What I am interested in, says Abdullah Hussein, is how people survive. How they invent ways and means of dealing with their situation in given circumstances and what happens to them in the course of it, how they stand of fall. All writers, I believe, are interested in modes of survival.This collection includes three long short stories—Night, The Little Brook and The Sea—all examining, in one way or the other, the limits of human endurance.In language that abounds in rich, sensuous imagery, Ab...

"The undisputed master of the modern Indian short story." —Salman RushdieStories encircling the marginalized, forgotten lives of Bombay, set against the backdrop of the India-Pakistan Partition.By far the most comprehensive collection of stories by this twentieth century master available in English.A master of the short story, Saadat Hasan Manto opens a window onto Bombay's demimonde—its prostitutes, rickshaw drivers, artists, and s...

Winner of the Booker prize and twice winner of the Booker of Bookers, Midnight's Children is "one of the most important books to come out of the English-speaking world in this generation" (New York Review of Books). Reissued for the 40th anniversary of the original publication--with a new introduction from the author--Salman Rushdie's widely acclaimed novel is a masterpiece in literature.Saleem Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight on August 15,...

'A comfortable chair and a Mary Stewart: total heaven. I'd rather read her than most other authors.' Harriet EvansLegend has it that when the Gabriel Hounds run howling over the crumbling palace of Dar Ibrahim, high in the Adonis Valley of Lebanon, death will follow on their heels. When rich, spoilt Christie Mansel arrives at the decaying palace to look after her eccentric Aunt Harriet, she arrives to the sound of howling dogs. The palace is riddled with hidden pas...

By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature**'Demands to be read and reread, for its humour, generosity of spirit and clear-sighted vision'**Evening Standard'Gurnah zooms in on individual acts of violence ... and unexpected acts of kindness' Daily Telegraph________________________Demoralised by small persecutions and the squalor and poverty of his life, Daud takes refuge in his imagi...

LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding debut novel about the trailblazing Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad, who defied society’s expectations to find her voice and her destiny“A complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people, a reminder of the power and purpose of art, and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out.”—The New York Times Book Review(Editors’ Cho...

A young Egyptian woman clashes with her traditional family when she chooses a career in medicine. Rather than submit to an arranged marriage and motherhood, she cuts her hair short and works fiercely to realise her dreams. At medical school, she begins to understand the mysteries of the human body. After years of denying her own desires, the doctor begins a series of love affairs that allow her to explore her sexuality – on her own terms. Written in her twenties when Nawal El Saadawi was s...

Witty, acerbic, insightful musings from Robert Dessaix, one of Australia's finest writers.One Sunday night in Sydney, Robert Dessaix collapses in a gutter in Darlinghurst, and is helped to his hotel by a kind young man wearing a T-shirt that says FUCK YOU. What follows are weeks in hospital, tubes and cannulae puncturing his body, as he recovers from the heart attack threatening daily to kill him.While lying in the hospital bed, Robert chances upon Philip L...

Rumi is regarded by many as the world's greatest poet. This selection by Arthur Scholey provides a taster of Rumi's great work. Here are stories plucked from friends and folk tales and real life, embodying Sufi wisdom, kindness, courtesy and candour.

Winner of the EBRD Literature Prize 2018. Istanbul is a city of a million cells, and every cell is an Istanbul unto itself.After a military coup, four prisoners - the doctor, Demirtay the student, Kamo the barber and Uncle Kuheylan - sit below the ancient streets of Istanbul awaiting their turn at the hands of their wardens. Between violent interrogations, the condemned share parables and riddles about their beloved city to pass the time. From their retelling of stories, both real and imag...

Khartoum, according to one theory, takes its name from the Beja word hartooma, meaning meeting place . Geographically, culturally and historically, the Sudanese capital is certainly that: a meeting place of the Blue and White Niles, a confluence of Arabic and African histories, and a destination point for countless refugees displaced by Sudan s long, troubled history of forced migration.In the pages of this book the first major anthology of Sudanese stories to be translated into En...

Naguib Mahfouz's haunting novella of post-revolutionary Egypt combines a vivid pychological portrait of an anguished man with the suspense and rapid pace of a detective story.After four years in prison, the skilled young thief Said Mahran emerges bent on revenge. He finds a world that has changed in more ways than one. Egypt has undergone a revolution and, on a more personal level, his beloved wife and his trusted henchman, who conspired to betray him to the police, are now married...