Contributors: Su'ad Abdul-Khabeer, Sham-e-Ali al-Jamil, Samina Ali, Sarah Eltantawi, Yousra Y. Fazili, Suheir Hammad, Mohja Kahf, Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, Asra Q. Nomani, Manal Omar, Khalida Saed, Asia Sharif-Clark, Khadijah Sharif-Drinkard, Aroosha Zoq...

Sait Faik may well be named "the Turkish Chekhov." In Turkey, critics and readers regard him as their finest short story writer. Since his death in 1954 at the age of forty-eight, his stature has grown on the strength of his narrative art, which is both realistic and whimsical with a poetic touch. Suha Oguzertem, a premier authority on Turkish fiction, writes in his introduction to Sleeping in the Forest that "As an anti-bourgeois writer and fierce democrat, Sait Faik has always sided with the underdog" and that no characters remain " 'common' or 'ordinary' once they enter Sait Faik's...

Thanks to these generous donors for making the publication of the books in this series possible: Lloyd E. Cotsen; The Maurice Amado Foundation; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Tales from the Sephardic Dispersion begins the most important collection of Jewish folktales ever published. It is the first volume in Folktales of the Jews, the five-volume series to be released over the next several years, in the tradition of Louis Ginzberg's classic, Legends of the Jews.

The 71 tales here and the others in this series...

This indispensible guide to modern Arabic literature in English translation features not only a comprehensive bibliography but also chapters on fiction, drama, poetry, and autobiography, as well as a special chapter on Iraq's Arabic literature. By focusing on Najib Mahfuz, one of Arabic Literature's luminaries, and on poetry--a major, if not the major genre of the region-- Altoma assesses the progress made towards a wider reception of Arabic writing throughout the western world.

A goldsmith's daughter who eludes the Prince of Darkness, three wandering brothers born from a walnut tree, the Princess of Fantasistan, the case of the Shah's lost ruby ring, the leopard and the Sultan's emissary, the Cook and the Unforgettable Sneeze... These are just some of the enchanting stories described in Tales from the Bazaars of Arabia, a collection of classic folktales gathered from Arabia, Afghanistan, Persia and Turkey. Each story is alive with vivid characters - beggars and kings, merchants, witches and djinns - and threaded with universal motifs of fantasy and magic,...

Mowlana Jalaludin Balkhi, known also as Rumi was born in Balkh, Afghanistan in 1206 AD. His father Bahaudin-walad, the most prestigious scholar of Khurasan decided to leave Balkh and move to Konya, Turkey just before the Mongolian invasion of Islamic countries in 1221 AD.

The story begins with Jalaludin's childhood when he was joyfully playing with his friends in the reed beds in the...

Leila Sebbar's novel recounts an event in French history that has been hidden for many years. Toward the end of the Algerian war, the FLN, an Algerian nationalist party, organized a demonstration in Paris to oppose a curfew imposed upon Algerians in France. About 30,000 Algerians gathered peacefully, but the protest was brutally suppressed by the Paris police. Between 50 and 200 Algerians were killed and their bodies were thrown into the Seine. This incident provides the background for a more intimate look into the history of violence between France and Algeria. Following three young...

This book introduces Western readers to some of the most significant novels written in Arabic since 1979. Despite their contribution to the development of contemporary Arabic fiction, these authors remain largely unknown to non-Arab readers.

Fabio Caiani examines the work of the Moroccan Muhammad Barrada; the Egyptian Idwar al-Kharrat; the Lebanese Ilyas Khuri and the Iraqi Fu'ad al-Takarli. Their most significant novels were published between 1979 and 2002, a period during which their work reached literary maturity. They all represent pioneering literary trends compared to...

Al-Tha'labi was a renowned Qur'anic scholar of the fifth/eleventh century, and his 'Ara'is al-majalis is arguably the finest and most widely consulted example of the Islamic qisas al-anbiya' genre.

Drawing on primary Arabic sources, Klar applies modern critical methods in order to explore the nature of al-Tha'labi's 'Ara'is al-majalis within its historical and literary context, and thereby produces a compelling examination of the stories of Noah, Job, Saul and David as portrayed in the key historiographical and folkloric texts of the medieval Islamic period. Via a close...