Description
Book SynopsisMohammad Ali Taha is a well-known Palestinian writer residing in Galilee as an Israeli citizen. Despite his fame in the Arab world, his works are still unfamiliar to Western audiences. In this volume, translator Jamal Assadi has collected a selection of Taha's short stories, representing a variety of themes, styles, historical periods, contexts, settings, tones, languages, narrations, and characters, with the intent to help Taha enter what Edward Said calls the large, many-windowed house of human culture as a whole. In his introduction, Assadi discusses the culture, traits, and manners of Taha's world, which provides the reader with a greater appreciation and understanding of the short stories in this volume.
Trade Review«Every story in this book makes me shake my head fondly and smile. Always suspenseful and beautifully plotted, Mohammad Ali Taha’s tales are moving, funny, and wryly philosophical. Like real people, his yearning and often befuddled characters stumble, manage, and occasionally triumph in their lives. The lovely translations by Jamal Assadi, a native of Taha’s landscape, capture not only meaning but nuance and shifts in tone. For me, reading and thinking about these stories has been a hugely expansive experience. I suspect that other English-speaking readers will find in them, as I do, a world exotic in its details but familiar in its humanity.» (Martha Moody, Author of ‘Best Friends’ and ‘The Office of Desire’)
