Love in Exile

Love In Exile

Literature & Fiction

Taher, Bahaa

Literary

Arabia Books

This prize-winning novel, the first to be written by an Algerian woman in Arabic, is concerned with Algeria's struggle against foreign domination as well as its post-independence struggle with itself and the fate of revolutionary ideals in a post-revolutionary society.The story, spanning more than four decades of Algerian history, from the 1940s to the 1980s, revolves around a love affair between Khaled, the middle-aged militant who turns to painting after losing his left arm in the struggle, and the fiction writer and young daughter of his friend the freedom fighter Si Taher, all brilliantly told through Khaled's voice.It was features such as this convincing embodiment of a male voice alongside narrative techniques in which the author subtly joins the acheivements of world literature with that of local storytelling and traditional modes of narration that particularly impressed the judges who awarded this novel the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

Memory in the Flesh

Mosteghanemi, Ahlam

The Dark Side Of Love

Rafik Schami

Murder in the Tower of Happiness

Tawfik, Mohamed M.

In Egypt a new era has dawned, but the dawn has taken an ominous turn. President Gamal Abdel Nasser has just proclaimed the first in a series of nationalization decrees, the stock exchange has shut down, and its parking attendant, Sayyid, is staring at penury. Across the street, the office of the Ministry's Supervisory Board of Administrative Organization is engulfed in an eerie silence, and the narrator, one of the two remaining fulltime occupants of that nearly defunct government office, has fallen desperately in love with the other, Doha - forceful, erudite, and a complete enigma, with a spiritual bond to the Egyptian goddess Aset. In this sophisticated, richly textured novel the author explores such themes as apathy and despair, courage and self-sacrifice, ambition and temptation, disillusionment and political faith, and, above all, commitment and betrayal.

As Doha Said

Contemporary

The Dark Side of Love

Spectres

Radwa Ashour

<p>Purposefully imitating Voltaire’s classic Candide, another dark comedy which derives its humour from life’s tragedies, Habiby’s The Secret of Saeed the Pessoptimist is a classic of Arab literature. The story of Saeed, a Palestinian who becomes a citizen of Israel, is a story of fact and fantasy, tragedy and comedy. At once a comic hero and luckless fool, his life is full of terror, aggression, resistence and heroism. As an informer for the Zionist state, Saeed’s stupidity, candour and cowardice make him more the victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, blundering from disaster to disaster, he is slowly transformed from gullible collaborator into a Palestinian intent on survival. The novel, informed by the author’s own experience in Israeli politics, is both biting and funny.</p>

The Secret Life of Saeed the Pessoptimist

Habiby, Emile

Wild Mulberries is the story of Sarah, the adolescent daughter of a Lebanese sheikh in the 1930s. Although the area has seen financial hardship because of a sharp decline in the price of silk, Sarah's father insists on raising silk worms. His rigid dedication to the traditional method of silk production angers members of the family. As a result, Sarah flees Lebanon and the pressures of her family's conservatism in search of a mother she's never known. Younes provides a textured, personal window into a country on the brink of change, and a village that is holding on to its traditions despite Western influence and economic hardships.

Wild Mulberries

Humayden Younes, Iman

<p>Even as a young man Hamid Farsi is acclaimed as a master of the art of calligraphy But as time goes by he sees that weaknesses in the Arabic language and its script limit its uses in the modern world In a secret society he works out schemes for radical reform never guessing what risks he is running</p>

The Calligrapher's Secret

Schami, Rafik

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