Bøger i Middle East Literature In Translation serien

Shahrokh Meskoob was one of Iran's leading intellectuals and a preeminent scholar of Persian literary traditions, language, and cultural identity. In The Ant's Gift, Meskoob applies his insight and considerable analytical skills to the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran completed in 1010 by the poet Abul-Qusem Ferdowsi.

Undertaking a sustained interpretation of Sudanese novelist Tayeb Salih's novels and short stories, this study focuses primarily on the ways in which his work depicts the clashing of Arab ideologies - that is, questions of tradition, modernity, imperialism, gender and political authority.

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.

Vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli- Nu'ma-ni- (1857-1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian, Nu'ma-ni- took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts.

How lethal is love, how dangerous is woman? And how sensual is the yearning for immortality? This book presents the drama of Jummo's life, the tragic arc of her affair with her childhood sweetheart and her lifelong love for the mysterious Sidi Wadhana, a more-than-human emissary from the Netherworld.

The earliest Turkish verses, dating from the sixth century A.D., were love lyrics. Since then love has dominated the Turks' poetic modes and moods - pre-Islamic, Ottoman classic, folk, modern. In style, form and sensibility, this collection offers a broad spectrum.

Set in Geneva, Switzerland, around the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, this intricately plotted novel probes the emotional misfortunes of Arab men and women fleeing the horror of war only to find their ways of life constantly challenged by their foreign surroundings.

Writing in a symbolic and minimalist style, author Sonallah Ibrahim has been called the Egyptian Kafka. This wry take on Kafka's "The Trial" revolves around its narrator's attempts to petition successfully the elusive ruling body of his country, known simply as "the committee".

Hilmi Yavuz is among Turkey's most celebrated poets. Containing English translations, this work offers a glimpse into the complex and expressive poetry of Yavuz, introducing traditional Ottoman forms and themes into a familiar poetic landscape. It discusses Yavuz's work within the world of Turkish poetry.

As one of Egyptian theater's leading contemporary playwrights, Alfred Farag has had a profound influence on shaping Arabic drama and Egyptian cultural politics. This book chronicles Farag's career and offers a critical perspective on his creative output and the condition of Egyptian theater in the 1970s through the 1990s.

Tells of the suffering - memories of an abandoned garden fading away - and of a poet at the confluence of two cultures: Western and Middle Eastern. This bilingual book comprises Sentimental Archives of a War in Lebanon and the English translation of Lebanon: Twenty Poems for One Love. It includes more than forty selected poems.

It has been said that the difference between a language and a dialect is that a language is a dialect with an army. This title explores the tension between dynamics of literary influence and canon formation within the Arabic literary tradition. It challenges the reader to re-examine notions of translation, bilingualism, and postcoloniality.

The Muslim Suicide focuses on the life of an actual historical character, Ibn Sabin (1217-69), who, born in the town of Murcia in Andalus (Arab Spain), ended his life while on pilgrimage to Mecca.

Offers a portrait of a marginalized Egyptian community, bringing to life the absurd and tragic characters who occupy the margins of society while paying tribute to a historical Cairene neighborhood. This novel reveals a social climate where ruthlessness and goodness seem almost indistinguishable and humanity is on display in all its rich variety.

In this text Kilito argues that genre - not authorship - is at the heart of classic Arabic literature. He examines love poetry and panegyric, the Prophet's Hadith and the literary anecdote, as well as such themes as memorization, plagiarism and forgery and the dream visions of the dead.

A novel that follows the parallel lives of a transplanted Austrian woman, who has made Iran her home, and her grandson, Nuri, who desperately misses his mother but hides his longing behind a veneer of teenage bravado.

Depicts the childhood of Murtada al-Shamikh and his return forty years later to his home in the medina or old city of Tunis. After being taken from his mother and raised in his father's home where he was physically abused and emotionally marginalized, Murtada spends a life of anxiety wandering the world.

Sheds light on the dreams, customs, and everyday concerns of people living in historic obscurity on the fringe of the glitzy, petrodollar kingdoms of the Middle East. This tale begins on a worksite in Egypt's western desert. In the middle of nowhere, railway men and locals wait in hope for the annual return of a ""distant train.

Rediscovered in Syria in the late 19th century, this account relates the experiences of Reverend Elias al-Musili, a priest of the Chaldean Church and the first known visitor to the Americas from the Middle East. Supported by Spain and the pope, he offers a unique perspective on the New World.

Al Ayshuni, a middle-aged painter, has fallen in love with a younger woman, the alluring Ghaylana. But fate intervenes when she leaves him for new adventures in Spain. Now, Al Ayshuni befriends Ghaylana's impressionable daughter and fights to recapture the ""fugitive light"" of his youth.

Features 22 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 Turkish writer.

The Libyan landscape is one of the most diverse and breathtaking, replete with barren deserts, vast ocean coasts, and a stunning display of earth's elements. Al-Koni, an award-winning and critically acclaimed Arabic writer, reflects on this fragile environment and the increasing threats to its existence in A Sleepless Eye, a collection of the poet's desert wisdom.

This is one of the most masterful, psychologically penetrating novels in Armenian diaspora literature. Published in 1967 at a time of political awakening among the descendants of survivors of the Armenian genocide, the novel explores themes of trauma, forgiveness, reconciliation, friendship, and sacrifice, and examines the relationship between victim and perpetrator.

In this luminous bilingual collection of poems, Ghareeb Iskander offers a personal response to the The Epic of Gilgamesh. 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.

"First published a Le Daesert, ou la Vie et les Aventures de Jubair Ouali El-Mammi, Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1977, 1989."--Title page verso.

These folktales have been collected from Teuan, Al-Huceima, Taza, Fes, Marrakesh and Tahanout. Varied genres include anecdotes, legends and animal fables.

A novel that recounts the efforts of a young man to explore his own history and identity through his encounters with the family and friends who surround him.

A master of the short story form, Muhammad Zafzf is one of Morocco's greatest narrative writers. This anthology, the first collection of his work translated into English, is a tribute to the remarkable influence he exerted on an entire generation of Moroccan storytellers. Zafzf's stories are set within a variety of contexts, each portraying a slice of life, a simple struggle for survival in a challenging world that is changing at a rapid pace.

Brings together in one volume Haddad's seminal work and a considerable selection of poems from his oeuvre, stretching over forty years. The selected poems reveal Haddad's playful yet profound meditations. A powerful lyric poet, Haddad juxtaposes classical and modern symbols, and mixes the old with the new, the sensual with the sacred, and the common with the extraordinary.

At the heart of this volume is the translation of a fourteenth-century Turkish version of the Joseph story, better known to Western readers from the version in Genesis. Hickman provides us with a new lens: we see the drama of the Old Testament prophet Joseph, son of Jacob, through Muslim eyes.