An old fisherman of unknown origin arrives in a black boat. Taciturn and enigmatic, he takes on a woman and her twin boys. While he gives away nothing about his past, his undemanding companionship prompts the woman to narrate her turbulent life. Meanwhile, in a nearby village by the lake, Gomaa and his wife have found respite from the dreariness of their existence in the fantastic objects the sea churns up during gales. But when the waves cast up a chest that speaks in a language no one can comprehend, Gomaa is haunted by its voice. As the tumult of the lake drives a wedge between the couple, it turns two neighbors into close allies. But Karawia and Afifi too will be haunted by the siren song of the lake.In this lyrical novel, the stories of these various figures converge on the mercurial presence of the lake, which in the end proves the narrative's true hero. Clamor of the Lake won the 1995 Cairo International Book Fair Award for Best Novel of the Year.

The articles in Alif 37 address the intersection of literature and journalism, in a wide variety of Arabophone, Francophone, Anglophone, and Latin American contexts, analyzing the literary in relation to an array of journalistic genres and forums, including the interview, investigative journalism, the questionnaire, the blogosphere, creative non-fiction and reportage, literary websites, cultural periodicals, the autobiographical essay, and writers' opinion articles. Complemented by the testimonies of two journalist-litt rateurs and an interview with an artist-poet-art critic, the studies present fresh aspects of Arab literary modernity, litt rature engag e, the politics of reception and translation in cultural journalism, canon-formation in relation to journalism, the journalistic delineation of a literary generation's profile, gender and censorship of creative writers, and revolution and civil strife.