story.
September 12, 2019
It should have been called "The Compass of Modern Arabic Fiction" as it guides you through many a writer, and gives tribute to some underrated great Arabic authors.
September 7, 2025
An excellent collection, especially the long list of Egyptian writers.
June 24, 2008
We chose this for our book club because none of us knew anything about Arabic fiction. There are some great stories in here, but it's a lot to get through... someone should have read it first and picked out selections. As it was, even with a whole month to read it, a lot of the stories blended together in my mind. I didn't like that many of the selections were excerpts from longer works; I guess the editor did that to give us more exposure to some of the better-known novels, but it was tough enough to keep everything straight without also having to deal with little chunks of longer books. Consequently, I can't even say this book was successful at giving me a tasting of different Arabic authors, because I'm just left feeling relieved that I got through the book -- not excited about picking up more books from any of the authors. It's a shame.
Currently reading
March 7, 2007Ever wandered through Diwan book store in Zamalek and wondered which if the modern Arabic novels were worth buying? OK, maybe not, but I have often felt overwhelmed while in Egypt by the choices. This anthology provides a nice selection of lesser-known modern authors from the entire Middle East, all of which are available in longer form or in multiple translated works.
February 11, 2013
the selections are often so short that you can't get a sense of the writing style, and certainly not the plot of many of these selections. It would have been better to include less authors and more of each of them.
November 11, 2013
This book is beautifully put, again, even though I wished it was in Arabic. I got too excited when I was reading, Sudan's own (where I come from) Tayib Saleh's excerpt, from his book 'season of migration to the north. ' the feeling was too nice
October 2, 2014
A really great collection of excepts from the work of great authors across the Arab world. Managed to create for myself a reading list of Arabic fiction from this book and I highly recommend it to anyone hoping to find a good introduction to the world of Arabic literature.
Want to read
August 25, 2007Someday I will work up the courage to steal this this from Samantha's bookshelf...
December 22, 2008
There are several very good stories, but the excerpts are so short! It's hard to get any appreciation of the story when you have (sometimes) two pages to work with.
August 18, 2009
This is an amazing collection of middle eastern writers writing short stories, some never before translated. It's very interesting.
October 5, 2012
In English. Perfect introduction to the Arabic short story.
November 27, 2012
While a few stories are great reads, this is overall a mediocre collection.
September 9, 2013
I always read this over and over again
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