Zakariyya Tamir is Syria's foremost writer of short stories, and his works are widely read across the Arab world. In this, the first English language monograph on Tamir's entire oeuvre, Alessandro Columbu examines Tamir's literary development in the context of changing political contexts, from his beginnings as a short story writer on local magazines in the late 1950s until the Syrian revolution of 2011. Thus, the movements from independence and Western-inspired modernisation to the rise of nationalism and socialism; war, defeat, occupation in the 1960s; the emergence of authoritarianism and the cult of personality of Hafiz al-Assad in the 1970s are charted in the context of Tamir's works. Therein, the significance of masculinity and patriarchy and its changing nature in relation to nationalism and authoritarianism are revealed as Tamir's foremost vehicles for social and political critique. The role of female sexuality and its disrupting/empowering nature vis-a-vis patriarchal institutions is also explored, as is the question of literary commitment and the relationship between authors and the authoritarian regime of Syria; homosexuality and representations of unconventional sexualities in general.

Set in the Syrian neighborhood of al-Qaweyq, Sour Grapes is a collection of fifty-nine wry, satirical short stories loosely connected by a cast of rotating characters living at society’s margins. Tamer captures their everyday lives, weaving the attendant cruelties and ironies of living under an oppressive regime with the residents’ irreverence and small acts of defiance. Inspired by the heroines of Arab mythology, the women of al-Qaweyq navigate the patriarchal community with brash confidence and dark humor while the younger generation of children inherit a bitter cynicism from their fathers. Evoking under-ripened and immature fruit, the collection’s title serves as a bittersweet metaphor for a world that possesses the seeds of change but is unprepared for the harvest. Considered a master of the short story, Zakaria Tamer is one of the Arab world’s most prominent and widely read writers. Columbu and Capallera’s fluid translation gives English readers access to Tamer’s original and provocative voice

Situated in the fields of contemporary literary and cultural studies, the ten essays collected in Generations of Dissent shed light on the artistic creativity, cultural production, intellectual movements, and acts of political dissidence across the Middle East and North Africa. Born of the contributors' research on dissidence and state co-option in a variety of artistic and creative fields, the volume's core themes reflect the notion that the recent Arab uprisings did not appear in a cultural, political, or historical vacuum. Rather than focus on how protestors "finally" broke the walls of fear created by authoritarian regimes in the region, these essays show that the uprisings were rooted in multiple generations and various acts of resistance decades prior to 2010-11. Firat and Taleghani's volume maps the complicated trajectories of artistic and creative dissent across time and space, showing how artists have challenged institutions and governments over the past six decades.