Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> World Literature - Middle East - Egypt & North Africa

The Puppet, a mythic tale of greed and political corruption, traces the rise, flourishing, and demise of a Saharan oasis community. Aghulli, a noble if obtuse man who has been chosen leader of the oasis, hankers after the traditional nomadic pastoralist life of the Tuareg. He sees commerce (understood as including trade in gold, marriage, agriculture, and even recreation) as the prime culprit in the loss of the nomadic ethos. Thus he is devastated to learn that his supporters are hoarding gold.

The novel's title notwithstanding, the author has stressed repeatedly that he...

Set in the High Atlas in pre-modern Morocco, Moon and Henna Tree chronicles the rise and fall of a local potentate, Hmmu. Not content with the territory left to him upon his father's death, Hmmu, under the influence of his scheming advisor, Ibn al-Zara, begins a campaign to acquire those lands that adjoin his, either through marriage or physical force.

Ahmed Toufiq's subtle investigation of the abuse of power and its effects on those who suffer under its tyranny also provides a unique look at Amazigh (Berber) culture. While most of Toufiq's contemporaries focus on modern...

Set in a small village in the Egyptian Delta, El-Bisatie's finely tuned novella illustrates the social and sexual tensions in a community in which nothing is secret and where people's pasts haunt their present.

When Mussad catches the butcher's son Amer with his wife, the whole village knows and waits with bated breath for Mussad to exact his revenge. But something goes wrong. Mussad's ill-planned schemes are choked by an opaque veil of history--his wife's sexual past, the war-torn lives of their families, and the personal allegiances of his friends and enemies. The village women...