The first two essays in Poets from a War Torn World are about mysticism in modern Arabic poetry. The second two essays are about literary philosophy in modern Hebrew poetry. All four essays focus on the 1960s and 1970s, a time when poets hoped that through their writings they could help bring peace to a war torn Middle East.-----Reuven Snirs introduction is in clear simple language. It provides background knowledge that will assist the general reader who has no previous knowledge of specif...

The book On Screenwriting and Love and Politics: The Screenplay “Blue Mist,” is written in an engaging literary style. It attempts to illuminate the emotions, theories, and process that go into crafting a screenplay.----As a special appendix, the book includes the authors latest full-length screenplay Blue Mist. About this screenplay, Aviva says: “I write about love and politics. My screenplays are theatrical feature films on Middle Eastern subjects. This time with my screenplay Blue Mist,...

Gifts from an Empty Suitcase and Other Short Stories: And Twenty Poems presents an array of stories and poetry about people in our turbulent, modern world that encompasses both East and West. It is a world filled with tragedy and a growing refugee population.----The fate of birds is also interwoven within these tales of human joy and sadness.----These fascinating stories are truly Gifts, and are set in Egypt, Afghanistan, Michigan and Australia. The poems often complement the stories, with...

Previously unavailable in English, Salim Barakat’s Sages of Darkness depicts Kurdish life in the period of transition from a traditional tribal existence to half-hearted modernization under the Ottomans. A saga of the lives and deaths of two Kurdish chieftains and their families, it is filled with fantasy, humor and wonder as well as tragedy and devotion to the futile, and delves into the intertwined workings of history, mythology and memory. It is a landmark of Kurdish literature...

"Mafi's luminous translation brings the Persian poet Rumi's distinctive and timeless Sufi lessons to a new audience." — Foreword ReviewsThis fresh prose translation of 105 short teaching stories by Rumi, which form the core of the six-volume Masnavi, explores the hidden spiritual aspects of everyday experience. Rumi transforms the seemingly mundane events of daily life into profound Sufi teaching moments. These prose gems transport readers to the world of t...

The story of a man undone by a culture that in part created him, Season of Migration to the North, is a powerful and evocative examination of colonization in two vastly different worlds.When a young man returns to his village in the Sudan after many years studying in Europe, he finds that among the familiar faces there is now a stranger - the enigmatic Mustafa Sa''eed. As the two become friends, Mustafa tells the younger man the disturbing story of his own life in London after the ...

The stories collected here are by leading authors of the short story form in the Middle East today. In addition to works by writers already wellknown in the West, such as Idwar al-Kharrat, Fu'ad al-Takarli and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz, the collection includes stories by key authors whose fame has hitherto been restricted to the Middle East. This bilingual reader is ideal for students of Arabic as well as lovers of literature who wish to broaden their appreciation of the work of Mi...

One Hundred Years of Solitude meets The Kite Runner in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."A contemporary tragedy of epic proportions. No author is better placed than Muhsin Al-Ramli, already a star in the Arabic literary scene, to tell this story. I read it in one sitting".Hassan Blasim, winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for The Iraqi Christ.On the third day of Ramadan, the villa...

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...

Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Translation: A collection of the Palestinian poet's work spanning his career from 1990 to 2005.Mahmoud Darwish was that rare literary phenomenon: a poet both acclaimed by critics as one of the most important poets in the Arab world and beloved by his readers. His language—lyrical and tender—helped to transform modern Arabic poetry into a living metaphor for the universal experiences of exile, loss, and identity. The poems in ...

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...

Wry, satirical and bawdy, Tamer's stories are always informed by his dark view of humanity and of Syrian society in particular. Through these glimpses of corrupt, fearful lives under a violent dictatorship, it is possible to discern echoes of the storm that has brought Syria to near-disintegration. Tamer's stories explore taboos and power relations, bringing together religion, politics and sexuality (often all at once) and implying that these forms of oppression are connected. An assault i...