Modern Arabic Short Stories: A Bilingual Reader [Arabic]

This is the perspective of reading the book in Arabic from a native English speaker: How do I describe a collection of short stories like this? Clearly, it is impossible to doubt the quality of the stories, each of which was interesting and entertaining in its own right. My favorites were the `Tale of the Lamp' in which we see a starved traveler stumble upon a rich kingdom, and `The Night and the Sea' which painted a bleak but moving picture with its rich descriptions and overwhelming emotions. Unfortunately, the beautiful use of language means that the language is also suitably hard. Devilishly hard. Consider the first sentence of the first (supposedly easiest) story: They claimed, and god knows it was true, that it was a year of drought, famine, misery, hunger and starvation, god preserve us all. P. 18 Or this sentence from Naguib Mahfouz's short story about Siamese twins: They would clash in a vortex of fiery and crazed outbursts. A raging wave would emerge from the depths, removing any sense of shame while impetuosity superseded regret. P. 126 I would like to think of myself as an advanced student, despite my terrible writing, but I found many of these stories extraordinarily hard. Were it not for the translations in English these stories would have been too much to handle. I tried to read the entire Arabic story before resorting to the English translation however I found myself switching back after only a page to make sure that I understood the next section in Arabic. Also, when I showed the book to a group of Saudi friends, and as soon as one opened up the book and read the first sentence, one asked me after saying, "This stuff is hard for us too." Considering the difficulty of the texts, the structure of footnotes and translation is important. But I was disappointed by how the book placed footnotes and the end of the story, necessitating multiple bookmarks and needless page flipping. Worse, the translations did not line up with the Arabic, and often spilled over on to the next page. So reading these stories was harder than it could have been. In the end, the important thing is that there are translations, and for that this book deserves praise. But be warned, if you want to read this for its Arabic content, be prepared for a challenge.

I've been studying Arabic on my own for about 2 years. The problem is that there is so little material available that is not either religion or media (reprinted newspaper articles). I was overjoyed to find this book. The stories are pretty good (especially the Naguib Mahfouz -- sort of magical realist story about twins joined from the chest down and the dangers of getting what you thought you wanted). The translations really help you understand the Arabic text. The only thing I wish (but it's a minor complaint) is that the translations were a little more literal. Sometimes the translator veers so far into idiomatic English that it sounds odd, when the Arabic formulation was more eloquent and would have made perfect sense in English.

This excellent collection of 20th century bilingual short stories includes male and female authors from across the Arabic speaking world. The editors state that they deliberately tried to find stories that had yet to be translated into English. The editors give a brief biography of each author including their religious, political views, and class background. This book is very recent, published this year. The stories range from five to 15 pages in length. They deal with a variety of topics whose common denominator is human folly and foible. One of my favorites was an excerpt from Ibrahim al-Faqih's The Book of the Dead in which a middle aged teacher has his fragile existence turned upside down by the sudden appearance of a female student in his all boys school. In order to subdue his frightening pangs of amour he must demonize the young girl to the point of absurdity. This made me think of Cervantes' Don Quijote and Edgar Allen Poe's "Telltale Heart" and "The Black Cat." 'Izz al-Din al-Madani's "The Tale of the Lamp" was a sort of "the emperor has no clothes." In Muhammad Shukri's "The Night and the Sea" a woman whose impoverished fate forced her into prostitution curses her circumstances vis-a-vis one of her favorite clients: "He would finish his university studies and graduate as a philosophy teacher. He would have another woman, while she continued to sleep with men she didn't love." Salwa Bakr's "Ancestral Hair" deals with a middle aged woman who's been dealt a bad hand by fate and befriends a lonely woman her mother's age who's content with her lot in life. All of these very short stories seem to pack a powerful message, a few of them were a bit difficult to understand. I would say that what makes this collection unique is it that even though it is narrowed down to a language, period, and genre it is still very eclectic. The other collections of Arabic short stories tend to be focused on gender or politics, and I haven't found any that were bilingual. My only complaints about this collection are that it came with a card insert listing about 50 mistakes strewn throughout the Arabic side of the text. The editors should have caught this before it went to press! Also, I missed out on part of the culture because the editors presume that everyone who is reading this collection is doing so to improve Arabic fluency. The footnotes on Arabic terms do not give any transliterations even though the explanations are in English.