Bücher der Reihe Middle East Literature in Tran

Set in the Syrian neighborhood of al-Qaweyq, Sour Grapes is a collection of fifty-nine wry, satirical short stories loosely connected by a cast of rotating characters living at society's margins. Tamer captures their everyday lives, weaving the attendant cruelties and ironies of living under an oppressive regime with the residents' irreverence and small acts of defiance. Inspired by the heroines of Arab mythology, the women of al-Qaweyq navigate the patriarchal community with brash confidence and dark humor while the younger generation of children inherit a bitter cynicism from their fathers. Evoking under-ripened and immature fruit, the collection's title serves as a bittersweet metaphor for a world that possesses the seeds of change but is unprepared for the harvest.Considered a master of the short story, Zakaria Tamer is one of the Arab world's most prominent and widely read writers. Columbu and Capallera's fluid translation gives English readers access to Tamer's original and provocative voice.

Allah's Spacious Earth is a stunningly fresh and timely political dystopia that depicts the tragic yet very real consequences of tensions between majority populations and Muslim minorities in the Western world. The novel is set in an imagined future where anti-Muslim sentiment and political pressure lead to a community being cut off from the rest of society. Told from the perspective of Nasim, a young Muslim living in the Zone-an urban area within one of the states forming the Pan-European Federation-the story follows his journey as he struggles with the restrictions imposed upon him along with the expectations of his community.In the tradition of Michel Houellbecq's Submission, Allah's Spacious Earth is a powerful novel of ideas that brilliantly captures a growing fear in Western societies and its devastating fallout.