Seismic shifts in Zimbabwe's politics since the 2017 demise of Robert Mugabe have generated renewed interest in Ndabaningi Sithole, the first president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Tinashe Mushakavanhu brings this vanguard revolutionary back to center stage through a selection of his important political and literary works. The result is an important biographical mapping of    More >

When Lauretta Ngcobo died in 2015, Africa lost a significant literary talent, freedom fighter, and feminist voice. Ngcobo was one of the pioneering writers who first published novels in English from the vantage point of black women. Along with Bessie Head and Miriam Tlali, she showed the world, through her fiction, what it was like to be a black woman in apartheid South Africa. Barbara Boswell    More >

Dennis Brutus (1924-2009) is perhaps best known for his powerful poems chronicling the suffering of apartheid in South Africa. But he was also a political activist whose voice helped to mobilize and intensify opposition to injustice and oppression worldwide. Tyrone August traces the many facets of Brutus's life from his childhood until his exile from South Africa in 1966. Placing the    More >

Don Barnard's reader's guide plumbs the richness, subtlety, and power of Derek Walcott’s Omeros. Barnard adeptly lays out the major themes of the work, explains Walcott's geographical, historical, and autobiographical references, and explores his use of symbolism. He also highlights the qualities that make Omeros a master class in the use of form, rhythm, and rhyme and    More >

This anthology of never-before-published poems showcases a new generation of African women poets, some familiar, some just beginning their literary careers. Their rich voices belie popular stereotypes, reflecting the diversity and dynamism of their environment. As they range across topics encompassing family and personal relationships, politics, war, and the ravages of famine and disease, they    More >

African Lives, a pioneering anthology of memoirs and autobiographical writings, lets the people of Africa speak for themselves—telling stories of struggle and achievement that have the authenticity of lived experience. The anthology presents selections from the work of many of Africa's finest writers and most significant personalities from across the continent and spanning several    More >

In these two extraordinary works, published posthumously, Gertrude Kolmar's elegiac prose transports us into her characters' rich inner worlds even as it depicts the cold material realities of 1920s Berlin. In A Jewish Mother from Berlin, Martha Jadassohn's seemingly conventional life descends into chaos after the brutal rape of her five-year-old daughter. The ethereally beautiful    More >

Spanning more than a century, this systematic study brings to the forefront a dazzling array of novels by Arab women writers. Bouthaina Shaaban's analysis ranges from the work of Zaynab Fawwaz, published at the end of the nineteenth century, to that of Sahar Khalifah and Najwa Barakat, published at the cusp of the twenty-first. The novels discussed reflect not only specifically Arab    More >

Ahmad Suba'i's autobiography is the story not only of an Arab boy growing up in Saudi Arabia at the turn of the twentieth century—to become a noted writer, educator, and social critic—but also of a place, Mecca, and of the world of the traditional quranic school of the time. Contextualizing the work, the editors have provided information about Suba'i's life and work,    More >

It has been more than 25 years since Moses Aloetta became one of the “Lonely Londoners” in the novel of that name. Now—though an avowed Anglophile—he hankers for Trinidad, for sunshine, Carnival, and rum punch. With characteristic irony and delicacy of touch, Sam Selvon tells the story of Moses’s reencounter with his native land. This edition of the novel    More >

ForeWord Magazine's Reference Book of the Year, 2007! Ranging from ancient cultures to the present century, from Africa's rich oral traditions to its contemporary fiction, poetry, and drama, this long-awaited comprehensive anthology reflects the enduring themes of African literature.   The selections, drawn from the length and breadth of the continent, reveal the richness of    More >

In her moving reflection on growing up as the daughter of refugees from Hitler's Europe, Carol Ascher explores the conflicts of an émigré childhood and chronicles her return to Vienna to uncover her father's roots.    More >

National Jewish Book Awards Finalist! The editors have gathered a treasure trove of excerpts (some translated into English for the first time) from a variety of genres—novels, short stories, letters, plays, poetry, autobiographies—to showcase the work of both well-known and less familiar French Jewish women writers from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The collection    More >

Edouard Glissant's Monsieur Toussaint tells the tragic story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the charismatic leader of the revolution—the only successful slave revolt in history—that led to Haiti's independence more than two hundred years ago.   Translated by J. Michael Dash in collaboration with the author, this new edition captures the striking essence of the original    More >

This near-definitive study sets a new standard for the kind of meticulous scholarship that Nobel laureate Derek Walcott's poetry deserves. Another Life, Walcott's masterpiece of autobiography in verse is an ideal point of entry into Walcott's work. The 200 pages of detailed notes and commentary offered in this annotated edition—drawing to a great extent on unpublished    More >

Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898-1987) dedicated much of his long life to a fruitful attempt to advance the fortunes of twentieth century Arabic literature by writing it. This guide to his work provides paths for readers through his multiple literary worlds. Chapters on his personal history, his novels, plays, short stories, and essays, his Islamic feminism, and his theology are enhanced by a discussion of    More >

Though Sahelian culture likely dates back more than five thousand years—encompassing Africa's greatest empires—the Sahel remains little known in the English-speaking world. Redressing this situation, The Desert Shore offers a rich sampling of the contemporary literatures of the region, along with contextualizing chapters by critics from Africa, Europe, and North America. The    More >

His works having already been translated the world over into as many as six different languages from their original Italian, Valerio Magrelli is one of the most innovative and exciting poets writing today. Hailed by figures as diverse as Octavio Paz and Dana Gioia, Magrelli is widely regarded as the foremost Italian poet of his generation. This latest collection of his poetry, translated into    More >

Ahmed Bangura argues that a deeply ingrained pattern of prejudice toward Islam in European-language writing on Africa has led to serious misreadings of many West African novels. Extending Edward Said's study of the orientalist tradition in Western scholarship, Bangura traces the origins of contemporary misunderstandings of African Islam to the discourse of colonial literature. Western critics and    More >

Concentrating on issues of power and change, Annie Gagiano's close reading of literary texts by Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, and Dambudzo Marechera teases out each author's view of how colonialism affected Africa, the contribution of Africans to their own malaise, and above all, the creative, progressive, pragmatic role of many Africans during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Gagiano    More >

In the present golden era of Iranian fiction, women writers—contrary to what many in the West perceive—are making a powerful contribution to the literary scene. Reflecting this, A Feast in the Mirror captures the diverse voices of contemporary Iranian women, offering glimpses into their lives and into the labyrinths of Iranian society today. Moving from the framework of their own    More >

"Politics and the novel," Ghassan Kanafani once said, "are an indivisible case." Fadl al-Naqib reflected that Kanafani "wrote the Palestinian story, then he was written by it." His narratives offer entry into the Palestinian experience of the conflict that has anguished the people of the Middle East for more than a century. In Palestine's Children, each story    More >

Ngoza, in KwaZulu-Natal—South Africa's most turbulent province—is transformed when clan leader Baba Joshua dies and his headstrong daughter tackles the age-old shibboleths held by traditionalists and gangsters alike. The reluctant heroine of this novel, Zodwa, finds support from unlikely quarters. A disenchanted ex-ANC guerrilla and a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist join forces    More >

Albert Memmi published the first anthology of francophone Maghrebian literature, he expressed his unhappy belief that francophone writing would quickly be eclipsed by Arabic. To the contrary, this volume demonstrates that the francophone writing of North Africa remains vibrant and prolific. Two distinct periods are evident in contemporary Maghrebian letters, producing the anticolonial works    More >

National Jewish Book Awards Finalist! Humorous and endearing, while dealing with complex issues, the stories in Goodbye, Evil Eye reflect the tensions between Sephardic Jews and contemporary urban life in the United States. The characters—with their superstitions, myths, and contradictions, the still-palpable heritage of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain—fight    More >

The environment of New York City in the post-World War II era was one filled with new ideas and movements. The 1950s saw waves of Freudian disciples set up practices. In The Last Good Freudian, Brenda Webster describes what it was like to grow up in an intellectual and artistic Jewish family during this time. Her father, Wolf Schwabacher, was a prominent entertainment lawyer whose clients    More >

Stefan Zweig gained early fame as a poet, translator, and biographer. When he added fiction to his repertoire, he won even more critical acclaim. After his death, however, his work fell inexplicably into obscurity. The Royal Game and Other Stories is a collection of five of Stefan Zweig's brilliant and creative psychological thrillers. Filled with emotional extreme—from obsessive love    More >

Nizar Kabbani’s poetry has been described as "more powerful than all the Arab regimes put together" (Lebanese Daily Star). Reflecting on his death in 1998, Sulhi Al-Wadi wrote (in Tishreen), "Qabbani is like water, bread, and the sun in every Arab heart and house. In his poetry the harmony of the heart, and in his blood the melody of love". Arabian Love Poems is the first    More >

This collection of important stories by novelist, journalist, teacher, and Palestinian activist Ghassan Kanafani includes the stunning novella Men in the Sun (1962), the basis of the film The Deceived. Also in the volume are "The Land of Sad Oranges" (1958), "'If You Were a Horse . . .'" (1961), "A Hand in the Grave" (1962), "The Falcon" (1961),    More >

The shocking execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa at the hands of the Nigerian government in 1995 stirred new interest in the many facets of his life—as novelist and short story writer, radio and television personality, publisher and entrepreneur, political and environmental activist. This interdisciplinary collection critically assesses Saro-Wiwa’s exceptional life and work from a range of    More >

This anthology presents the voices of a new generation of African poets, drawn from across the continent and representing a wide range of themes, styles, and ideologies. These contemporary voices have been shaped in the realities of postcolonial Africa from the mid-1970s to the present. In contrast to the preceding generation—forged in the years of nationalist movements and    More >

These seven stories, dramatic and thought-provoking, provide a compelling picture of Korean life in the 1940s–1990s. Family and community ties, respect for tradition, survival in the face of repeated national disasters and wrenching social upheaval—these are among the themes evoked in the collection. The narratives make palpable the lives and emotions of characters from many differing    More >

From the appearance of Bound to Violence in the late 1960s, Yambo Ouologuem has been one of Africa’s most controversial writers. For some critics, the young Malian signaled an entire new direction for African letters: a fiercely courageous postindependence literature. For others, his novel revealed too much, bringing to light horrors many preferred to ignore. Today Ouologuem is credited with    More >

This first collection of al-Hakim’s stories to be published in English includes 27 of the author’s best works written from 1927 to 1966. Some inspired by literature and others by Egyptian social conditions, the stories range from mock-autobiographical to science fiction and folk fantasy to allegory and philosophy.    More >

Bored housewives, kept in seclusion, smuggling in Harlequin romances. Modish young men transformed into Islamic militants. A baker unwittingly caught in a web of intrigue, an imam whose faith is tested by urban corruption, a lonely divorcee accused of prostitution—all take part in Merzak Allouache's novel of a society on the brink of crisis. Allouache tells the story of the people of    More >

Mongo Beti is the most prolific and widely read author from Cameroon, and his writings have called world attention to political corruption in his native country. These essays cover the three distinct periods of Beti’s greatest activity as a writer—the first, which ran from 1953 to 1958; the re-emergence that began in 1974; and the third phase, which Arnold traces to Beti’s brief    More >

A gentle novel about the enduring conflict between young and old, new and traditional, foreign and native. Badian tells the story of a village family in an African country under French rule. The family's father and the eldest son revere the customs of their ancestors, while the younger children are strongly attracted by European ways and ideas. The daughter, Kany, has fallen in love with her    More >

Poignant and thought-provoking, this anthology offers a representative selection from the past three decades of works by the best-known women writers in Saudi Arabia. The authors’ stories of their patriarchal society afford rare insight into the traditional and changing roles, relationships, and expectations of modern Saudi women. The editors provide an introductory essay on modern Saudi    More >

The Whistling Bird celebrates what were until recently the little-heard voices of women writers from the Caribbean. The anthology includes short stories, poetry, drama, and excerpts from novels—all rich, melodic works written with clarity and conviction.    More >

It is the 26th day of Ramadan in the year 610, and a handsome man named Muhammad is meditating in a cave on Mount Hira. Fear grips him as he tries to sort out the visions and voices washing over him; and terrified that he is possessed, he leaves the cave to return to Mecca. The day that will transform Muhammad’s life—and change the world—has begun. That day becomes a fluid    More >

A vivid portrait of the lives of the Egyptian poor, particularly in the Nile Delta region, emerges in this collection of 24 short stories. El-Bisatie offers glimpses of the daily struggles and activities of old men, young women, prisoners, war widows, and everyone in between. Masterfully crafted, his stories cultivate in the reader compassion, hatred, understanding, and suspense.    More >

As a young widow with two boys to raise, Horia El-Gharib struggled to reconcile tradition and change. She dared to take on a man's role in commerce and trade to protect the future of her sons—but now, all is at risk in the midst of the turmoil of the newly independent regime. Lion Mountain is the unforgettable story of a stubborn old woman, a one-legged Nubian war hero, and a    More >

These powerful stories were written between 1947, when Pakistan was created, and 1971, when it was fragmented by the creation of Bangladesh as an independent nation. Steeped in an unmistakable Shi’ite ambiance, they also draw freely on memoirs and memories, dreams and visions, Middle Eastern oral traditions, and Hindu and Buddhist mythology.    More >

Heda Margolius Kovály (1919–2010) endured both the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and the brutality of Czechoslovakia's postwar Stalinist government. Her husband, after surviving Dachau and Auschwitz and becoming Czechoslovakia's deputy minister of foreign trade, was convicted of conspiracy in the infamous 1952 Slansky trial and then executed. This clear-eyed memoir of her life    More >

The first edition of this book, completed in 1970, was hailed as a major contribution to scholarship on the development of Arabic fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this revised and greatly expanded second edition, Matti Moosa has added five entirely new chapters—one on the popular dialogues of Abd Allah Nadim, and four devoted to twentieth century fiction    More >

"Not sure if he were imagining it or if it were indeed real, he inhaled a familiar scent, rose attar, the fragrance that had consumed him in his sleeping and waking hours.... she was there! He spotted and recognized the black sandals, saw the hands, pale and lovely, the black glass bangles catching the light of the sun like flames leaping out in the darkness."—Excerpt from    More >

Offering a critical perspective on new fiction from the West Indies, Patteson concentrates on five writers from diverse backgrounds and with differing perspectives and artistic strategies, who nevertheless share a commitment to an imaginative repossession of Caribbean life and consciousness. The writers discussed are Olive Senior (Jamaica), who combines devices of oral narratives and    More >

This coming-of-age novel by the accomplished Bahamian writer Ian G. Strachan traces the life of Tree Bodie as he grows up in the Yellow and White House and the nameless streets of Pompey Village, far (though not in distance) from the sanitized world of Santa Maria's luxury hotels. Against the backdrop of the internal struggles of a Caribbean island nation, Strachan tells the story of    More >

Hilary Tham's memoirs reveal the many images, cultures, myths, and memories out of which her poetry has emerged. Tham recalls a life of many textures: her Chinese ancestry, her family's life in Malaysia, her early education and conversion to Christianity, her university studies, marriage to a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer, and more. Amidst memories of her raffish father and inspired,    More >

This collection of fiction and poetry, written by members of the military forces sent by Castro to help defeat the South Africa-backed regime in Angola, reflects the realities of painful years in Africa. The material is laced together by Burness’ narrative of past and present wars and rebellions.    More >

Guyana-born poet-novelist Dathorne’s powerful work, set against the background of a revolution, both political and spiritual, is a compelling account of the search for ancestry and legacy. The reader learns about the past, present, and future of the chief protagonists—Dele, the saintly whore; Pietro, the impotent medical practitioner; Ianty, the corrupt politician; and Stephan, who    More >

Brilliant, soulful, poor, and doomed to a short life, Franz Peter Schubert (1797-1828) in many ways embodied the Romantic era in which he lived. In this vibrant biographical novel, Peter Härtling brings the composer to life as a man of exquisite sensitivity, passionate extremes, and a profound sense of rootlessness much like the famous wanderers of his musical creations. The deftly    More >

An innocent yet stinging—and always absorbing—account of the lives of two young expatriate girls in Kuwait in the 1960s. Isabel, the red-headed daughter of an American mother and Arab father, befriends Laila, whose family has left the lush, cool mountains of Lebanon in search of a better life in the heat and desert of Kuwait. Abdul-Baki presents the voices of both girls, telling their    More >

This is the first time that the literary works of contemporary Afro-Brazilian women have been compiled presenting a comprehensive vision of what it means to be both black and female in Brazil. Though the canon of Brazilian literature is rich in Afro-Brazilian female characters, until recently it has included only a handful of Afro-Brazilian women writers, sprinkled across the centuries. The    More >

The violence of war leads to the euphoria of Algeria's newly won independence from France—and then quickly deteriorates into a harsh and cynical reality in this brutal yet lyrical autobiographical novel. Shattered Vision (first published in France as Le regard blesse) was awarded the Prix France Culture in 1987.    More >

Jabra's highly acclaimed novel is a masterful exploration of the post-1948 Arab world, with its frustrations, yearnings for homeland, and struggle for survival. As his characters interact on a ship sailing from Beirut to Europe, Jabra exposes them to the elements of spiritual and physical displacement. Some survive; others do not.    More >

During the Spanish Inquisition, daring individuals defied and thwarted persecution by writing works in which hidden meanings were apparent only to Jews or fellow conversos, the descendants of Jewish converts to Christianity. Colbert Nepaulsingh analyzes three seminal, sixteenth-century novels as converso works—Lazarillo, a prototype of the picaresque novel; El Abencerraje, of the Moorish    More >

Mathieu, the narrator of this novel, is compelled by his older sister's suicide to confront the effects of his family's tragic past. Born after the war, Mathieu is left to grapple with recovering his sister's memories—which he had resolutely tried to deny—and with it the meaning of his own identity, family origins, and historical predicament. As neither victim, survivor,    More >

Poet, activist, teacher, and scholar, Dennis Brutus is one of the foremost names in African literature—as a creative force, a cultural influence, and a personality. Exploring Brutus's life and writings, this collection opens with a biographical introduction to his "art and activism," covering his childhood, his university days, his arrest and imprisonment in 1964–1965, his    More >

Dealing with sexual mutilation, Accad’s lyrical, tragic novel shows woman as prisoner, victim, and target of man’s age-old preoccupation with domination by and fear of women. Set in exploding, agonized Lebanon, the work is Islamic, Christian, modern, and antique in scope. First published in French in 1982. This new paperback edition includes a preface by the author.    More >

A revealing study of a girl growing to maturity in middle-class Syria and of her family’s struggle to survive in the tumultuous years of 1940–1961 in Damascus. Attar’s work shows a keen eye for the daily scene, a keen ear for conversation, and a tragic sense of history. Reflecting the rapid sociopolitical changes in Syria that exalted some, but crushed others, it marks anew the    More >

In this turbulent novel of shame, violence, and hypocritical morality, the adolescent son of a repudiated mother grows up in a hostile, erotic, bourgeois world, where he must fight for his own soul. Using violence against violence, the young hero seeks to realize his better nature by overcoming the powers of hedonism, religious conformity, and tribalism. First published in French in 1969.    More >

Yusuf Idris is considered by many to be the greatest contemporary short-story writer working in Arabic. The 17 critical essays in this collection—some by critics in the Arab world and others by Western specialists on modern Arabic fiction and drama—are organized in sections devoted to Idris's short stories, novels, and plays. Each section includes studies that adopt a general    More >

After many years abroad, Brahim, the author of stories about a detective (alter-ego) named Ali, returns to Morocco with his pregnant Scottish wife and two sons. Soon to join them are his in-laws, complete with golf clubs and nervous expectations about a mysterious land. In a warm, satirical novel about the misunderstanding between two worlds, Chraïbi pokes fun at both the native Morocco of    More >

Through birthright, travel, marriage, and work, Hilary Tham has experienced an extraordinary range of world cultures, all vibrantly reflected in her latest collection of poems. Tham’s insights and unusual juxtapositions tell of the meetings of strangers, friends, and lovers; the clashes of differing religions and cultures; and the eternal conflict and misunderstanding between men and women,    More >

Acclaimed as one of the most vivid and evocative autobiographies of the century, Manès Sperber’s trilogy All Our Yesterdays concludes in this final volume. Through the eyes of this eminent European intellectual and activist, we witness the years 1934–1984 including hostility between Croats and Serbs in Yugoslavia, the abortive workers' uprising in Vienna, and Stalin's    More >

Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature, has risen from obscure colonial origins to lay claim to a rich cultural heritage. The progeny of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas come together in his work as they populate his native Caribbean islands; his poetry and plays record their struggles to overcome the ironies of their lives, to establish their authentic "new    More >

One of the most important literary voices to emerge from The Gambia for several decades, Sallah writes nostalgically about his African roots. This, his third collection, includes elegant, often melodic poems about love, prayer, fate, homesickness, and the contrasts between different places and cultures.    More >

At the beginning of the 1980s, Singapore’s public relied largely on a literary diet of traditional British and North American authors. By 1990, however, books by Singaporeans were rapidly replacing imports on the bestseller lists and in the review columns. Singular Stories exemplifies the range of the new Singaporean prose. The pieces in this diverse collection explore the conflict between    More >

Abdul-Baki’s stories, set in Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, and Jerusalem, explore the themes of young women coming of age, the effects of civil war, and differences between East and West.    More >

A collection of songs sung by Arab women, compiled by Caspi during field research in the West Bank and Israel. The songs, in English translation, are divided into three sections: bridal songs, lullabies, and lamentations. The work also includes a general introduction and a bibliography.    More >

These twelve stories set in modern Pakistan capture the rich Urdu literary tradition, telling close, personal tales of family relationships, love, spirituality, dreams, and the interactions between members of different races and religions. A discussion of contemporary Urdu literature introduces the volume. The authors included in the collection are Zamiruddin Ahmad, Khalida Asghar, Masud Ashar,    More >

These twenty stories show the broad range of iconoclast, fabulist, realist, satirist, avant- gardist Aziz Nesin (1915-1995), long considered a major voice in contemporary Turkish fiction. Like many Turkish writers, Nesin was born into poverty, saw his work censured, and suffered imprisonment; as these stories demonstrate, however, his voice is very much his own, rich with insights into the social    More >

This ambitious work presents biographical entries for nearly 500 of the leading Oceanic writers, as well as references to approximately 2,000 authors and 10,000 novels, anthologies, memoirs, cultural studies, and literary journals. It includes an index organized by countries/regions.    More >

Eleven essays by Western and Middle Eastern scholars evaluate the work of Naguib Mahfouz, arguably Egypt's greatest novelist, and the winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. The first such comprehensive, critical treatment in English, the book considers Mahfouz's short stories and screenplays, as well as his novels. The contributors pay particular attention to the sociocultural    More >

The Unheeded Warning richly portrays the turbulent interwar period in Vienna and Berlin through the eyes of one of the century's foremost intellectuals and activists. Psychologist, novelist, essayist, and revolutionary, Manès Sperber begins his story in Vienna when he was thirteen years old and concludes the book—which is the second volume of his three-volume autobiography, All    More >

This unique investigation provides the first major account of the explosion of literary talent that began in Nigeria in 1948 and ended as the civil war was intensifying in 1966. The book is structured around interviews with the men and women who led this generation of profound talent, all of whom attended University College, Ibadan, or its successor, the University of Ibadan. Speculating about    More >

European colonialists assumed the prerogative to interpret the experiences of their “charges” and to decide the legitimacy of creative expression among Africans. Yoder examines that assumption, frankly discussing the racism and cultural chauvinism of nineteenth-century France, as well as colonial practices and the reactions to them as reflected in West African novels. Using a    More >

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In this fresh look at the troubled, passionate work of an important South African writer and social critic, Balutansky explores Alex La Guma’s five novels in all their dimensions. Balutansky notes La Guma’s belief that, in order to lead a fulfilling existence, an individual must go beyond introspection and adopt a life that is organized around unity, caring, and sharing. She is    More >

Prophetically named for a real war yet to come, Six Days depicts the struggle of a fictional city under siege. Barakat tells the story of shy lovers, friends, increasing fear and anger, and finally the terror of war. The people of Dayr Albahr are confronted with an ultimatum: surrender or be destroyed. They choose to resist, knowing that they face inevitable defeat, but sustained by a    More >

The final volume in a trilogy that includes The Flutes of Death and Mother Spring, Birth at Dawn extends to the eighth century the story of the arrival of Islam in Morocco and Algeria. First published in French in 1986.    More >

Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea, Quartet, and other novels treating the alienation of a woman from the Caribbean living in European settings, has been a focus of interest both as a feminist writer and in the context of Caribbean literature. She was honored with the W. H. Smith Award in 1967 and the Council of Great Britain Award for Writers in 1979.    More >

Issues of racial discrimination, imperialist exploitation, and accuracy of observation have long interested Conrad’s critics. As a European writing about imperialism in exotic lands, Conrad offered a vivid, but subjective account of the confrontations between the cultures and peoples of East and West. Though some in Africa have condemned his novels as racist, the books have been used as    More >

Although he was a staunch supporter of French colonialism, Paul Hazoumé in his realistic, sweeping narrative captures the customs and traditions—the soul—of Dahomey. This historical novel, set in the first half of the nineteenth century, depicts a proud and powerful nation at a turning point in its long pattern of wars, slave trade, and human sacrifices—practices that, in    More >

Jameel Farran, a Christian Arab, is forced to flee his destroyed Jerusalem in 1948. Teaching at Baghdad University, he falls in love with a beautiful Muslim girl, Sulafa, but their turbulent affair meets almost insurmountable obstacles of tradition and circumstance. This is a story of multiple conflicts—between Arab and Jew, desert and city, dictatorship and futile liberal effort, Eastern    More >

Seventeen short stories by such well-known writers as Abdullah, Idris, Mahfouz, Taher, Ibrahim, Sharouni, Fahmy, Sibai, and    More >

Nothing ever happens to Etienne. Born into a provincial French family, he grows up in the shadow of his ambitious successful brother. His personality passive, his life uneventful, he is resigned to his own inferiority—-until he meets Stefan. German, Jewish, outgoing, and cosmopolitan, Stefan Stein could hardly be more unlike Etienne. Yet, when the two young teenagers first meet, they form a    More >

This exhaustive bibliography includes creative works by Dutch-, English-, French-, and Spanish-speaking women writers from the Caribbean. The entries are grouped by language region, and within region by genre. There is also an extensive author index.    More >

The dehumanization of the Arabs who emigrated to "Mother France" is the subject of Chraïbi’s second novel, echoing Simple Past. This time, however, the focus is more on the values and customs of the West, whose promises to the Islamic world appear as a facade for violence and exploitation. The story unfolds in the mind of Yalaan Waldik, an "Arabo" who aspires to    More >

Beginning with an epilogue set in the present, this novel quickly moves back to the time of the generation after Muhammad—a time when North Africa, the home of the Berber peoples, was overrun by Arab armies. With strong characters and a compelling sense of place, Chraïbi demonstrates how the Berbers tried to maintain their cultural identity in the face of the overwhelmingly rapid and    More >

A collection of forty-two poems that depict the pain and pathos, the political and personal struggles that marked South Africa during apartheid. House is acutely sensitive to the sometimes subtle, sometimes explosive tensions of her homeland—and to the hope that must accompany any movement toward liberation. Eighteen full-page drawings by Selma Waldman are presented as visual responses to    More >

Seb, the protagonist of this Goan-Indian novel, is a member of the Indian “lost generation” caught between cultures, religions, and epochs. Struggling against the Western-style materialism and spiritual corruption he sees everywhere in the postimperial era, he becomes a teacher at a Gandhian-inspired school in the interior. There, both he and his “slow” students embark on a    More >

Women’s Voice is a detailed study of Clarice Lispector’s Laços de família, Rosario Castellanos’s Oficio de tinieblas, Marta Lynch’s La señora Ordóñez, and Silvina Bullrich’s Mañana digo basta. In deciding to focus on these, Lindstrom chose, from a wealth of literature, the authors that she felt not only express women’s    More >

Oyono’s third novel is the bittersweet, first-person story of Aki Barnabas, a young Cameroonian scholar who seeks to become “someone” by using the rules of the colonial system to his personal advantage. Failing in his nearly ten-year effort to win a scholarship to Paris, sacrificing his very self in a futile quest for prestige, Barnabas becomes lost at home and unwanted abroad.    More >

The protagonist, Katharina Wüllner—like many other women who were born shortly after the turn of the century—married just after the First World War and then had to send her husband and sons to fight in World War II. Her life spans the regimes of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Weimar Republic, Hitler's Reich, the Allied Occupation, and finally the Federal Republic. Her story is in many    More >

A detailed study of the literary debate among medieval Arab critics and philosophers about the use of truthfulness and untruthfulness in the poetry of the period. Emphasis on the critical schemes proposed by al-Jurjani and al-Qarta-janni. The book includes extensive notes, a bibliography, an index of personal names, and a useful glossary/index of literary and philosophical terms.    More >

This political, and darkly romantic novel centers on Mei Puti, a "forty-something" professor of literature, who suffers during the Cultural Revolution because of her heritage as part of the old elite.    More >

"I enjoy playing in the small square between the archway and the takiya [monastery] where the Sufis live. Like all the other children, I admire the mulberry trees in the takiya garden, the only bit of green in the whole neighborhood. Our tender hearts yearn for their dark berries. But it stands like a fortress, this takiya, circled by its garden wall. Its stern gate is broken and always, like    More >

This groundbreaking study of prolific Trinidadian writer Sam Selvon includes background essays, interviews with Selvon, and critical assessments of his ten novels and collected short stories. An extensive bibliography and notes on the contributors are included. In addition to Sam Selvon, the contributors to the work include Whitney Balliett, Harold Barratt, Edward Baugh, Frank Birbalsingh, E.K.    More >

Poet, storyteller, scholar, teacher, and statesman, Léon Gontran Damas, born in French Guiana, was a founding father of the negritude movement. This collection offers a wide range of essays on the life and career of Damas from his schooling at home and later in Martinique, through his creative years in Paris as a student, writer, and member of the French Chambres du Deputés, to his    More >

Sperber's great fiction trilogy spans the period from 1931 through the rise of Hitler and the struggles of international Communism to the early postwar era. It traces the lives of intellectuals, partisans, Communists, and ex-Communists during those turbulent, desperate, and heartbreaking years. This second novel in the series is one of brooding self-analysis and remorse, an account of some    More >

Behrangi offers five children’s stories that are notable for their realism and social significance. In keeping with his desire to combat ignorance and bridge the cultural gap between the rural poor and wealthy city dwellers and land owners, his stories do not shield children from knowledge about the pain and cruelty of life. Rather, they pay homage to the lives of the poor, who despite their    More >

This is the volume that first presented Hilary Tham's unique voice to the world literary scene. Described vividly and compassionately, Tham's colorful cast of characters includes a Cantonese grandfather who repaired ships under water, but now refuses to go into the sea; a strong-willed grandmother with bound feet but an unbounded mind; and a mother who arranges a marriage between her    More >

The son of a Tunisian Jewish family, Yetiv attempts to preserve some of the wisdom contained in a tradition that may be dying out. Each proverb is presented in transliterated Arabic, with both a literal English translation and an alternative translation that provides a context more familiar to a Western reader.    More >

Exploring the negra archetype in literature, this anthology presents the work—both the original Spanish version and the English-language translation—of 15 poets from Colombia, Equador, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Young’s extensive introduction traces the black woman’s image from Hispano-Arabic poetry to the 20th century poetry of South America.    More >

In this witty and ironic reversal of the typical colonial travelogue, Dadié recounts the journey of a bemused African traveler who settles in Rome, continuing his inquiries into the fundamental nature of humankind. Part conqueror, part pilgrim, part worshipper, and part critic, the protagonist compares Roman and African customs, traditions, history, and above all,    More >

Simms explores the methodological and theoretical problems faced by creative writers in the Pacific, perceptively discussing not only the native author’s dilemma in expressing ideas and forms generally unfamiliar to Westerners, but also the problems that foreign critics and general readers face in evaluating works by Pacific authors. He considers, too, how a writer evolves in a culture where    More >

A sensitive study of a great poet, one of only a handful of women who gained renown during the past 2,500 years of Persian history. During her life in post-Moseddeq, pre-Khomeini Iran, Farrokhzad (1935–1967) demonstrated a unique tenacity in striving for artistic freedom and individuality. Hillmann borrows freely from Farrokhzad's poetry and letters to weave a complex tapestry of the    More >

The first book in a trilogy that continues with Mother Spring and Birth at Dawn, this naturalistic allegory is about two Arabic-speaking police officers who set out in the Atlas Mountains in search of a revolutionary. Once in this mysterious region, the officers, with their postcolonial, Westernized manners, are challenged by the ferociously suspicious and independent-minded Berber    More >

In The Tree Climber, a detective, a lizard, a time-traveling dervish, and a magic tree all help to turn the quiet life of a married couple upside down. "Tawfiq al-Hakim’s plays deal with themes of universal rather than local application: the role of the artist in society, the predicament of man in the face of forces he neither controls nor understands, the use and abuse of power....    More >

The only child of the last traditional chief of Makawana village, Maiba struggles to hold her people together in the face of the polarizing forces of convention and modernization. Soaba makes palpable the tensions that arise when rapid change confronts a society that has been stable for many centuries. We also follow his unlikely heroine’s journey as she overcomes the legacy of a neglected    More >

Set against the background of post-1967 Lebanon, this novel caused a sensation in the Arab world because of its frank and realistic descriptions of Lebanon's—and particularly Lebanese women's—problems. Tragedy awaits Tamina, who is drawn by the lure of the city to leave her Shia Muslim village for the university in Beirut. Injured in a student demonstration, she is rescued by    More >

Setting his novel during World War II, Chraïbi opens the door on the protected and well-to- do world of an Arab woman whose role in society is restricted to that of wife and mother. At the urging of her two sons, she seeks knowledge of the larger world with all its political, economic, and social realities. Soon, she begins to develop and express her own opinions about the ongoing World War    More >

Assembled in this volume are the Arabic and English texts of the three long poems that make up Hawi's Bayadir al-ju [The Threshing Floors of Hunger], The Cave, The Genie of the Beach, and Plurals in Singular Form: The Transformations of Lazarus 1962. The translators provide detailed essays that explain each poem and the specific problems encountered in translating it.    More >

A woman abandons her newborn baby in a ditch. Soon discovered, the corpse arouses in the local peasants an intense desire to bring the killer to justice—and gives them the excuse to pry into the lives of the entire community. The primary suspects are a group of migrant workers, and the question of their guilt or innocence soon reveals other kinds of truths. The Sinners is an evocative    More >

These translations of 45 Wolof folktales are remarkable for the way they capture the poignancy, humor, and meaning of their original, oral form. Organized according to their thematic patterns, the stories reveal much about the Wolof people’s relationship with their environment, their beliefs about causality, and their social values, morality, and customs. Including a general introduction and    More >

Narang describes India as a land that lives simultaneously in several centuries, “accepting much and rejecting nothing.” It is a place of contrasts and contradictions, “where volatile emotions see-saw against a phlegmatic acceptance of the writ of fate.” Her stories, set in northern India—sometimes in the westernized homes of the educated elite, sometimes in the mud    More >

A collection of essays and reviews, both favorable and negative, about the charismatic and popular Igbo poet who, at the age of 35, was killed by the advancing Nigerian army during the war of Biafran secession. The book begins with a memorial essay by Okigbo’s good friend Chinua Achebe. Other contributors examine the rich imagery that Okigbo drew from nature, history, and politics,    More >

This is the first book-length analysis of the emerging literature written in Spanish by contemporary Central Americans whose grandparents came from the largely English-speaking islands of the Caribbean. Smart shows how the themes of language, religion, identity, exile, the plantation, mestizaje, and interracial love are explored in this literature to their fullest pan- Caribbean potential, and how    More >

Focusing on the interaction of finely portrayed characters from all elements of society, Days of Dust depicts the existential drama of the Six Days War as it was experienced on a personal level. The novel provides a remarkable perspective for comprehending Palestinian uprootedness and a people’s unceasing struggle for a homeland. First published in Arabic in 1969. This edition includes    More >

With an added introduction to place the work in context, this edition presents Cuban poet José Martí's (1853-1895) most famous poems in both Spanish and English.    More >

Veronica Mercier, a sophisticated Caribbean woman teaching and living in Paris, journeys to West Africa in pursuit of her "identity." There, she becomes involved with a prominent political figure—and must find her way among the often misleading guises of ambition, idealism, and violence. Conveying a mosaic of feelings (from childhood and adolescence in Guadeloupe, university days    More >

The poems in this powerful bilingual collection range from the rhetorical lyricism of Tawfiq Zayyad to the complex, cosmic imagery of Walid al-Halis, from the romantic idiom of Salma al-Jayyusi to the edgy, convoluted style of Tawfiq Sayigh, all evoking Palestine, the never-forgotten homeland. The rich variety of the work is explored in Abdelwahab Elmessiri's extensive introduction and    More >

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Includes The Wisdom of Solomon, King Oedipus, Shahrazad, Princess Sunshine, and Angels’ Prayer.    More >

The struggle for liberation from colonial rule in lusophone Africa, which culminated in the creation of several independent nations, has produced a vigorous body of works that are innovative in both theme and language. This collection of critical essays, accompanied by more than 30 illustrations and photographs, covers a range of literary forms (both oral and written) and also discusses the    More >

A masterpiece of modern African literature, The Suns of Independence brilliantly captures the struggles, desires, and dreams of people in a west African country as they live through the tumultuous days of postcolonial independence.    More >

Includes The Song of Death, The Sultan's Dilemma, and Not a Thing Out of Place, as well as the title play, an absurdist comedy.    More >

Distinguished scholars analyze the plays, poetry, and prose of Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. Introductory essays trace Soyinka’s career and place his work in the general context of African literature; the book also includes a definitive bibliography of his work and a chronology of his publications.    More >

Salih's shocking and beautiful novel reveals much about the people on each side of a cultural divide. A brilliant Sudanese student takes his mix of anger and obsession with the West to London, where he has affairs with women who are similarly obsessed with the mysterious East. Life, ecstasy, and death share the same moment in time. First published in Arabic in 1969.    More >

Poems of home and exile by Fouzi El-Asmar, a Palestinian poet and journalist. Most selections are presented in dual English/Arabic text.    More >

Peters searches for themes about African self-identity by exploring images of the mask in the poetry of Senghor, the fiction of Achebe, and the drama of Soyinka. His focus is not on the mask as a physical object, but as a concept—a dynamic interplay that involves both the mask and its wearer. Within this interplay, he finds important insights about Africanness as defined by three of the    More >

Because of, and at times in spite of, the distinct quality of Portuguese colonial policy, an original and vibrant lusophone literature exists today in Africa. Burness introduces the too-little- known work of Angola’s Luandino Viera, Agostinho Neto, Geraldo Bessa Victor, and Mario Antonio, Cape Verde’s Baltasar Lopes, and Mozambique’s Luis Bernardo Honwana.    More >

This collection combines articles by Naipaul himself, reflecting his developing ideas from 1958 through the mid-1970s, with fourteen perceptive essays representing his reception among critics.    More >

A lively debate on the question of the feminine voice in literature. Writers examined include Louise Bogan, Olive Schreiner, Hazel Hall, May Sarton, Edith Wharton, Lisa Alther, and Margaret Drabble.    More >