Short stories
أخبار من البلد
Not translated into English
Hasib Kayali · 1954
Synopsis
News from the Country: nine satirical stories of Syria in the early fifties. The details of their plots are not known. The author's satire, as described by studies of his work as a whole, brings literary language down into the street, attacks the corruption of the offices and gives a voice to the humble, from Idlib to Damascus, moving from symbol to realism.
Context
The collection appeared in Beirut in 1954 and brings together nine stories, which their author read himself on Damascus radio in those years. It follows a first collection, which had been the very first book published by the writers' association of which he was a co-founder, and establishes a storyteller who has been nicknamed the Chekhov of Syria for the simplicity and depth of his portraits of ordinary people. The Syrian Ministry of Culture has reissued it with his other stories.
Who it is for
Short texts in Arabic, with no French edition, since gathered into the author's collected works; they can be read without preparation.
Prizes and reception
One of the collections through which the writer is introduced whom Syrian critics regard as the pioneer of the literature of the joke.