We were beside ourselves. My head reeled, as if I’d had too much to drink. I took the novels out of the suitcase one by one, opened them, studied the portraits of the authors, and passed them on to Luo. Brushing them with the tips of my fingers made me feel as if my pale hands were in touch with human lives.
- an extract from "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" by Dai Sijie (China, born 1954)
Kamila is nine years old when she is taken from the poverty of her childhood village in southern Lebanon to Beirut. She has never learned to read o...
A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul's Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer - and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out...
No matter how hard Rachid tries to recreate himself, to become educated and wordly – to ‘learn English’ – it is im...
“They Die Strangers”, a novella and thirteen short stories, is the first full-length work of the distinguished Yemeni writer Mohammad A...
A husband seeks his wife’s lover who has vanished in the turbulence of Israel’s Yom Kippur War. As his quest unfolds and intensifies, t...
When her father dies, Touba – a smart and spiritual fourteen year old – proposes for financial reasons to a middle-aged man. Miserably ...
