Books
For those unaccustomed to witnessing the daily, random bombardments of cities during a bloody conflict like the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, it would be hard to imagine the lives of those who actually endured those experiences. The novel “A Portal in Space” (Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin, 2015), by Mahmoud Saeed, allows readers to feel, share, and interact with the ordinary people living in war-plagued Basra, Iraq. You cannot help but feel connected to the characters as they struggle to cope with their worries, fears, and despair.
Diaspora Arab Women Writers: The Legacy of Shahrazad and Female Infanticide
‘Life without a Recipe’: The Ingredients of a Multicultural Life
Broken Dreams: Love, Corruption, and the Plight of Foreign Workers in Israel
Murder Under the Bridge, a Palestine Mystery
By Kate Jessica Raphael
She Writes Press, 2015
Kate Jessica Raphael describes her novel, “Murder Under the Bridge, a Palestine Mystery,” as “the product of my imagination and experience – the experience and imagination of a white, Jewish American who spent around eighteen months in Palestine, with brief forays into Israel.” Her cast of characters also crosses the green line in the pursuit of love, which results in grave consequences. The mystery opens with the discovery of t
Dying to Reach Europe: The African Immigrant Crisis
By Aisha K. Nasser
African Titanics
By Abu Bakr Khaal
Translated by Charis Bredin
Darf Publishers Ltd, 2014.
(First published in Arabic by Dar al Saqi, London, 2008.)
Media accounts normalize the tally of illegal African immigrants drowning while crossing the Mediterranean. Eritrean novelist Abu Bakr Khaal disrupts this false sense of normality by giving voices to these immigrants.
Section
Tawfiq al-Hakim: Foretelling the Youth Revolution
The Revolt of the Young: Essays by Tawfiq al-Hakim
Translated by Mona Radwan
Syracuse UP, 2015, 145 pp.
Syrian Booknotes
Ghostly Performances: Arab-American ‘Otherness’ and Haunted Stereotypes
Sin, Redemption, and Visions of Female Illness in Modern Arab Literature
The Female Suffering Body, Illness and Disability in Modern Arabic Literature
By Abir Hamdar
By Abir Hamdar