Books by Hanan al-Shaykh

The Arabian Nights, a classic collection of Arabian, Persian, and Indian folk tales has been a profound influence on both the Western and Eastern literary traditions. (The award-winning French novelist Mathias Enard described it as the “classic of classics” in his Five Books interview about the best books on Orientalism.) Upon discovering his wife’s infidelity, Sultan Shahryar has developed a burning hatred for women and in this frenzied rage he vowed to marry a virgin each night and kill her by morning. In order to survive, Shahryar’s latest bride Shahrazad has concocted a cunning plan. Each night she tells the Sultan a tale, leaving him in such intense suspense that come morning he cannot kill her. This forms the frame story, within which many other, shorter, tales are held. There are many variations, translations, and new editions; this 2013 retelling by Hanan al-Shaykh offers invigorating blend of romance, wit, and violence, and is suitable for the general reader.

From our article Books like The Alchemist

“Hanan al-Shaykh has written several novels and several short story collections. She’s well established. And she broke a lot of taboos. She was the first Arab woman writer that I read in my teens, translated from Arabic…This collection is set between Beirut, Africa, Cairo. In the story I included in We Wrote In Symbols, a woman tries to excite her husband by making him watch Japanese erotic films, after being encouraged by her friend who is much wilder than she is. Another one of the stories is a love story about a woman whose husband left her for another woman just before he died. During a memorial to the woman’s mother, all these crazy theatrical friends of her mother pile into her flat and start trying to raise the dead with an ouiji board, and she manages, kind of negligently, to contact her dead husband, and she asks him: did you love me?” Read more...

Erotic Writing by Arab Women

Selma Dabbagh, Novelist