Description
Book SynopsisFinalist for the 2016 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators'' Association
The life, birth, and early years of ''the Fariyaq''the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of the Fariyaq,' alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women's rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European an
Trade Review
Al-Shidyaq, born in Lebanon in the early years of the nineteenth century, was a Zelig of the Arabic literary world, and his Leg Over Leg is a bawdy, hilarious, epically word-obsessed, and unclassifiable book, which has never been translated into English before * MobyLives *
The heroic achievement of award-winning translator Humphrey Davies marks the first ever English translation of this pivotal work An accessible, informative, and highly entertaining read. * Banipal Magazine *
...Leg Over Leg by the Lebanese intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, [has] long been held to be untranslatable and so [is] appearing, in [its] entirety, in English for the first time. -- Lydia Wilson * Times Literary Supplement *
Humphrey Davies translation, published in four dual-language volumes, is a triumph. He skillfully renders punning, rhyming prose without breaking the spellLeg Over Leg& stands out for both its stylistic brazenness and the excellence of the translation. With this bilingual edition, the Library of Arabic Literature helps fill a large cultural gap and alters our view of Arabic literature and the formal trajectory of the novel outside the West. Any reader for whom the term & world literature is more than an empty platitude must read Humphrey Davies's translation. -- John Yargo * Los Angeles Review of Books *
We're having a particularly good season for literary discoveries from the past, with recent publications of Volumes 1 and 2 of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's 'Leg Over Leg' (1855)… -- Martin Riker * New York Times Book Review *
With this impressive edition and translation, Humphrey Davies has rendered one of the most challenging texts of Arabic literature, al-Shidyaq's al-Saq 'ala l-saq, accessible to a wide range of readers for the first time.... The reader is plunged into al-Shidyaq's critical, humorous, uninhibited, sometimes bitter but profoundly humane, and utterly original masterpiece. -- Hilary Kilpatrick * Journal of the American Oriental Society *
It is not too early to state that the publication of this work, in this edition, is a game-changer. This is a foundational work of modern Arabic literature and its publication in English is long overdue but given how it is presented here, it was perhaps worth the wait. This edition, with helpful endnotes, the original Arabic text, and in a translation that both reads well and appears to closely mirror the original, seems, in almost every way, ideal I dont think Im exaggerating when I say that this is the most important literary publication of a translation into English, in terms of literary history and our understanding of it, in years. * The Complete Review *
Table of Contents
Table of Contents Letter from the General Editor iii Leg Over Leg, Volume Three 1 Contents of the Book 4 Firing Up a Furnace 8 Love and Marriage 52 Contagion 108 Analepsis 126 Travel, and the Correction of a Common Misconception 134 A Banquet and Various Kinds of Hot Sauce 158 That Stinging Sensation You Feel When You Get Hot Sauce up Your Nose 174 Dreams 176 The Second Dream 184 The Third Dream 190 Physicking the Foul of Breath 200 A Voyage and a Conversation 214 A Maqamah to Make One Stand 250 Raveningly Ravenously Famished 272 The Journey from the Monastery 280 Ecstasy 288 An Incitement to Nudity 290 A Drain 300 Assorted Wonders 326 A Metropolitan Theft 344 Notes 353 Glossary 381 Index 385 About the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute 394 About the Typefaces 395 About the Editor-Translator 396
