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Beirut39: New Writing From The Arab World. (2012)

by Samuel Shimon(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

140880963X (ISBN13: 9781408809631)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury UK

review 1: This was a great anthology—most entries were good, although I questioned the merit of a few.The highlights for me:* Abdelaziz Errachidi* Abdelkader Benali* Abdullah Thabit* Adania Shibli* Ala Hlehel* Islam Samhan* Joumana Haddad* Kamel Riahi* Mansoura Ez Eldin (her stuff is always great)* Mohammed Hassan Alwan* Mohammed Salah al Azab* Rabee Jaber (most excellent)* Randa Jarrar (great, as always)* Rosa Yassin Hassan* Youssef Rakha
review 2: I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads program. It is a collection of short stories, poems, and excerpts from longer works, and like most such compilations, I found it a little bit of a mixed bag. Each piece had a different translator, and overall, the translation work was good. The rhythms of a d... moreifferent language came through without being awkward. I really enjoyed the different rhythm given by the Arabic origin of the work. Coming from all over the Arab world, the pieces gave great insights into daily life in a broad spectrum of places and cultures. A few pieces, such as Abdelkader Benali's "The Trip to the Slaughterhouse," are actually set amongst Arabs living abroad, but the places of origin still sing through. I wish some of the excerpts had been longer. Some seemed too brief, and really made me wonder where they were going. Ahmad Saadawi's "Frankenstein in Baghdad" was a particularly haunting look at the psychology of war-torn Iraq, centering on a protaganist compulsively making his own Frankenstein's Monster out of the body parts of bombing victims. While I didn't find all of the pieces compelling, overall I found the book well worth reading as a look inside the art and a little bit of the daily life in Palestine and Morocco, Lebanon and Egypt, Iraq and Yemen. less

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