under the naked sky: short stories from the arab worldDrawing on an intimate knowledge of modern Arabic writing, Denys Johnson-Davies brings together in this collection a colorful mosaic of life as lived and portrayed by Arabs from Morocco to Iraq. From a diverse area of the world with the common factor of a written language, these thirty stories tell of an old Moroccan peasant woman who kills snakes; an Iraqi soldier who returns home as a stranger after years as a prisoner-of-war; a repairer of lost virginities in a Tunisian village; a typically Mahfouzian start to a train journey; the steamy meeting of two women and a cat at the height of an Iraqi summer; the ill-fated attraction of a boy to a magical bird in the Tuareg deserts of Libya; and a novel way of hunting ducks in the Nile Delta. The purveyors of this strange and delightful cornucopia of fictions include Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, Gamal al-Ghitani, and Mohamed El-Bisatie from Egypt; Fuad al-Takarli and Mohamed Khudayyir from Iraq; Zakaria Tamer from Syria; Hanan al-Shaykh from Lebanon; and Ibrahim al-Kouni from Libya. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
The Pilot | 7 |
The IllOmened Golden Bird | 14 |
Copyright | |
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Abdul Magid Abu Abduh Antara ibn Shaddad Arab world Arabic arette asked Baghdad began bird body breasts breath café Cairo chest child close corncobs Dahma darkness Denys Johnson-Davies djinn door dream empty eyes face father fear feeling feet felt fingers frightened front gallabiya GAMAL AL-GHITANI gave girl glass grandfather ground hair Hanan al-Shaykh hand happened hashish head hear heard husband Hyksos Ibrahim inside laugh leave light living lodger looked lying Manal milaya mother moved Mustafa Naguib Mahfouz neck night novel piasters Radwan Rebab seated short stories silent sleep smell smile snake souk stairs standing staring stop street talk things told took translated turned Umm Abduh voice volumes of short waiting walked wall What's wife window woman women Yusuf Idris Zakaria Tamer Zarifa