A classic work of fiction from Edwar al-Kharrat, who has been described by Doris Lessing

The year is 1970, a period of crisis in the Arab world. Twenty-year-old Hisham has left home for the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh, where he's enrolled at university to study politics and economics. But this city has more than academic qualifications to offer a man of Hisham's mettle, and he soon discovers a strange underworld of alcohol and prostitution where fear, pleasure and politics merge. Here hospitals prove the richest cruising grounds; the desert is the place for illicit couplings; and now Hisham is spying on the bedroom activities of his next-door neighbour's wife, who has taken...

This introduction to modern Arabic literature, from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st, develops themes such as the interaction of the classical Arabic literary tradition (and, to a lesser extent, the parallel oral tradition) with literary forms derived from the West.

This introduction to modern Arabic literature, from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st, develops themes such as the interaction of the classical Arabic literary tradition (and, to a lesser extent, the parallel oral tradition) with literary forms derived from the West.

This book provides an introduction not only to the works of Sun'Allah Ibrahim, but also, more generally, to the modern literature of Egypt (and elsewhere in the Arab world) over a 40-year period, in its social, historical and political setting.