A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab worldsleading woman novelist, about four women copingwith the insular, oppressive society of an unnameddesert state."

Zahra s mother uses her as a cover for her meetings with a lover; Zahra s strict father mistreats her for being complicit in her mother s affair. Fleeing from Beirut in search of solace, Zahra stays with her uncle in West Africa and then uses marriage as another kind of escape. Back in Beirut, love finally comes to her, but with terrible consequences. Banned in several Middle Eastern countries since its original publication, The Story of Zahra is an intoxicating, provocative story of a young woman s coming of age in a city torn apart by war."

With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Beirut Blues, published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level.
The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In Beirut...

In a masterly act of literary transformation, celebrated novelist Hanan al-Shaykh re-creates the dramatic life and times of her mother, Kamila.
Married at a young age against her will, Kamila soon fell head-over-heels in love with another man--and was thus forced to choose between her children and her lover. As the narrative unfolds through the years--from the bazaars, cinemas and apartments of 1930s Beirut to its war-torn streets decades later--we follow this passionate woman as she survives the tragedies and celebrates the triumphs of a life lived to the very fullest.

Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across the Arab world, the mesmerizing stories of One Thousand and One Nights are related by the beautiful, young Shahrazad as she attempts to delay her execution. Retold in modern English by the acclaimed Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, here are stories of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Bringing together nineteen classic tales, in these pages al-Shaykh weaves an utterly intoxicating collection, rich with humor, violence, and...