A Selection of Modern Arab Writing
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The Smiles of the Saints:
Ibrahim Farghali (Author), Andy Smart (Translator), Nadia Fouda-Smart (Translator)

Told through the voices of a group of close friends and spanning a generation, Smiles of the Saints is an epic story condensed into a short, intricate novel. Twenty-year-old Hanin has just returned to Egypt after an absence of fifteen years spent mostly in a Parisian boarding school, cut off from all family save for sporadic visits from her father, Rami. She has been summoned back by her fathers twin sister, who gives her an envelope containing his diaries, the last section of which is missing. Reading Ramis account of the passionate love affairs and tortured spiritual adventures of his youth, Hanin begins to unravel the riddle of a family she has barely known.

Herself the child of a Muslim-Christian marriage, Hanin, in love with a Jewish man, is considering adding a further religious dimension to her family. But someone is carefully watching the proceedings a figure from the past who was once deeply involved with Hanins family. Who exactly is this, and what stake does he have in Hanins return?

Couched in a pervasive air of mystery, Ibrahim Farghalis novel is ripe with resonant observations on the complexities of human entanglements.

About the Author
IBRAHIM FARGHALI was born in Mansoura in the Nile Delta in 1967, and grew up in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. He has written two collections of short stories and two novels. He is a journalist with the Cairo daily newspaper al-Ahram.


Feuillles de narcisse (Broché)   de Somaya Ramadan (en Francais)

Une jeune Egyptienne partie étudier en Irlande sombre rapidement dans la "folie". Mais l'exil de l'héroïne est intérieur autant que physique et son sentiment d'étrangeté aussi vif ici que là-bas. Dès l'enfance, dans une famille bourgeoise et feutrée, Kimi est hantée par la peur de ne pas savoir se tenir dans les cadres du conte de fées que l'on a soigneusement tracés pour elle. Avec le temps et la distance, le fossé se creuse entre elle et son monde "familier", entre les attentes de son entourage et ce qu'elle est devenue... Quand elle finit par rentrer chez elle, sa mère, lointaine, comme retranchée derrière une paroi de verre, refuse de voir la dérive cauchemardesque de sa fille. Seule Amna, la nourrice que l'on dit "stupide" et "têtue comme une mule", a gardé un lien d'intimité avec elle. Analphabète, elle lui tend la clef d'une autre mythologie, orale et populaire, qu'elle fiait résonner avec les mythes grecs et la littérature irlandaise, britannique ou autres, dont elle est pétrie. Le roman s'ouvre et se termine par l'expression "peut-être", qui ponctue aussi le fil éclaté de la narration : une multitude de points de vue, de séquences et de flash-back disloqués qui s'entrecroisent, comme autant de fragments de feuilles écrites, déchirées, récrites..

This book was our readers club selection for June 2002. For more information on the book and its author go to: http://www.arabworldbooks.com/Readers2002/june.htm


Layla, An Egyptian Woman
by Fawzia Assaad, Melissa Marcus (Translator) Price: $16.96 Click on title to buy

A somewhat autobiographical novel about a Christian Coptic girl growing up inCairo and her family spanning the British occupation to the Arab Israeli War.

This novel features several women characters from different backgrounds andportrays their traditions and their urge for change.The images of the past arecaught in everyday's life, the ancient myth of the Enemy brothers perpetuatesitself throughout the dramatic events of the Arab Israeli war narrated withthat Egyptian brand of humour that heals the wounds of repeated occupations.

The Lives Of Rain   
by Nathalie Handal
Shortlisted for the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize/Pitt Poetry Series.
Foreword by Carolyn Forche Price: $10.20 Click on title to buy

The Lives of Rain is a book of exile and wandering, geographically and emotionally. In it are wars, loves, scars, ancestors. In it are olive trees, lemon trees, weddings, music, fear. In it are English, French, Arabic, Spanish, “the breath of cities,” the blue hour of a woman's body. Nathalie Handal is a poet for our time of crisis and need, for our awakening sense of the battles of eros and thanatos in our world.

From the Foreword by Carolyn Forche
"In The Lives of Rain, Nathalie Handal has brought forth a work of radical displacement and uncertainty, moving continent to continent, giving voice to Palestinians of the diaspora in the utterance of one fiercely awake and compassionate, who, against warfare, occupation and brutality offers her native language, olives, wind, a herd of sheep or a burning mountain, radio music, a butterfly's gaze...Handal is a poet of deftly considered paradoxes and reversals, sensory evocations and mysteries left beautifully unresolved. Hers is a language seared by history and marked by the impress of extremity; so it is suffused with a rare species of wisdom."

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