Modern Arabic Short Stories: A Bilingual Reader | 
|  | | | Title: | Modern Arabic Short Stories: A Bilingual Reader | | Author: | Ronak Husni (Editor)
Daniel L. Newman (Editor) | | Publisher: | Saqi Books | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 June, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0863564364 / 9780863564369 | | List Price: | $21.95 | | You Save: | $7.02 | | Amazon Price: | $14.93 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Designed as a reader for intermediate students of Arabic and those who may wish to broaden their appreciation of leading Middle Eastern writers, this collection features stories in both Arabic and English translation. Prefaced by an author biography plus notes on context and background, each story is followed by a glossary and discussion of problematic language points. Authors include Naguib Mahfouz, Edwar al-Kharrat, Hanan al-Shaykh, Layla al-Uthman, and Mohamed Choukri. Ronak Husni is a senior lecturer at Heriot-Watt University, teaching Arabic language, literature, and translation. Daniel L. Newman is the course director of the MA in Arabic/English Translation at the University of Durham and the author of An Imam in Paris (Saqi Books).
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Customer Reviews:
• A Unique Gem 10 November, 2008
This excellent collection of 20th century bilingual short stories includes male and female authors from across the Arabic speaking world. The editors state that they deliberately tried to find stories that had yet to be translated into English. The editors give a brief biography of each author including their religious, political views, and class background. This book is very recent, published this year. The stories range from five to 15 pages in length. They deal with a variety of topics whose common denominator is human folly and foible. One of my favorites was an excerpt from Ibrahim al-Faqih's The Book of the Dead in which a middle aged teacher has his fragile existence turned upside down by the sudden appearance of a female student in his all boys school. In order to subdue his frightening pangs of amour he must demonize the young girl to the point of absurdity. This made me think of Cervantes' Don Quijote and Edgar Allen Poe's "Telltale Heart" and "The Black Cat." 'Izz al-Din al-Madani's "The Tale of the Lamp" was a sort of "the emperor has no clothes." In Muhammad Shukri's "The Night and the Sea" a woman whose impoverished fate forced her into prostitution curses her circumstances vis-a-vis one of her favorite clients: "He would finish his university studies and graduate as a philosophy teacher. He would have another woman, while she continued to sleep with men she didn't love." Salwa Bakr's "Ancestral Hair" deals with a middle aged woman who's been dealt a bad hand by fate and befriends a lonely woman her mother's age who's content with her lot in life.
All of these very short stories seem to pack a powerful message, a few of them were a bit difficult to understand. I would say that what makes this collection unique is it that even though it is narrowed down to a language, period, and genre it is still very eclectic. The other collections of Arabic short stories tend to be focused on gender or politics, and I haven't found any that were bilingual.
My only complaints about this collection are that it came with a card insert listing about 50 mistakes strewn throughout the Arabic side of the text. The editors should have caught this before it went to press! Also, I missed out on part of the culture because the editors presume that everyone who is reading this collection is doing so to improve Arabic fluency. The footnotes on Arabic terms do not give any transliterations even though the explanations are in English.
- Reviewed by customer ID: ADUH7FZMW185H
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