Sardines and Oranges: Short Stories from North Africa

Edited by Peter Clark (London: Banipal Books, 2005)

Description: The short stories in this anthology come from Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia. There are 26 in all, and as editor Peter Clark states in his introduction to the anthology, “The stories in this selection are part of the modern, multi-cultural world. Pain, hardship, heartache, humor, identity, joy, loss, lack of power, and strategies for survival, are universal themes and all are represented here in tough stories that seem rooted in the author’s experiences, regardless of nationality and generation.”

 

Being Abbas El Abd

By Ahmed Alaidy (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2006)

Description (from book cover): The narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo—in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads and navigates the city’s social life with tolerable efficiency, and is ever ready with a withering response. Lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters that are both elusive, disturbing and profound.

Endings

By Abd al-Rahman Munif (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2007)

Description (from Publishers Weekly): The late Saudi novelist Munif (1933 - 2004) sets this timeless tale within an Arabic desert village struck by drought and doomed by the thoughtlessness of its inhabitants. Told in the omniscient voice of a storyteller familiar with this ancient land and its people, the tale involves a hunter from the village of al-Tiba, 'Assaf, who acts as the Cassandra of the village, warning of the coming drought and urging the people to learn sustainable hunting methods. A series of folktales follow, encapsulating the relationship between man and nature, and juxtaposing the inhabitants' anxiety over their ancestors' increasingly unsustainable land against the collective pipe dream of modernization, represented by plans for a dam.