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Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah brings to life a story that can never
again be lost in time after a single line in Aramaic on a tombstone
fired his imagination. This inspiring epic poem awakens two
extraordinary lovers, Barates, a Syrian from Palmyra, and Regina,
the Celtic slave he freed and married, from where they have lain at
rest beside Hadrian's Wall for eighteen centuries, and tells their
unique story. Barates' elegy to his beloved wife, who died young at
30, is, however, not about mythologizing history. With the poet
himself an exile in Britain for 40 years from his birthplace of
Damascus, the poem forges new connections with today, linking
al-Jarrah's personal journey with that of his ancient forebear
Barates, who resisted slavery with love. Barates' Eastern song also
questions whether the young Celtic fighters, the Tattooed Ones,
were really barbarians, as they emerged from forest mists to defend
their hills and rivers and their way of life from the Romans, and
died or lay wounded at the twisting stone serpent that was
Hadrian's Wall.
Poetry is the quintessence of Arab culture. In this book one of
today's foremost Arab poets reinterprets a rich and ancient
heritage. He examines the oral tradition of the pre-Islamic poetry
of Arabia and the relationship between Arabic poetry and the
Qur'an, and between poetry and thought. He also assesses the
challenges of modernism and the impact of Western culture on the
Arab poetic tradition. Stimulating in their originality, eloquent
in their treatment of a wide range of poetry and criticism, these
reflections open up fresh perspectives on one of the world's
greatest--and least explored--literatures.
Rebelling against the contraints of family and society, a young
Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman
in a class of men. Her encounters with the other students mdash; as
well as the male and female corpses in the autopsy room intensify
her dissatisfaction with and search for identity. She realizes men
are not gods as her mother had taught her, that science cannot
explain everything, and that she cannot be satisfied by living a
life purely of the mind. After a brief and unhappy marriage, she
throws herself into her work, becoming a successful physician, but
at the same time, she becomes aware of injustice and hypocrisy in
society. Fulfillment and love come to her at last in a wholly
unexpected way. ". . . Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal el
Saadawi, one of the leading Egyptian feminist writers, reveals the
contradictions embedded in women's self-oppressive struggle against
patriarchy." Khadidiatau Gueye, Research in African Literatures
(Indiana University Press) Nawal el Saadawi, born in 1931 in Kafr
Tahla, Egypt, is an Egyptian physician, psychiatrist, author, and
activist. She is the founder and president of the Arab Women's
Solidarity Association and co-founder of the Arab Association for
Human Rights. In 2004 she won the North-South Prize from the
Council of Europe. In 2005 she won the inana International Prize in
Belgium. In 2010 she won the Sean MacBride Peace Prize from the
International Peace Bureau. She has written and published other
novels, memoirs, plays, non-fiction, and short stories including
Woman at Point Zero , The Hidden Face of Eve, and The Fall of the
Imam.
This reader consists of the full Arabic text of 11 carefully chosen
and very readable short stories by established Egyptian, Iraqi,
Syrian and Jordanian writers. The earliest story, written in 1929,
is by the Egyptian Mahmud Tahir Lashin; the most recent by the
Iraqi writer, Fuad al-Takarli, written in 1972. Each story has an
introduction, in English, with biographical information about the
author, placing him in his literary context, a description of the
contents and a brief analysis of the story itself. In addition,
each story is accompanied by a critical literary analysis. The aim
of this collection is to encourage a literary appreciation of
modern Arabic texts, and an understanding of some of the cultural
conflicts reflected in the writings. This title includes writers
such as Yusuf Idris, Idwar El Kharrat, Yahya Haqqi, Zakariyya Tamir
and Ghalib Halasa. It is ideal for students of Arabic language and
literature
This is the first critical monograph on Iraqi fiction, looking at
the novel's coming of age in the 1950s Catherine Cobham and Fabio
Caiani look in depth at a focussed number of authors who started
writing in Iraq in or around the 1950s to explore a pivotal moment
in Iraqi novel writing. In these writers' work, a transition is
made from fiction that was mainly concerned with political and
social matters to one which, while remaining engaged with society,
is formally more adventurous and technically more mature. It fills
a gap in the existing research in English on modern Arabic prose
literature, which has barely begun to address the work of Iraqi
novelists. It focuses on Gha'ib Tu'ma Farman (1927-1990), Mahdi Isa
al-Saqr (1927-2006) and Fu'ad al-Takarli (1927-2008), plus a
selection of works by Mahmud Ahmad al-Sayyid, Dhu al-Nun Ayyub and
Abd al-Malik Nuri. It places authors in their literary - historical
and socio-political context to show how external factors shaped the
fiction of the time.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, Naguib Mahfouz is perhaps the best-known living Arab writer. His books have had great success in this country, particularly The Cairo Trilogy. Fans of the famed trilogy will be delighted with The Harafish, an epic novel that chronicles the dramatic history of the al-Nagi family -- a family that moves, over many generations, from the height of power and glory to the depths of decadence and decay. The Harafish begins with the tale of Ashur al-Nagi, a man who grows from humble beginnings to become a great leader, a legend among his people. Generation after generation, however, Ashur's descendants grow further from his legendary example. They lose touch with their origins as they amass and then squander large fortunes, marry prostitutes when they marry at all, and develop rivalries that end in death. The community's upper class keeps a watchful eye on the descendants of al-Nagi for fear of losing their privileges, but they find no threat of another such as Ashur. Not, that is, until the al-Nagi who, like his noble ancestor, finds his power once again from among The Harafish, or the common people. Through the strength of their numbers and their passion, the glory of the name of al-Nagi is restored. "Of all [Mahfouz's] experiments in recent decades, this is the one which owes least to western inspiration and is probably the most successful. The Harafish, fluently translated by Catherine Cobham, makes accessible and engrossing reading." -- The Washington Post Book World.
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