Short stories
Tigers on the Tenth Day
النمور في اليوم العاشر
Zakaria Tamer · 1978
Synopsis
Stories of a few pages each. In the one that gives the book its title, a tiger captured in the forest is put in a cage and entrusted to a tamer who means to subdue it by hunger: on the first day the beast resists, on the second it endures, on the third it calls in vain to the tigers of the forest. Elsewhere, little Randa argues with the night, which demands a story, and two old men decide to write a petition to God.
Context
The volume appeared from Dar al-Adab, in Beirut, in 1978, and was reprinted in 1981, the year its author settled in England. Muhammad al-Maghut wrote the back-cover text, saying that he had begun as a blacksmith and had remained one. The pieces in the book run to a few pages and speak of the crushing of the weak by the strong; the story of the tiger has become a school text. Denys Johnson-Davies drew an English selection from it in 1985.
Who it is for
Very short texts in Arabic, with no French edition. It is worth knowing that the political charge passes through fable and animals rather than through naming things directly.
Prizes and reception
The best-known title by a master of the Arabic short story, whose books have been translated into at least seven languages; the story that gives it its name has become proverbial.