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The Occasional Virgin
Yvonne and Huda have come a long way. Attractive, successful and glamorous, their brilliant ascent has flung them far from Lebanon, and each other. Now it's only on their rarely snatched holidays that the friends can catch up. As they swim, drink and talk by the glittering Italian Riviera, Huda and Yvone ponder just how complicated it is to be free – and the eternal mysteries of love, sex, and getting a guy to call you back. Then, amid the glitz and chatter of London's Mayfair, a chance encounter brings their past rushing back. But Huda has a wicked trick her sleeve...
The Locust and the Bird
A richly woven and breathtaking memoir from the perspective of the author's own mother: a Radio 4 Book of the Week 'It is an extraordinarily brave act for a writer to undertake to inhabit, fully and sympathetically, the life her mother lived before she was born, particularly when her mother was no jewel of wifely virtue' J.M. Coetzee 'This is a book that wears its heart firmly on its sleeve, offering an insight into an unfamiliar culture and a cinematic love story' The Times 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 or write, though she longs to go to school. Stories, poetry and film are h...
One Thousand and One Nights
The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh 'Magical ... bursting with jinnis and mischief' Donna Tartt 'One of the finest writers of her generation' Financial Times One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad under sentence of death to King Shahrayar. Maddened by the discovery of his wife's orgies, King Shahrayar vows to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. To survive, his newest wife Shahrazad spins a web of tales each night, leaving the King in suspense when morning comes, prolonging her life for another day. Gathered from India, Persia and across the great Arab empire, these mesmerising stories tell of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Retold by Hanan al-Shaykh, One Thousand and One Nights are revealed in an intoxicating new voice.
Only in London
Four strangers meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to London: Amira, a canny Moroccan prostitute; Lamis, a 30-year old Iraqi divorcee; Nicholas, an English expert on Islamic art; and Samir, a Lebanese man who is delivering a monkey on a mission he doesn’t fully understand. Once safely on British soil, Lamis and Nicholas fall in love, Samir chases after blond British youths, and Amira reinvents herself as a princess, the better to lure clients at the best London hotels. Through the city and across cultural borders, Only in London wittily portrays the smells, sounds, and sights of London’s lively Arab neighorhoods, as well as the freedoms the city both offers and withholds from its immigrants.
I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops
Since the U.S. publication of Women of Sand and Myrrh--which has now sold more than 35,000 copies and was selected as one of the Fifty Best Books of 1992 by Publishers Weekly--Hanan al-Shaykh has attracted an ever larger following for her dazzling tales of contemporary Arab women. In these seventeen short stories--eleven of which are appearing in English for the first time--al-Shaykh expands her horizons beyond the boundaries of Lebanon, taking us throughout the Middle East, to Africa, and finally to London. Stylistically diverse, her stories are often about the shifting and ambiguous power relationships between different cultures--as well as between men and women. Often compared to both Margaret Atwood and Margaret Drabble, Hanan al-Shaykh is "a gifted and courageous writer" (Middle Eastern International).
One Thousand and One Nights
One of the world's great folk story-cycles adapted for the stage by leading theatre maker Tim Supple, from the stories written by the seminal Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. This unique edition will unlock the ancient tales for a new generation of readers and performers. Written by Arabic writers from tales gathered in India, Persia and across the great Arab Empire, the One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad night after night, under sentence of death, to the king Shahrayar who has vowed to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. Shahrazad prolongs her life by keeping the King engrossed in a web of stories that never ends - a fascinating ...
Women of Sand and Myrrh
In an unnamed Middle Eastern city, four women from different social and cultural backgrounds tell their story. There is Suha, an educated Lebanese woman brought to the desert by her husband; Tamr, who must fight against male rule to educate herself; Suzanne, captivated by the men and the mystery of the Arabian desert; and Nur, in fierce pursuit of lovers (male and female) and foreign adventures - but her husband has her passport. All four women struggle in a society where women cannot drive a car, walk in the streets unveiled, or travel without male permission. It is a society where sex, due to its constraints, becomes an obsession. These women are treated to every luxury except that which they truly desire - freedom.
Beirut Blues
With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Beirut Blues, published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level. The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In Beirut Blues, Hanan al-Shaykh evokes a Beirut that has been seen by few, and that will never be seen again.
The Locust and the Bird
In a masterly act of literary transformation, celebrated novelist Hanan al-Shaykh re-creates the dramatic life and times of her mother, Kamila. Married at a young age against her will, Kamila soon fell head-over-heels in love with another man—and was thus forced to choose between her children and her lover. As the narrative unfolds through the years—from the bazaars, cinemas and apartments of 1930s Beirut to its war-torn streets decades later—we follow this passionate woman as she survives the tragedies and celebrates the triumphs of a life lived to the very fullest.
