Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems by Fatema Mernissi

Throughout my childhood, my grandmother Yasmina, who wa silliterate and grew up in a harem, repeated that to travel is the best way to learn and empower yourself. “When a woman decides to use her wings, she takes big risks,” she would tell me, but she was convinced that if you didn’t use them, it hurt…

So recalls Fatema Mernissi at the outset of her mesmerizing new book. Of all the lessons she learned from her grandmother —whose home was, after all, a type of prison—the most central was that the opportunity to cross boundaries was a sacred priviledge.

The Dark Side of Love
Rafik Schami’s 900-page masterpiece, hot off the press 2009
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell

A dead man hangs from the portal of St Paul’s Chapel in Damascus. He was a Muslim officer—and he was murdered. But when Detective Barudi sets out to interrogate the man’s mysterious widow, the Secret Service takes the case away from him. Barudi continues to investigate clandestinely and discovers the murderer’s motive: it is a blood feud between the Mushtak and Shahin clans, reaching back to the beginnings of the 20th century. And, linked to it, a love story that can have no happy ending, for reconciliation has no place within the old tribal structures.

Rafik Schami’s dazzling novel spans a century of Syrian history in which politics and religions continue to torment an entire people. Simultaneously, his poetic stories from three generations tell of the courage of lovers who risk death sooner than deny their passions. He has also written a heartfelt tribute to his hometown Damascus and a great and moving hymn to the power of love.

Papa Sartre: A Modern Arabic Novel
An ironic view of Iraqi intellectual life in the sixties

Description:
After a failed study mission in France, Abd al-Rahman returns home to Iraq to launch an existentialist movement akin to that of his hero. Convinced that it falls upon him to introduce his country’s intellectuals to Sartre’s thought, he feels especially qualified by his physical resemblance to the philosopher (except for the crossed eyes) and by his marriage to Germaine, who he claims is the great man’s cousin. Meanwhile, his wealth and family prestige guarantee him an idle life spent in drinking, debauchery, and frequenting a well-known nightclub.

But is his suicide an act of philosophical despair, or a reaction to his friend’s affair with Germaine? A biographer chosen by his presumed friends narrates the story of a somewhat bewildered young man who—like other members of his generation—was searching for a meaning to his life.

This parody of the abuses and extravagances of pseudo- philosophers in the Baghdad of the sixties throws into relief the Iraqi intellectual and cultural life of the time and the reversal of fortune of some of Iraq’s wealthy and powerful families.

A Country Called Amreeka: Arab Roots, American Stories by Alia Malek (Paperback || Kindle)

Synopsis

Among the surfeit of narratives about Arabs that have been published in recent years, surprisingly little has been reported on Arabs in America — an increasingly relevant issue. This book is the most powerful approach imaginable: it is the story of the last forty-plus years of American history, told through the eyes of Arab Americans.

It begins in 1963, before major federal legislative changes seismically transformed the course of American immigration forever. Each chapter describes an event in U.S. history — which may already be familiar to us — and invites us to live that moment in time in the skin of one Arab American. The chapters follow a timeline from 1963 to the present, and the characters live in every corner of this country.

Rania Matar

Matar’s work focuses mainly on women and women’s issues. Her previous work has focused on women and children in the Middle East, and her projects – which examine the Palestinian refugee camps, the recent spread of the veil and its meanings, the aftermath of war, and the Christians of the Middle East – intend to give a voice to people who have been forgotten or misunderstood. In Boston, where she lives, she photographs her four children at all stages of their lives, and is currently working on a new body of work, “A Girl and her Room,” photographing teenage girls from different backgrounds.

Arab American National Museum
The Arab American National Museum is the first museum in the world devoted to Arab American history and culture. Arab Americans have enriched the economic, political and cultural landscape of American life. By bringing the voices and faces of Arab Americans to mainstream audiences, we continue our commitment to dispel misconceptions about Arab Americans and other minorities. The Museum brings to light the shared experiences of immigrants and ethnic groups, paying tribute to the diversity of our nation.

RAWI – Radius for Arab American Writers

RAWI is a not-for-profit literary organization dedicated to supporting and disseminating creative writing and scholarly writing by Arab-Americans.