Background
Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence.
(A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab worlds leading ...)
A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab worlds leading woman novelist, about four women coping with the insular, oppressive society of an unnamed desert state.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385423586/?tag=2022091-20
(Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across...)
Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across the Arab world, the mesmerizing stories of One Thousand and One Nights are related by the beautiful, young Shahrazad as she attempts to delay her execution. Retold in modern English by the acclaimed Lebanese author Hanan al-Shaykh, here are stories of the real and the supernatural, love and marriage, power and punishment, wealth and poverty, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. Bringing together nineteen classic tales, in these pages al-Shaykh weaves an utterly intoxicating collection, rich with humor, violence, and romance.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307948994/?tag=2022091-20
(Four strangers meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to L...)
Four strangers meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to London: Amira, a canny Moroccan prostitute; Lamis, a 30-year old Iraqi divorcee; Nicholas, an English expert on Islamic art; and Samir, a Lebanese man who is delivering a monkey on a mission he doesn’t fully understand. Once safely on British soil, Lamis and Nicholas fall in love, Samir chases after blond British youths, and Amira reinvents herself as a princess, the better to lure clients at the best London hotels. Through the city and across cultural borders, Only in London wittily portrays the smells, sounds, and sights of London’s lively Arab neighorhoods, as well as the freedoms the city both offers and withholds from its immigrants.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385721218/?tag=2022091-20
(Zahra’s mother uses her as a cover for her meetings with ...)
Zahra’s mother uses her as a cover for her meetings with a lover; Zahra’s strict father mistreats her for being complicit in her mother’s affair. Fleeing from Beirut in search of solace, Zahra stays with her uncle in West Africa—and then uses marriage as another kind of escape. Back in Beirut, love finally comes to her, but with terrible consequences. Banned in several Middle Eastern countries since its original publication, The Story of Zahra is an intoxicating, provocative story of a young woman’s coming of age in a city torn apart by war.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385472064/?tag=2022091-20
(With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Sh...)
With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Shaykh established herself as the Arab world's foremost woman writer. Beirut Blues, published to similar acclaim, further confirms her place in Arabic literature, and brings her writing to a new, groundbreaking level. The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In Beirut Blues, Hanan al-Shaykh evokes a Beirut that has been seen by few, and that will never be seen again.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385473826/?tag=2022091-20
(Since the U.S. publication of Women of Sand and Myrrh--wh...)
Since the U.S. publication of Women of Sand and Myrrh--which has now sold more than 35,000 copies and was selected as one of the Fifty Best Books of 1992 by Publishers Weekly--Hanan al-Shaykh has attracted an ever larger following for her dazzling tales of contemporary Arab women. In these seventeen short stories--eleven of which are appearing in English for the first time--al-Shaykh expands her horizons beyond the boundaries of Lebanon, taking us throughout the Middle East, to Africa, and finally to London. Stylistically diverse, her stories are often about the shifting and ambiguous power relationships between different cultures--as well as between men and women. Often compared to both Margaret Atwood and Margaret Drabble, Hanan al-Shaykh is "a gifted and courageous writer" (Middle Eastern International).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385491271/?tag=2022091-20
(A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab world's leading ...)
A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab world's leading woman novelist, about four women coping with the insular, oppressive society of an unnamed desert state.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J68CLO/?tag=2022091-20
Her father and brother exerted strict social control over her during her childhood and adolescence.
Hanan al-Shaykh's family background is that of a strict Shi'a family. She continued her gender-segregated education at the American College for Girls in Cairo, Egypt, graduating in 1966. She returned to Lebanon to work for the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar until 1975.
She left Beirut again in 1975 at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War and moved to Saudi Arabia to work and write there. She now lives in London with her family. Al-Shaykh's literature follows in the footsteps of such contemporary Arab women authors as Nawal El Saadawi in that it explicitly challenges the roles of women in the traditional social structures of the Arab Middle East.
She challenges notions of sexuality, obedience, modesty, and familiar relations in her work. Her work often implies or states sexually explicit scenes and sexual situations which go directly against the social mores of conservative Arab society, which has led to her books being banned in the more conservative areas of the region including the Persian Gulf. In other countries, they are difficult to obtain because of censorship laws which prevent the Arabic translations from being easily accessible to the public.
Specific examples include The Story of Zahra which includes abortion, divorce, sanity, illegitimacy and sexual promiscuity, and Women of Sand and Myrrh which contains scenes of a lesbian relationship between two of the main protagonists. In addition to her prolific writing on the condition of Arab women and her literary social criticism, she is also part of a group of authors writing about the Lebanese Civil War. Many literary critics cite that her literature is not only about the condition of women, but is also a human manifestation of Lebanon during the civil war.
(Four strangers meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to L...)
(Passed down over centuries from India, Persia, and across...)
(A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab worlds leading ...)
(A powerful and moving novel, by the Arab world's leading ...)
(Zahra’s mother uses her as a cover for her meetings with ...)
(With the acclaim won by her first two novels, Hanan al-Sh...)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(Since the U.S. publication of Women of Sand and Myrrh--wh...)