On Arab Stories

This is a rare little treasure — only 110 pages, seventeen short stories. What makes it significant is that it was produced before Western audiences had really developed a taste for Arabic fiction. The stories were originally published between the 1930s and the 1970s, so they lean much earlier than most Arabic short stories in print today (or later, depending on how you weigh the classical tradition).

It also gives as much room to the Maghrib as to the East. When Arabic literature was translated into English, it tended to be Egyptian authors, with some Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, and occasionally Iraqi; here there’s a strong showing from Morocco and Tunisia as well. I don’t know whether these have been translated into French, but it’s good to see North African stories in English. Not all of them are top-notch, though many are — the significance lies less in the excellence of the stories than in what the volume chooses to include. The translations were solid, and the first story (Iraqi) and the last (Moroccan) were especially strong.