Arabic Short Stories — Denys Johnson-Davies

An alleyway of Tangier as seen through the eyes of a prostitute, the price paid by a sophisticated Cairene philanderer for his infatuation with a young bedouin girl, the callous treatment a young wife receives from the man to whom she has been married. These are some of the themes of the twenty-four stories in this volume, each by a different author and rendered into English by one of the finest translators of Arabic fiction. Among the authors represented are Edward El-Kharrat, Bahaa Taher, Alifa Rifaat, and Ghassan Kanafani. Through the eyes of insiders, these stories show us the intimate texture of life throughout the diverse countries and cultures of the Arabic world.