PUBLISHER / EDITOR Margaret Obank ASSISTANT EDITOR Samuel Shimon COVER ARTIST Sattar Kawoosh CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Khaled Mattawa Saadi Youssef Anton Shammas Peter Clark Fadhil al-Azzawi Sinan Antoon Paul Starkey Issa J Boullata Mona Zaki CONSULTING EDITORS Naguib Mahfouz Etel Adnan Roger Allen Mohammed Bennis Gamal el-Ghitani Marilyn Hacker Erdmute Heller Herbert Mason Yasir Suleiman Susannah Tarbush Sargon Boulus Saif al-Rahbi COPY EDITING Christina Phillips & Corinne Sklar LAYOUT Banipal Publishing
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Tel: +44 (0)20 8568 9747 Fax: +44 (0)20 8568 8509 editorial email: editor@banipal.co.uk subscriptions: subscribe@banipal.co.uk website: www.banipal.co.uk PRINTED BY Short Run Press Ltd Bittern Road, Sowton Ind. Est. EXETER EX2 7LW ISSN: 1461-5363 Photographs not accredited have been donated, photographers unknown © All material: Banipal, authors, translators and artists. All rights reserved.
Banipal takes its name from Ashurbanipal, last great king of Assyria and patron of the arts, whose outstanding achievement was to assemble in Nineveh, from all over his empire, the first systematically organised library in the ancient Middle East. The thousands of clay tablets of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian writings included the famous Mesopotamian epics of the Creation, the Flood, and Gilgamesh, many folk tales, fables, proverbs, prayers and omen texts. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica
CONTENTS No 26, Summer 2006
2 EDITORIAL 3 Jamal Mahjoub – A short story In the Long Shadows 10 Hassan Nassr – “Earthquake Nightmare”
A chapter from the novel Return to Dar al-Basha 23 Siham Bouhlal – Three Poems
LITERARY INFLUENCES 26 Ghalib Halasa We are the Generation without Teachers
NOVELS BY SIX IRAQI AUTHORS 40 Saadi Youssef – “Fadhil al-Marzoog”
An excerpt from Triangle of the Circle 53 Mohammad Khudayyir – “First Exploration”
An excerpt from Basrayatha 62 Saadi Youssef – TRIBUTE TO MAHDI ISSA AL-SAQR 63 Lutfiyya Dulaimi – An excerpt from Hayat’s Garden 70 Fadhil al-Azzawi – Burhan Abdullah’s Secret Chest
An excerpt fromThe Last of the Angels 86 Kadhim al-Hallaq – An excerpt from
My One-Eyed Father and hix Six Wives 90 Inaam Kachachi – A chapter from Streams of Hearts 97 NEWWRITING IN EGYPT CONTINUED 98 Yasser Abdel Latif – A chapter from The Law of Inheritance 104 Girgis Shukry – Four Poems 110 Mustafa Zikri – Four Tales 114 Hamdy el-Gazzar – Chapters from the novel Black Magic 124 Youssef Rakha – A short story Dead Man’s Town
A TRAVELLING TALE 128 Ali Mosbah – Istanbul Diary
INTERVIEW WITH AN EDITOR 138 Michel Beard and Adnan Haydar, Editors, Middle East Litera-
ture in Translation Series, Syracuse University Press BOOK REVIEWS 144 Susannah Tarbush In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar 148 Zuzanna Kratka Le roman arabe by Kadhim Jihad Hassan 152 Margaret Obank Burning in the Past Tense by Suhail Shadoud 154 Hussain al-Mozany Sophia by Mohammad Hassan Alwan 155 BOOKS IN BRIEF 160 CONTRIBUTORS ANDTRANSLATORS
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