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Catalogue of a Private Life
A collection of short stories by one of the Arab world’s most accomplished and acclaimed writers.
A grandmother who takes on a thief trying to seduce her daughters. A guard who fantasises about killing his general while locked in battle with a non-existent enemy. A film script about Libya’s traffic problems improvised at a workshop. A woman’s letter from her old school, which is now a makeshift refugee camp. A cow straying into a field, breaking an age-old truce between warring factions. The eight stories of Catalogue of a Private Life feel like oft-recounted folktales, where the ordinary has been softly twisted several degrees.
Najwa Bin Shatwan navigates the tensions between loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret, and tenderness and cruelty to weave a portrait of family, war and nation against a stark backdrop of the completely absurd.
A grandmother who takes on a thief trying to seduce her daughters. A guard who fantasises about killing his general while locked in battle with a non-existent enemy. A film script about Libya’s traffic problems improvised at a workshop. A woman’s letter from her old school, which is now a makeshift refugee camp. A cow straying into a field, breaking an age-old truce between warring factions. The eight stories of Catalogue of a Private Life feel like oft-recounted folktales, where the ordinary has been softly twisted several degrees.
Najwa Bin Shatwan navigates the tensions between loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret, and tenderness and cruelty to weave a portrait of family, war and nation against a stark backdrop of the completely absurd.
94 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
77 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 27, 2022
Translators deserve a place of light in the paradise of readers. What would we do without them, mediators and carriers of meanings and secrets we are unaware of ? There are many ways to praise their work, but telling that our world will be poorer without them is one of it. I am happy to have been discovered in the last years excellent translators whose works I appreciate and follow. Actually, I would read anything they translate, with the same passion I will follow a reader which inspires me. Among them, Sawad Hussain, an exquisite translator of Arabic wor(l)ds.
Without the knowledge of a translator, how could we/me be able to read such an elegant collection of short stories like Catalogue of a Private Life by Najwa Bin Shatwan published at the end of the last year by Dedalus.
Najwa Bin Shatwan is a Libyan academic and novelist, author of four novels. In 2017, she was the first Libyan to ever be shortlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction. In general, Liyban literature is under-represented, before discovering her short stories I was acquainted with only one author: Hisham Matar. Language is definitely a barrier, but as usual, there is always at play a self-suficient neglect of authors and literatures belonging to a realm outside the regular political or social - or even touristic - interest. If a couple of decades ago, Libya was sporadically famous for the excentricities of Muammar al-Gaddafi, after his disappearance and the local/international debacle it seems there is nothing to say about and from Libya.
Catalogue of a Private Life proves though that those anti-literary scales of value are completely wrong. With a highly elegant humour, Bin Shatwan knits together social observations and political misfortunes in stories short but of an unforgettable impact. Think about the tragedy created by a brainless cow who broke a delicate truce simply by walking on the wrong side of the lane. Or the grandmother who caught a burglar in white socks falling from the sky, and while wainting for some news from her son, she impatiently asks: ´Touch the phone. Maybe it´s hot; maybe he just called´.
The characters, like we all, navigate through traditional obligations, religious commandments and political interogations. But as they cannot stop rummaging about their own drama, they may forget paying attention to the potholes on the road.
´(...) how could one call this a homeland when it´s just an airport for missiles?´
The everyday tragi-comical may look unbearable, but arts and literary talent in general helps survival. You need two to tango and an enemy to start a war, and a good short story to understand that, in fact, literary talent is equally distributed among all peoples and nations and a good translator to open your eyes and your literary appetite.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Without the knowledge of a translator, how could we/me be able to read such an elegant collection of short stories like Catalogue of a Private Life by Najwa Bin Shatwan published at the end of the last year by Dedalus.
Najwa Bin Shatwan is a Libyan academic and novelist, author of four novels. In 2017, she was the first Libyan to ever be shortlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction. In general, Liyban literature is under-represented, before discovering her short stories I was acquainted with only one author: Hisham Matar. Language is definitely a barrier, but as usual, there is always at play a self-suficient neglect of authors and literatures belonging to a realm outside the regular political or social - or even touristic - interest. If a couple of decades ago, Libya was sporadically famous for the excentricities of Muammar al-Gaddafi, after his disappearance and the local/international debacle it seems there is nothing to say about and from Libya.
Catalogue of a Private Life proves though that those anti-literary scales of value are completely wrong. With a highly elegant humour, Bin Shatwan knits together social observations and political misfortunes in stories short but of an unforgettable impact. Think about the tragedy created by a brainless cow who broke a delicate truce simply by walking on the wrong side of the lane. Or the grandmother who caught a burglar in white socks falling from the sky, and while wainting for some news from her son, she impatiently asks: ´Touch the phone. Maybe it´s hot; maybe he just called´.
The characters, like we all, navigate through traditional obligations, religious commandments and political interogations. But as they cannot stop rummaging about their own drama, they may forget paying attention to the potholes on the road.
´(...) how could one call this a homeland when it´s just an airport for missiles?´
The everyday tragi-comical may look unbearable, but arts and literary talent in general helps survival. You need two to tango and an enemy to start a war, and a good short story to understand that, in fact, literary talent is equally distributed among all peoples and nations and a good translator to open your eyes and your literary appetite.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
January 9, 2024
This short story collection by Libyan author Najwa Bin Shatwan features eight stories, all of which are absurd, precise and vehemently anti-war. In ways her writing reminds me of Slaughterhouse Five, because of the way that it pulls at the fabric of reality to expose the horrors and reverberation of war to the point that reality becomes funny, weird and at times almost stupid and yet that is its very brilliance. One of the weirdest stories is probably "The Young Cow Crossed the Field”, where a man dreams of a cow that can speak Arabic after eating a newspaper and books and then appears in his dreams in the form of a fighter jet and a missile.
My favourite stories were:
* When Can We Go Home?: which feels genuinely like an email one might write to a husband or friend in the aftermath of a war that has forced a mother to take refuge with her daughter in a school. ““My daughter writes on the same blackboard that I wrote on; poetry, prose, maths; she draws a heart with her faraway father’s name in it, a sun, a flag, and weapons – these are her memories of Libya. Fragile things.»
* The Beetle is a Good Sport: which centers how a community pledges support to Palestine despite suffering their own private disasters and yet manages to balance this in a satirical way with a story about car racing. “Meanwhile, the Beetle continues to inspire generations of youth to learn to drive, and thus overcome the impossible and follow their dreams. As for the German manufacturer, it continues to pull the wool over the eyes of new generations of Beetle drivers, lying about how environmentally friendly their cars are. As for the government, in one of its more recent updates, we were promoted from town to state; in short, after all our exertions on behalf of the Palestinian cause, this is the grand total of our achievements.”
* The Irresponsible Director – which examines power, family, patriarchy, truth and belied through a short film about a family who wan to go on a picnic at the beach. This is probably my favourite story. “The baby gives her father a sharp look. A cloud appears above her head; in the cloud it says: “Liaaarrrr.”’ ‘The newborn is too young to have learned that no one in our society calls her fa- ther a liar when he’s lying, the same way no one says to her mother, “You knew he
was a liar and yet you married him anyway.” No one says this because society deems any woman who doesn’t have a liar by her side to be lacking in mind and religion.’”
These stories explore what prolongued violence can do to a society and plays with the line between fantastical realism and haunting memories and symptoms of trauma. At what point does war generate fantastical realism?
“It was a godless land, because the men there had become gods themselves, limitless in what they thought they could control.”
“Being a driver was testament to his manhood and his nerves of steel, given the acrobatics that our roads required. But what can you possibly know about our
roads if you haven’t walked a day in our sandals? All the world’s surprises and accidents are to be found on our roads, to travel them is to enter a race that only ever ends on Judgement Day. A camel, an ambulance with faulty lights, a flock of sheep, a flooded wadi, potholes of all sizes, huge great lorries rubbing shoulders, pick-up trucks whose drivers have fallen asleep at the wheel, tin cans and empty cartons, plastic bags blown in from faraway lands, camels on the run from Sudan, desert safari hunting enthusiasts who fight off boredom by driving with one foot on the pedal and the other dangling out the window.“
My favourite stories were:
* When Can We Go Home?: which feels genuinely like an email one might write to a husband or friend in the aftermath of a war that has forced a mother to take refuge with her daughter in a school. ““My daughter writes on the same blackboard that I wrote on; poetry, prose, maths; she draws a heart with her faraway father’s name in it, a sun, a flag, and weapons – these are her memories of Libya. Fragile things.»
* The Beetle is a Good Sport: which centers how a community pledges support to Palestine despite suffering their own private disasters and yet manages to balance this in a satirical way with a story about car racing. “Meanwhile, the Beetle continues to inspire generations of youth to learn to drive, and thus overcome the impossible and follow their dreams. As for the German manufacturer, it continues to pull the wool over the eyes of new generations of Beetle drivers, lying about how environmentally friendly their cars are. As for the government, in one of its more recent updates, we were promoted from town to state; in short, after all our exertions on behalf of the Palestinian cause, this is the grand total of our achievements.”
* The Irresponsible Director – which examines power, family, patriarchy, truth and belied through a short film about a family who wan to go on a picnic at the beach. This is probably my favourite story. “The baby gives her father a sharp look. A cloud appears above her head; in the cloud it says: “Liaaarrrr.”’ ‘The newborn is too young to have learned that no one in our society calls her fa- ther a liar when he’s lying, the same way no one says to her mother, “You knew he
was a liar and yet you married him anyway.” No one says this because society deems any woman who doesn’t have a liar by her side to be lacking in mind and religion.’”
These stories explore what prolongued violence can do to a society and plays with the line between fantastical realism and haunting memories and symptoms of trauma. At what point does war generate fantastical realism?
“It was a godless land, because the men there had become gods themselves, limitless in what they thought they could control.”
“Being a driver was testament to his manhood and his nerves of steel, given the acrobatics that our roads required. But what can you possibly know about our
roads if you haven’t walked a day in our sandals? All the world’s surprises and accidents are to be found on our roads, to travel them is to enter a race that only ever ends on Judgement Day. A camel, an ambulance with faulty lights, a flock of sheep, a flooded wadi, potholes of all sizes, huge great lorries rubbing shoulders, pick-up trucks whose drivers have fallen asleep at the wheel, tin cans and empty cartons, plastic bags blown in from faraway lands, camels on the run from Sudan, desert safari hunting enthusiasts who fight off boredom by driving with one foot on the pedal and the other dangling out the window.“
May 2, 2022
Instant 5⭐️ from me.
8 unique short stories unfolding against a backdrop of political unrest. In only 90+ pages, Najwa Bin Shatwan, Libyan academic and novelist, masterfully mixes tragedy and wit in these portraits of resilience that closely examine the absurdity of war and the profound effects it has both at an individual and national level.
✨A household full of daughters, carefully kept away from men’s view. What will grandma do when a thief breaks in and the father is not home?
✨A guard is silently plotting against his bloodthirsty general who, in turn, is plotting against an invisible enemy.
✨A man is caught between 2 warring parties. Is endless torture the price of loyalty?
✨A meandering cow enters the wrong field, unearthing an old feud.
✨A group of future cinematographers reflects on their new assignment at a workshop: a short film about traffic in Libya. What will they come up with?
✨A woman writes a letter describing her life in a refugee camp. What will the future be like for her children?
✨An old Beetle participates at a marathon, clouding all the other participants in smoke.
✨An old woman ponders on that one time she left her village and the series of unfortunate events that followed.
I know I'll go back to this little book. It is published by Dedalus, the same publishing house that gave us the wonderful anthology Baltic Belles. Do not sleep on Dedalus! It's criminally underrated.
8 unique short stories unfolding against a backdrop of political unrest. In only 90+ pages, Najwa Bin Shatwan, Libyan academic and novelist, masterfully mixes tragedy and wit in these portraits of resilience that closely examine the absurdity of war and the profound effects it has both at an individual and national level.
✨A household full of daughters, carefully kept away from men’s view. What will grandma do when a thief breaks in and the father is not home?
✨A guard is silently plotting against his bloodthirsty general who, in turn, is plotting against an invisible enemy.
✨A man is caught between 2 warring parties. Is endless torture the price of loyalty?
✨A meandering cow enters the wrong field, unearthing an old feud.
✨A group of future cinematographers reflects on their new assignment at a workshop: a short film about traffic in Libya. What will they come up with?
✨A woman writes a letter describing her life in a refugee camp. What will the future be like for her children?
✨An old Beetle participates at a marathon, clouding all the other participants in smoke.
✨An old woman ponders on that one time she left her village and the series of unfortunate events that followed.
I know I'll go back to this little book. It is published by Dedalus, the same publishing house that gave us the wonderful anthology Baltic Belles. Do not sleep on Dedalus! It's criminally underrated.
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January 29, 2024A collection of short stories by one of the Arab world's most accomplished writers, Najwa bin Shawtan's Catalogue of a Private Life takes on the Libyan psyche, veering between the serious and the surreal to entrance readers into her world. Read The New Arab's review here: https://www.newarab.com/features/laye...
April 30, 2025
I feel so lucky to have been able to get my hands on this collection. Truly beautiful. Fantastic translation. My favorites include:
The Burglar in White Socks
The Irresponsible Director
Can We Go Home?
The Burglar in White Socks
The Irresponsible Director
Can We Go Home?
March 30, 2023
3.5 maybe? Gotta think on this one.
April 30, 2023
enjoyed "the burglar in white socks", "convention for the protection of national pestles", "return ticket"
August 28, 2025
I really did devour this one, as much of a cliché as it sounds. Bin Shatwan has such a great way of skewering the complete absurdity of war, without ever outwardly saying ‘war is absurd’. In the title story, Catalogue of a Private Life, a disinterested body guard watches a general fawning over his new weapons, idly considers assassinating him, and then decides that it’s not worth the bother. It’s such a bizarre, blasé attitude towards the life of another human, who in turn views the lives of civilians as little more than a chance to try out his shiny new cannon, that it really brilliantly shows how absolutely ludicrous it is that human life is essentially treated as disposable during conflict.
(Full review at The Global Women's Library.)
(Full review at The Global Women's Library.)
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews