Short stories
مدينة الموت الجميل
Not translated into English
Said al-Kafrawi · 1985
Synopsis
A collection of short stories rooted, like most of the author's work according to ArabLit, in the countryside of his childhood. According to the Goodreads presentation, the stories vary their ways of storytelling, some by free association, in a rural, poetic and melancholy atmosphere; among them, “The Moon Hanging Above the Water” and “The Horse for the Boy… the Horse for Death”. Arab World Books notes in the work a taste for detail, atmosphere and the unusual.
Context
The collection appeared in 1985; it was the author's first book, he having published in journals since 1966, Yahya Haqqi having accepted one of his texts in al-Majalla according to Masrawy. About fifteen collections followed. In English, Denys Johnson-Davies translated a selection of his stories, published by AUC Press in 1998, and praised his “panache”; in French, Stéphanie Dujols translated another of his collections, Le Kiosque à musique, for Actes Sud in 2002.
Who it is for
A collection in Arabic, written in an allusive style that some readers find enigmatic; the volume has not been translated.
Prizes and reception
First book by the writer nicknamed the monk of the short story, who remained faithful to the short form all his life.
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