Mahmoud Shukair s first major publication in English translation enthralls, surprises and even shocks as one of the world s most original of storytellers excels in exposing the surreal moments in the ordinary and the mundane, the limits of human frustration and patience. Brimming with humour that ranges from the funny and the farcical, to satire and black comedy, with a painter s eye for colour and detail, Shukair s stories present a unique commentary on the power of human imagination to see beyond the particular.

Mordechai's Moustache and his Wife's Cats: and other stories

Literature & Fiction

Shukair MA, Mahmoud

Genre Fiction

Banipal Publishing

Jad El Hage's third novel (and his second written in English) is set in civil-war Lebanon. Young Adam Awad, his wife and daughter live in the remote village of his family, in the Lebanese countryside where his uncle maintains there are no vendettas and bloody feuds like in the North, no history of arms and bloodshed . He wants to restore his father s olive press house and live an idyllic life farming in peace, but it is 1976 and the civil war is closing in. The village becomes divided, but still Adam is determined to find a way to stop the escalation . . . Jad El Hage comments: The most recent of our wars began in the 1970s and ended by stages in the early 1990s, depending on how one defines beginning and end . This uncertainty characterised the entire conflict. The only certainty is that we killed each other for more than fifteen years.  Extract from The Myrtle Tree:"Our encounter was moving beyond casual chat. Murshed s throaty drawl was beginning to hit a nerve. He spoke about war like a coach about a game of football. He had the blueprints of coming battles all grafted into his brain. I dreaded pushing it any further for fear of ruining the Hakim s efforts. A trickle of sweat seeped under my arms as I began: Let me tell you, Murshed effendi, how I quit hunting. It may give you an idea how far apart we are on the issue of killing. Last winter we had two heavy snowfalls. On the morning after the second, I took my rifle and walked down to the valley. The sun was so bright off the fresh snow that you couldn t raise your eyes without sunglasses. A stunning day, one of those when your heart sings to be alive. I m stressing this weather report because it affected my mood so much. Anyway, when I saw the shadow of a bird gliding over the white slopes, I turned and fished it down in a split second. It was a blackbird who d found a morsel of food. It fell with a cry and hit a flat slab, still alive, still holding the food in its beak, panting, bleeding dark red dots onto the snow. I ll never forget its bewildered little eyes, Murshed effendi. Those eyes were saying: you wouldn t starve if you didn t kill me. So why? That day I decided to stop hunting for good. Because through the death of that blackbird, I was given a rare insight into the tragedy of another creature. And now you expect me to tear apart some animal to resurrect a killing instinct I ve consciously chosen to bury? The officer stood up, flushed. He paced the practice room, scanning the recliner, the workshop table with all its broken and mended dentures, the stove, the medicine cabinet. He seemed at a loss for words. He went to the window and stared at my uncle s back yard before turning back to me. I had no idea people like you still existed, Adam Awad. I mean no offence, but yes, there s a huge gap between us. As wide as that between reality and dreamland. I envy you this bliss. At the same time it shocks me, because it is, frankly, the bliss of ignorance.  Don t worry about offending me, Murshed effendi. But there s nothing about this war that makes me want to kill. I know I can t stop it, just don t ask me to be part of it.

The Myrtle Tree

El Hage, Jad

Literary

This title features a rich medley of tales in which the protagonists are mainly immigrants settled and settling into new countries on the other side of the world. Behind calm exteriors, and sometimes a lifetime of work, emerges passion, loss, extreme adversity and throbbing heartache.

A Retired Gentleman: and other stories

Boullata PhD, Issa J

First major poetry collection in English translation by one of the best-known and influential of contemporary Arab poets Knife Sharpener is a posthumous commemoration and celebration of Sargon Boulus in this collection of poems, written between 1991 and 2007 that he translated himself, together with an essay, "Poetry and Memory", written a few months before he died. With a Foreword by Adonis and an Introduction by Dublin poet and publisher Pat Boran, the volume includes seven pages of photographs as well as tributes from fellow poets and writers and Afterword by the publisher. Sargon Boulus was unusually influential among young Arab poets, who "found in him the father who refused to practice his patriarchy and a poet who always renewed himself in his rebellion against rhetoric . . ."[Abdo Wazen]

Knife Sharpener

Boulus, Sargon

Poetry

First poetry collection by London-based Jordanian poet in English translation by foremost Arabic poetry translator. "With his unusually wide and expressive range Amjad Nasser unites the varied facets of his experience in a discourse at once perceptive, critical, tender, and ironically comic." Alfred Corn At times a powerfully existential chronicle of exile, Shepherd of Solitude conjures a new understanding of Arab life, from war-torn Beirut, to castles in Andalusia, to Bedouin Jordan, to a London suburb. Amjad Nasser blends his Bedouin Arab heritage with European literary modernism producing an enthralling range of vivid, thoughtful and intimate poems. Shepherd of Solitude is Amjad Nasser's first English collection, translated and introduced by the foremost translator of contemporary Arabic poetry into English Khaled Mattawa, with the poems selected by poet and translator from the poet's Arabic volumes over the years 1979 to 2004.

Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems 1979-2004

Nasser, Amjad

?Prize-winning poet, essayist, dramatist and actor Ramsey Nasr, born 1974 in Rotterdam into a Palestinian-Dutch family, was voted Poet Laureate of the Netherlands in 2009. He selected the poems in Heavenly Life from his collections and works written as poet laureate. His award-winning translator, David Colmer, has dynamically recreated in English the patterns and sounds of Ramsey's inventive, bold and thoughtful poems. The collection includes a three-part poem inspired by the life of composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the title poem written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of composter Gustav Mahler’s birth, and the poem that voted Nasr into his laureate post.

Heavenly Life: Selected Poems

Nasr BA, Ramsey

A fully revised third edition in translation of this best-selling 'gem of autobiographical writing' in the Arab world, by an author who has been called 'a relentless raconteur', 'a modern Odysseus', 'the Iraqi Don Quixote'. Providentially leaving Iraq just before Saddam Hussein installs himself as President, the Assyrian boy dreams of becoming a Hollywood film-maker after his hero John Ford, but after arrest and torture in Syria - accused of being a Jewish spy on account of his name, similar treatment in Jordan, and escaping execution in Lebanon by armed militia, he eventually lands up on the streets of Paris, where he meets up with Jean Valjean and tries to escape his fate as a homeless refugee with wit, humour and amorous adventures, all the while writing the story of his childhood, his deaf-mute father Kika, and film buff Kiryakos. After all his experiences, Samuel Shimon, 'the runaway from museums', writes an urgently needed and timely 'manifesto of tolerance'. Translated from the Arabic by Christina Phillips and Piers Amodia with the author

An Iraqi in Paris

Biographies & Memoirs

Shimon, Samuel

Arts & Literature

A Boat to Lesbos, by Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah (his first collection in English translation), was written as Syrian refugees endured frightening journeys across the Mediterranean before arriving on the small island. Set out like a Greek tragedy, it is dramatic witness to the horrors and ravages they suffered, seen through the eye of history, the poetry of Sappho and the travels of Odysseus. In 2021 A Boat to Lesbos was shortlisted for the inaugural Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation.

A Boat to Lesbos: and other poems

al-Jarrah, Nouri

Tayeb Salih is internationally known for his classic novel Season of Migration to the North. With humour, wit and erudite poetic insights, Salih shows another side in this affectionate memoir of his exuberant and irrepressible friend Mansi Yousif Bastawrous, sometimes known as Michael Joseph and sometimes as Ahmed Mansi Yousif. Playing Hardy to Salih's Laurel Mansi takes centre stage among memorable 20th-century arts and political figures, including Samuel Beckett, Margot Fonteyn, Omar Sharif, Arnold Toynbee, Richard Crossman and even the Queen, but always with Salih's poet "Master" al-Mutanabbi ready with an adroit comment. "Mansi casts fresh light on the experiences and attitudes of a key generation of emigré and exiled Arab writers, thinkers and activists in the West" - Boyd Tonkin

Mansi: A Rare Man in his Own Way

Salih, Tayeb

BANIPAL 66 - TRAVELS

Yousif, Farouk

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