Literary Collections

The great war of the Maha bharata is over. Or is it? This is a single extended family wracked in conflict. Both sides succumbed to treachery. Ashva tthaman, the young leader of the three survivors on the losing side, is incensed at his father’s murder. He returns after dark to the now sleeping encampment. The sacrifice of the unsuspecting champions, the "Dead of Night," ensues. The five sons of Pandu have escaped. After a final confrontation, a missile crisis, Ashva tthaman concedes defeat but redirects his missile into the wombs of the victors’ women. They miscarry, and cannot hope for more children. Now the survivors, victors and vanquished, must struggle to comprehend their loss. "The Women" of both sides are confronted by their men’s mangled corpses in a masterpiece of horror and pathos. But their potent curses must be curbed to usher in a new era. Maha bharata Books Ten and Eleven give voice to the vanquished, to the psychology of loss and the conflicting desires for understanding and revenge.

Volume Two of "Drona" begins in the aftermath of tragedy. As evening falls, Arjuna journeys wearily back to camp and is greeted by the ashen faces of his brothers. Before they speak, he guesses the worst. And the worst is right: his son Abhimanyu is dead. Arjuna is inconsolable. Insensible with rage, he vows to take revenge on the boy’s killers. He swears that if they are not dead before another day passes, he will set himself alight. The world seems to shudder at his words.

The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Káurava army and the defeat of its leader, Dur·yódhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Káurava army, only to be slaughtered in his turn.
The Book of Shalya recounts in gory detail the final destruction of the Káurava army and the defeat of its leader, Duryódhana. In this first volume heroic duels and martial speeches abound as Shalya, the king of the Madras, is made general of the Káurava army, only to be slaughtered in his turn.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

The Book of Liberation is perhaps the most enigmatic philosophical text from ancient India. Presented as the teachings of Bhishma as he lies dying on the battlefield, after the epic war between the Pándavas and Káuravas, it was composed by unknown authors in the last centuries BCE, during the early period of world-renunciation, when peripatetic sages meditated under trees and practiced austerities in forest groves, and wandering sophists debated in the towns and cities. There has been no time like it before or since: such freedom of thought and expression is unparalleled in the history of the world.

The freedom enjoyed by these ancient thinkers was not an end in itself. Above all this animated work is the record of philosophers seeking liberation (moksha) from a world they believed unsatisfactory. The speculation herein is but a means to an end, for its authors believed they could attain freedom from the world by knowing philosophical truths.

After Bhishma is cut down at the end of the previous book of the Maha·bhárata, the book which bears his name, Duryódhana selects Drona as leader of his forces. Drona accepts the honor with Bhishma's blessing, despite his ongoing personal conflicts as mentor to both the Pándava and Káurava heroes in their youth. The fighting rages on, with heavy losses on both sides. Furious and frustrated, Duryódhana accuses Drona of collaborating with the enemy, but he replies that as long as Árjuna is on the field, the Pándavas will remain invincible. When Árjuna is finally diverted from the main action of the battle, Yudhi·shthira entrusts Árjuna's son Abhimányu with the task of making a breach in the Káurava formation. Abhimányu rampages through Drona's army, but at last is cornered by several Káurava warriors and finally killed by Jayad·ratha.
Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation
For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

King Harsha, who reigned over the kingdom of Kanauj from 606 to 647 CE, composed two Sanskrit plays about the mythical figures of King Udayana, his queen, Vásava·datta, and two of his co-wives. The plays abound in mistaken identities, both political and erotic. The characters masquerade as one another and, occasionally, as themselves, and each play refers simultaneously to itself and to the other.

Co-published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation

For more on this title and other titles in the Clay Sanskrit series, please visit http://www.claysanskritlibrary.org

Pelong ya Ka, a collection of essays and sketches in Sotho was first published in 1962 in the Bantu Treasury Series imprint of Witwatersrand University Press. S. Machabe Mofokeng is regarded as one of the greatest essayist and dramatist in Southern Sotho. His first book, Senkatana (a play) was published in 1952.

Pelong ya Ka comprises 20 essays which range from meditative, descriptive, and narrative to polemic style, with the tone of voice characterised by melancholy, humour, and satire. The essays span over a wide range of themes, as suggested by their titles, e.g. Pelo (The heart), Bodutu (‘Solitude’), Death (‘Lefu’), Nako (‘Time’), Pampiri (‘Paper’), Ho kganna mmotokara (‘Driving an automobile’), Sepetlele (‘Hospital’), Lenyalo (‘Matromony’), and Boqheku (‘Old age’). Nhlanhla Maake says of this collection “Mofokeng’s essays fuse simplicity with dept.” Pelong ya Ka is part of the African Treasury Series published by Wits University Press.

This anthology of contemporary American poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction, explores issues of identity, oppression, injustice, and social change. Living American writers produced each piece between 1980 and the present; works were selected based on literary merit and the manner in which they address one or more pressing social issues.

William Reichard has assembled some of the most respected literary artists of our time, asking whose voices are ascendant, whose silenced, and why. The work as a whole reveals shifting perspectives and the changing role of writing in the social justice arena over the last few decades.

New York Times Bestseller

In the spirit of her bestselling book Hope in the Dark, Rebecca Solnit explores how our actions can shape the future and the liberatory possibilities of embracing uncertainty.

Beginning with an essay about a three-hundred-year-old violin and what it can tell us about forests, abundance, and climate, and ending with on about a prisoner dreaming of seeing the ocean, No Straight Road Takes You There deftly bridges the political and the literary, offering unique insights, nuanced understanding, and inspiration for the challenging work ahead. In her latest essay collection, the award-winning author explores climate change, feminism, democracy, hope, and power and its abuse. Throughout she asks us to heed the stories we tell or have been told, and the ways those stories can be, or should be changed. Solnit offers a reappraisal of the value of indirect consequences, an embrace of unpredictability, slowness, and imperfection in the politics of how to change the world.

“I've tried to find other ways of seeing and to prize the migratory routes ideas take,” Solnit writes in the introduction, “the way that hope is most often grounded in memory, because you can't see the future but you can understand the patterns and possibilities if you know the past.”

WINNER OF THE 2023 RESTLESS BOOKS PRIZE FOR NEW IMMIGRANT WRITING

In imaginative prose that interrogates the past with a poet’s curiosity and a scientist’s pen, Unexploded Ordnance seeks to answer how we are shaped by the stories we inherit.

After moving from Germany to the United States to work as a professor of biology, Catharina Coenen takes up residence in a second language to voice the questions she could not ask at home: what exactly did her family live through during World War II, and to what extent are they implicated? What terrors did her grandmother, mother, and aunt endure, and why are women’s wartime stories so hard to find? How much of the self is shaped by the traumas and passions that come to us through our DNA? Balancing literature with historical research, old letters with new conversations, Coenen peels back generational silences to walk alongside her grandmother as she comes of age during Hitler’s rise to power, watches her friends disappear one by one, and flees bombing raids with her tiny daughters, escaping from city to town, rented room to orphanage, parish house to hospital, trying to survive. Weaving reflections on language, biology, queerness, art, and memory, Coenen moves between the personal and the universal with stunning honesty and elegance.

In this rich, eye-opening, and uplifting anthology, dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists, and translators from more than thirty countries send literary dispatches from life during the pandemic. A portion of proceeds benefit booksellers in need.

As our world is transformed by the coronavirus pandemic, writers offer a powerful antidote to the fearful confines of isolation: a window onto lives and corners of the world beyond our own. In Mauritius, a journalist contends with denialism and mourns the last days of summer, lost to the lockdown. In Paris, a writer struggles to protect his young son from fear. In Chile, protesters who prevailed against tear gas and rubber bullets are now halted by a virus. In Queens, after thirteen-hour shifts in the ER, a doctor dons running shoes and makes the long jog home.

And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again takes its title from the last line of Dante’s Inferno, when the poet and his guide emerge from hell to once again behold the beauty of the heavens. In that spirit, the stories, essays, poems, and artwork in this collection—from beloved authors including Jhumpa Lahiri, Mario Vargas Llosa, Eavan Boland, Daniel Alarcón, Jon Lee Anderson, Claire Messud, Ariel Dorfman, and many more—detail the harrowing experiences of life in the pandemic, while pointing toward a less isolated future. Together they comprise a profound global portrait of the defining moment of our time, and send a clarion call for solidarity across borders.

Our literary culture depends on bookstores—and those irreplaceable sources of conversation and community, of inspiration and solace, have been decimated by the lockdown. Net proceeds from And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which helps the passionate booksellers we readers depend upon.

WINNER OF THE 2023 RESTLESS BOOKS PRIZE FOR NEW IMMIGRANT WRITING

In imaginative prose that interrogates the past with a poet’s curiosity and a scientist’s pen, Unexploded Ordnance seeks to answer how we are shaped by the stories we inherit. 

After moving from Germany to the US to work as a professor of biology, Catharina Coenen takes up residence in a second language to voice the questions she could not ask at home. To what extent was her grandfather implicated in World War II? What exactly did her grandmother, mother, and aunt live through? And why are women’s wartime stories so seldom told? Coenen peels back generational silences to walk alongside her grandmother, who comes of age during Hitler’s rise to power, watches friends disappear one by one, and flees bombing raids with her tiny daughters. Weaving reflections on language, biology, queerness, art, and memory, Coenen moves between the personal and the universal with stunning honesty and elegance.

In this rich, eye-opening, and uplifting anthology, dozens of esteemed writers, poets, artists, and translators from more than thirty countries send literary dispatches from life during the pandemic. A portion of proceeds benefit booksellers in need.

As our world is transformed by the coronavirus pandemic, writers offer a powerful antidote to the fearful confines of isolation: a window onto lives and corners of the world beyond our own. In Mauritius, a journalist contends with denialism and mourns the last days of summer, lost to the lockdown. In Paris, a writer struggles to protect his young son from fear. In Chile, protesters who prevailed against tear gas and rubber bullets are now halted by a virus. In Queens, after thirteen-hour shifts in the ER, a doctor dons running shoes and makes the long jog home.

And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again takes its title from the last line of Dante’s Inferno, when the poet and his guide emerge from hell to once again behold the beauty of the heavens. In that spirit, the stories, essays, poems, and artwork in this collection—from beloved authors including Jhumpa Lahiri, Mario Vargas Llosa, Eavan Boland, Daniel Alarcón, Jon Lee Anderson, Claire Messud, Ariel Dorfman, and many more—detail the harrowing experiences of life in the pandemic, while pointing toward a less isolated future. Together they comprise a profound global portrait of the defining moment of our time, and send a clarion call for solidarity across borders.

Our literary culture depends on bookstores—and those irreplaceable sources of conversation and community, of inspiration and solace, have been decimated by the lockdown. Net proceeds from And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again will go to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, which helps the passionate booksellers we readers depend upon.

It's 1975. Bud Salem, 18-years-old, is fleeing his mother's TV church and meets a woman pitching oranges in the Mojave. She's Sylvia Cushman, a 45-year-old housewife, who loves driving alone through the desert. They odyssey through western motels and Apache gas stations where Sylvia gives long lectures about Emily Dickinson and drags Bud up into the mesas to search for petroglyphs. After sharing adventures in Detroit, New York, and Amherst, the travelers part...
In many ways Let the Dog Drive is an askew detective novel— when a character dies under strange circumstances in Texas, Bud goes to the panhandle to uncover what happened. His strange narration does contain pleasures of the genre: a shootout inside an aquarium; a faked death; another shootout on a chicken farm in Texas...But Let the Dog Drive is also a freewheeling merging of many other genres and concerns-- Hollywood, hardboiled novels of the 1930s, Emily Dickinson's white dress, hallucinatory cacti, The Book of Luke...And dogs.

Set among the spinning cogs and wheels of a lavish dinner club for the "gastronomical Elect," The Ruins is a black-eyed, Machiavellian fairy tale for adults, a gleeful cautionary discourse on ambition and ingratitude, and the penalties for disbelief in those forces within oneself.
Like all fairy tales, it turns on subjection–the increasingly comic and catastrophic subjection of "our hero, Tom," a high-minded and half-starved shoeshine boy. Tom shifts for himself in a dank and vaguely apocalyptic city where "the days come and go in a flat, lurid tide, noon and midnight like sullen twins, so indifferently does light distinguish itself from darkness."
Easily enticed from the artless squalor of his past into the dazzling and treacherous table politics of TheRuins, our hero soon finds himself at escalating odds with the diabolical proprietor, Jones, "an extravagant if charismatic crackpot." Tom's ill-fated efforts to reform The Ruins–finally and improbably rewarded at the glittering Fool's Ball–lead him on a devastating rise and illustrious tumble to humility, humanity, and practical grace.
In the tradition of Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut, Trace Farrell delivers this highly original first novel with the arch rhetoric and insinuating charm of a seasoned carnival barker. Slyly drawing the eye to a world teeming with life, after all, no more horrid than gorgeous, The Ruins marks the arrival of a major new literary talent.

A literary meditation on sex. Sam Heaps is a millennial Anaïs Nin, exploring their most intimate power struggles with a raw and artful voice.

Each partner is a new mask through which the narrator discovers themselves, creating a song through each personal essay of desire and regret — a pop melody with blues undertones. Heaps lets readers become the ultimate voyeurs, displaying nakedly what we secretly feel in our most intimate moments. Proximity brings you skin to skin with your own unspoken desires.

An eclectic collection of Crime, Horror, Bizarro, Science Fiction, Ninja Action, Noir, Mythos, and Literary Fiction stories, that gives tribute to one of the best Hip-Hop groups of all time.

Featuring:

Gabino Iglesias: BIG GHETTO BOYS

Charles Austin Muir: THE RAEKWONOMICON

Joshua Chaplinsky: SUPREME MATHEMATICS: A CIPHER

Mame Bougouma Diene: BEATS, BONES, & BRISKET

Jeremy Thompson: WU-TANGIBLE

J.C. Carter: ABBOT OF THE WHITE LOTUS

Loren Kleinman: SUNSHINE

Robert Dean: THE WORLD FELL BENEATH THE BROKEN CONCRETE

Andy Rausch: THE NIGHT OL’ DIRTY BASTARD CAME TO HOBOKEN

Tom Leins: INCARCERATED SCARFACES

Laura Lee Bahr: THE ONE WHO SWALLOWS THE SEA

David Osborne: PCP & METH & MOLLY & ALCOHOL, & NO SLEEP

S.L. Dixon: THE RIGHTEOUS HUNT

Aaron Besson: HELLRZA

Sergio Hernandez: LINX

Insights into power, spectacle, and performance in the courts of Middle Eastern rulers

In recent decades, scholars have produced much new research on courtly life in medieval Europe, but studies on imperial and royal courts across the Middle East have received much less attention, particularly for courts before 1500AD. In the Presence of Power, however, sheds new light on courtly life across the region. This insightful, exploratory collection of essays uncovers surprising commonalities across a broad swath of cultures.

The pre-modern period in this volume includes roughly seven centuries, opening with the first dynasty of Islam, the Umayyads, whose reign marked an important watershed for Late Antique culture, and closing with the rule of the so-called “gunpowder” empires of the Ottomans and Safavids over much of the Near East in the sixteenth century. In between, this volume locates similarities across the Western Medieval, Byzantine and Islamicate courtly cultures, spanning a vast history and geography to demonstrate the important cross-pollinations that occurred between their literary and cultural legacies. This study does not presume the presence of one shared courtly institution across time and space, but rather seeks to understand the different ways in which contemporaries experienced and spoke about these places of power and performance. Adopting a very broad view of performances, In the Presence of Power includes exuberant expressions of love in Arabic stories, shadow plays in Mamluk Cairo, Byzantine storytelling, religious food traditions in Christian Cyprus, advice, and political and ethnographic performances of power.

Spotlights the remarkable writers who will not be silenced by persecution

Following the August 12 attack on author Salman Rushdie, readers everywhere realized the vulnerability — and the courage — of writers who speak truth to power. The freedom to write is under threat today throughout the world, with more than 1,000 writers, journalists, and publishers known to be imprisoned or persecuted in more than 100 countries. Writers Under Siege bears witness to the power and danger of the pen, and to the powerful longing for the right to use it without fear. Collected here are fifty contributions by writers who have paid dearly for the privilege of writing. Some have been tortured; some have been killed. All understand the cost of speaking up and speaking out.

This book was prepared by PEN, which is both the world’s oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. It commemorates PEN’s eighty-fifth anniversary and celebrates PEN’s work by giving voice to persecuted writers from around the globe. The contributors come from more than twenty countries, from Belarus to Zimbabwe. Many are well-known in the English-speaking world, including Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature; Harold Pinter, from England, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature; Aung San Suu Kyi, from Burma, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize; and Anna Politkovskaya, from Russia, the noted journalist and author who was murdered in 2006, shortly after writing the piece that appears in this collection. Other contributors are less famous, perhaps, but their contributions are no less compelling. In prose and poetry, in fiction and non-fiction, they reveal the personal consequences of war, conflict, terrorism, and authoritarianism.

While the pieces collected here differ in their settings and their subjects, all are riveting. Grouped into four sections — Prison, Death, Asylum, and The Freedom to Write — they call our attention to the fundamental humanity we share and highlight the inhumanity we can so easily condone.

Contributors include: Chris Abani, Angel Cuadra Landrove, Asiye Guzel, Augusto Ernesto Llosa Giraldo, Mamadali Makhmudov, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Anna Politkovskaya, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thich Tue Sy, Gai Tho, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

“Ours is an ill-mannered society that wears those bad manners as a badge not just of its moral rectitude but of its millenarian ethical ambitions. At the same time, in no society in recent memory have people been so easily affronted.”

At a time when political writing and cultural criticism have come to be dominated by an insipid and unthinking moralism, David Rieff’s essays offer a bracing antidote. As well as being one of the English-speaking world’s most perceptive commentators on global politics, Rieff has in recent years been one of its most courageous and outspoken critics of the pathologies of identity politics—in particular, its grossly simplistic understanding of what it means to belong to a culture or a community, its fundamental failure to grasp the real value of the creative arts, and its increasing disregard for due process and freedom of expression.

The essays that appear in Desire and Fate serve both as a crucial record of and a fierce protest against these developments. Covering topics as diverse as censorship in contemporary publishing, the cultural ubiquity of the notion of trauma, and the future of democracy on a global level, they are all characterised by an incisive intelligence and a refreshing lack of wishful thinking. Together they confirm Rieff’s status as an indispensable writer and thinker.

The first anthology of its kind, On the Fly! brings forth the lost voices of Hobohemia. Dozens of stories, poems, songs, stories, and articles produced by hoboes are brought together to create an insider history of the subculture’s rise and fall. Adrenaline-charged tales of train hopping, scams, and political agitation are combined with humorous and satirical songs, razor sharp reportage and unique insights into the lives of the women and men who crisscrossed America in search of survival and adventure.

From iconic figures such as labor martyr Joe Hill and socialist novelist Jack London through to pioneering blues and country musicians, and little-known correspondents for the likes of the Hobo News, the authors and songwriters contained in On the Fly! run the full gamut of Hobohemia’s wide cultural and geographical embrace. With little of the original memoirs, literature, and verse remaining in print, this collection, aided by a glossary of hobo vernacular and numerous illustrations and photos, provides a comprehensive and entertaining guide to the life and times of a uniquely American icon. Read on to enter a world where hoboes, tramps, radicals, and bums gather in jungles, flop houses, and boxcars; where gandy dancers, bindlestiffs, and timber beasts roam the rails once more.

A one-man think-tank for the New Left, Paul Goodman wrote over thirty books, most of them before his decade of fame as a social critic in the Sixties. A Paul Goodman Reader that does him justice must be a compendious volume, with excerpts not only from best-sellers like Growing Up Absurd, but also from his landmark books on education, community planning, anarchism, psychotherapy, language theory, and poetics. Samples as well from The Empire City, a comic novel reviewers compared to Don Quixote, prize-winning short stories, and scores of poems that led America’s most respected poetry reviewer, Hayden Carruth, to exclaim, “Not one dull page. It’s almost unbelievable.”

Goodman called himself as an old-fashioned man of letters, which meant that all these various disciplines and occasions added up to a single abiding concern for the human plight in perilous times, and for human promise and achieved grandeur, love and hope.

Todo lo que siempre has querido saber sobre Murakami y el jazz, contado por el propio autor.

«Una joya.» Jorge Coscarón, Esquire
«Tan hermoso como ameno.» Eduardo Bravo, GQ
«Un libro perfecto para leer con los oídos mientras rinde un excepcional tributo a unos artistas imprescindibles.» Martín Page, El Cultural
«Demuestra la capacidad de Murakami para convertir las notas musicales en una prosa inigualable que nos envuelve en su melodía.» Iván Orio, El Correo
«Murakami logra atrapar en estos textos de forma prodigiosa el vínculo íntimo, emocional y subjetivo que establecemos con las creaciones artísticas.» Mauricio Bach, Letra Global
«Si les gusta el jazz, no deben perderse este libro de Murakami.» Luis M. Alonso, La Nueva España

Haruki Murakami regentó durante años un club de jazz, llamado Peter Cat, antes de dedicarse a tiempo completo a la escritura. Sin duda, al abrir este volumen el lector tendrá la sensación de haberse sentado a una de las mesas del local mientras el propio Murakami le cuenta anécdotas y pormenores de las canciones que se escuchan, en un tono confidencial, cálido y entusiasta. La pasión del escritor japonés por el jazz le llevó a escribir este libro compuesto por cincuenta y cinco retratos de músicos de jazz, acompañados de una ilustración del artista japonés Wada Makoto y de un comentario sobre un álbum de cada músico. Gracias a Murakami, cada «entrada» se convierte en una pequeña y deliciosa historia, en un fragmento de memoria autobiográfica, en consejos a la hora de escuchar a un intérprete, o en frescas pinceladas para describir a un artista o una época. Así, desde el mítico Chet Baker hasta Ella Fitzgerald, por el libro desfilan grandes figuras como Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans o Art Pepper.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Murakami and Jazz—Told by the Author Himself.

“A gem.” — Jorge Coscarón, Esquire
“As beautiful as it is engaging.” — Eduardo Bravo, GQ
“A perfect book to listen to as you read, paying exceptional tribute to essential artists.” — Martín Page, El Cultural
“Murakami masterfully transforms musical notes into prose, wrapping us in his melody.” — Iván Orio, El Correo
“He brilliantly captures the intimate, emotional, and personal connection we form with artistic creations.” — Mauricio Bach, Letra Global
“If you love jazz, you can’t miss this book by Murakami.” — Luis M. Alonso, La Nueva España

Before dedicating himself entirely to writing, Haruki Murakami ran a jazz club called Peter Cat for years. Open this book, and you’ll feel like you’ve taken a seat at the bar, listening to Murakami himself as he shares anecdotes and stories about the songs playing—his tone warm, personal, and full of enthusiasm.

Murakami’s deep love for jazz led him to craft this book, which features fifty-five portraits of legendary jazz musicians. Each profile is paired with an illustration by Japanese artist Wada Makoto and Murakami’s thoughts on an essential album from each musician’s repertoire. Thanks to Murakami’s storytelling, every entry transforms into a delightful little tale—a glimpse into his own memories, advice on how to listen to a performer, or vivid brushstrokes that bring an artist or an era to life.

From the iconic Chet Baker to Ella Fitzgerald, this book is filled with legends: Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Art Pepper, and many more.

El libro que faltaba de Almudena Grandes.

Las historias y las escenas cotidianas que resumen el mundo de una escritora irrepetible.

«Escalera interior es Almudena en estado puro.» Luis Landero
«Almudena Grandes era una maestra en contar el momento histórico a través de la vida cotidiana. Era insustituible… Y ahí nos dejó otros Episodios Nacionales monumentales.» Pepa Bueno
«Almudena mira por una mirilla y te invita a que lo hagas tú también... Te haces una idea muy clara de cómo era ella como mujer, como persona y como activista.» Carmen Machi
«El último regalo de Almudena Grandes. Pequeñas historias extraordinarias de la gente común.» Cristina Ros, Eldiario.es
«La épica de los pequeños momentos … Un deleite y un goce, además de un homenaje a una de nuestras escritoras más notables.» Javier García Recio, Faro de Vigo
«Debería ser lectura obligatoria en todos los colegios. Hay un momento en que las distintas generaciones literarias se acarician y este texto lo demuestra con una atrevida y perturbadora ambición emocional.» Sonia Fides, Heraldo de Aragón
«Una oda a lo cotidiano y a la educación sentimental.» Marta Alberca, El Plural

Escalera interior es el murmullo de los patios de luces que recogen olores de guisos, ruidos de cacharros y cucharones, risas, confidencias susurradas a media voz, buenos días y buenas noches que se intercambian en el rellano; es el murmullo que recoge nuestra rutina, la de la gente de a pie, en esas realidades pequeñas que son las que esconden las grandes historias...

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The Missing Book by Almudena Grandes

Stories and everyday moments that sum up the world of an unforgettable writer.

"Escalera interior is Almudena at her purest." Luis Landero
"Almudena Grandes was a master at capturing history through everyday life. She was irreplaceable… And she left us with other monumental Episodes of National Life." Pepa Bueno
"Almudena looks through a peephole and invites you to do the same… You get a crystal-clear picture of who she was as a woman, a person, and an activist." Carmen Machi
"Almudena Grandes’ final gift—extraordinary little stories about ordinary people." Cristina Ros, Eldiario.es
"The epic of small moments… A delight and a joy, as well as a tribute to one of our most remarkable writers." Javier García Recio, Faro de Vigo
"This should be mandatory reading in all schools. There comes a time when different literary generations intertwine, and this book proves it with daring and deeply emotional ambition." Sonia Fides, Heraldo de Aragón
"An ode to the everyday and to sentimental education." Marta Alberca, El Plural

Arabic erotic literature has a long and rich history going back as far as the ninth century. Far from being the pursuit of prurient pornographers, eroticism and sexuality received considerable attention from scholars.

Written by leading thirteenth-century scientist Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, The Sultan’s Sex Potions is part of a group of works devoted to aphrodisiacs as well as sexual practices and positions. Sober and measured in tone, the treatise was intended as a manual for self-healing. It was composed at the request of the ruler and so its potions, electuaries, syrups and enemas enjoyed a ‘royal warrant of appointment’ to arouse the lust for coitus and enhance sexual potency.

This volume includes a critical edition of three Arabic manuscripts (Berlin, Cairo and Glasgow), accompanied by an English translation as well as an introduction to Arabic erotic literature, a biography of the author, a bibliography of erotological works and extensive indexes.

This ground-breaking anthology features the compelling and courageous memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers – some internationally bestselling, others using pseudonyms. Here, we find heart-warming connections and moments of celebration alongside essays exploring the challenges of being LGBTQ+ and Arab.

From a military base in the Gulf to loving whispers caught between the bedsheets; and from touring overseas as a drag queen to a concert in Cairo where the rainbow flag was raised to a crowd of thousands, this collection celebrates the true colours of a vibrant Arab queer experience.

Finalist the People’s Book Prize 

Cyprus’ capital Nicosia has been split by a militarised border for decades. In this collection, writers from all sides of the divide reimagine the past, present and future of their city.

Here, Cypriot-Greeks coexist alongside Cypriot-Turks, the north with the south, town with countryside, dominant voices with the marginalised. This is a city of endless possibilities – a place where an anthropologist from London and a talkative Marxist are hunted by a gunman in the Forbidden zone; where a romance between two aspiring Tango dancers falls victim to Nicosia’s time difference; and where an artist finds his workplace on a rooftop, where he paints a horizon disturbed only by birds.

Together, these writers journey beyond the beaten track creating a complete picture of Nicosia, the world’s last divided capital city, that defies barriers of all kinds.

A Map of Absence presents the finest poetry and prose by Palestinian writers over the last seventy years. Featuring writers in the diaspora and those living under occupation, these striking entries pay testament to one of the most pivotal events in modern history – the 1948 Nakba.

This unique, landmark anthology includes translated excerpts of works by major authors such as Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani and Fadwa Tuqan alongside those of emerging writers, published here in English for the first time. Depicting the varied aspects of Palestinian life both before and after 1948, their writings highlight the ongoing resonances of the Nakba.

An intimate companion for all lovers of world literature, A Map of Absence reveals the depth and breadth of Palestinian writing.

Emma Watson’s Jan/Feb 2019 pick for her feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf

A Guardian UK Best Book of the Year

From established literary heavyweights to emerging spoken word artists, the writers in this ground-breaking collection blow away the narrow image of the ‘Muslim Woman’.

Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride. Among stories of honour killings and ill-fated love in besieged locations, we also find heart-warming connections and powerful challenges to the status quo.

From Algiers to Brighton, these stories transcend time and place revealing just how varied the search for belonging can be. Alongside renowned authors such as Kamila Shamsie, Ahdaf Soueif and Leila Aboulela are emerging voices, published here for the first time.

Sabrina Mahfouz is a British Egyptian playwright, poet and screenwriter. She was awarded the 2014 Fringe First Award for her play Chef and her play Clean transferred to New York in 2014. Her poetry has been performed and produced for TV, radio and film, including in the recent Railway Nation: A Journey in Verse on BBC2. Mahfouz has an essay in the award-winning The Good Immigrant and has published eight works of drama with Bloomsbury. She lives in London.

A classic textbook on the study of logic

In the Muslim East, logic was an integral part of the syllabus of schools and found to be especially helpful for legal studies. It was in this milieu that The Rules of Logic was composed by Najm al-Dīn al- Kātibī, a scholar of the Shāfiʿī school of law.

The Rules of Logic is the most widely read introduction to logic in the Arabic-speaking world. It has probably enjoyed a longer shelf-life than any other logic textbook ever written, having been in use by madrasah students from the early eighth/fourteenth century up until the present day. Building on the theories of Avicenna, al-Rāzī, and other pioneers of logic, al-Kātibī discusses the many pitfalls of building arguments and setting out unambiguous claims in natural language. The enduring nature of the text is a testament to al-Kātibī and his impact on concepts of formal discourse and argument. Accompanied by an informative commentary on the text by translator Tony Street, The Rules of Logic brings to an English readership an influential text that has shaped the work of scholars of logic for centuries.

An English-only edition, including a commentary by translator Tony Street.

A groundbreaking exposition of Islamic mysticism

The Essence of Reality was written over the course of just three days in 514/1120, by a scholar who was just twenty-four. The text, like its author ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which that it is in all likelihood the earliest philosophical exposition of mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This important work would go on to exert significant influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and philosophical mysticism.

Written in a terse yet beautiful style, The Essence of Reality consists of one hundred brief chapters interspersed with Qurʾanic verses, prophetic sayings, Sufi maxims, and poetry. In conversation with the work of the philosophers Avicenna and al-Ghazālī, the book takes readers on a philosophical journey, with lucid expositions of questions including the problem of the eternity of the world; the nature of God’s essence and attributes; the concepts of “before” and “after”; and the soul’s relationship to the body. All these discussions are seamlessly tied into ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s foundational argument—that mystical knowledge lies beyond the realm of the intellect.

An English-only edition.

Poems and tales of a literary forefather of the United Arab Emirates

Love, Death, Fame features the poetry of al-Māyidī ibn Ẓāhir, who has been embraced as the earliest poet in what would later become the United Arab Emirates. Although little is known about his life, he is the subject of a sizeable body of folk legend and is thought to have lived in the seventeenth century, in the area now called the Emirates. The tales included in Love, Death, Fame portray him as a witty, resourceful, scruffy poet, at times combative and at times kindhearted.

His poetry primarily features verses of wisdom and romance, with scenes of clouds and rain, desert migrations, seafaring, and pearl diving. Like Arabian Romantic and Arabian Satire, this collection is a prime example of Nabaṭī poetry, combining vernacular language of the Arabian Peninsula with archaic vocabulary and images dating to Arabic poetry’s very origins. Distinguished by Ibn Ẓāhir’s unique voice, Love, Death, Fame offers a glimpse of what life was like four centuries ago in the region that is now the UAE.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

A collection of poems from a changing Bedouin world

Bedouin Poets of the Nafūd Desert features poetry from three poets of the Ibn Rashīd dynasty–the highwater mark of Bedouin culture in the nineteenth century. Khalaf Abū Zwayyid, ʿAdwān al-Hirbīd, and ʿAjlān ibn Rmāl belonged to tribes based around the area of Jabal Shammar in northern Arabia. A cultural and political center for the region, Jabal Shammar attracted caravans of traders and pilgrims, tribal shaykhs, European travelers (including T.E. Lawrence), illiterate Bedouin poets, and learned Arabs. All three poets lived at the inception of or during modernity’s accelerating encroachment. New inventions and firearms spread throughout the region, and these poets captured Bedouin life in changing times. Their poems and the accompanying narratives showcase the beauty and complexity of Bedouin culture, while also grappling with the upheaval brought about by the rise of the House of Saud and Wahhabism.

The poems featured in Bedouin Poets of the Nafūd Desert are often humorous and witty, yet also sentimental, wistful, and romantic. They vividly describe journeys on camelback, stories of family and marriage, thrilling raids, and beautiful nature scenes, offering a window into Bedouin culture and society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Timeless fables of loyalty and betrayal

Like Aesop’s Fables, Kalīlah and Dimnah is a collection designed not only for moral instruction, but also for the entertainment of readers. The stories, which originated in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, were adapted, augmented, and translated into Arabic by the scholar and state official Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in the second/eighth century. The stories are engaging, entertaining, and often funny, from “The Man Who Found a Treasure But Could Not Keep It,” to “The Raven Who Tried To Learn To Walk Like a Partridge” and “How the Wolf, the Raven, and the Jackal Destroyed the Camel.”

Kalīlah and Dimnah is a “mirror for princes,” a book meant to inculcate virtues and discernment in rulers and warn against flattery and deception. Many of the animals who populate the book represent ministers counseling kings, friends advising friends, or wives admonishing husbands. Throughout, Kalīlah and Dimnah offers insight into the moral lessons Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ wished to impart to rulers—and readers.

An English-only edition.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded pits the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish—offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence.

Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on “rural” verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt’s countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbī. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era.

An English-only edition.

Poems and tales of a literary forefather of the United Arab Emirates

Love, Death, Fame features the poetry of al-Māyidī ibn Ẓāhir, who has been embraced as the earliest poet in what would later become the United Arab Emirates. Although little is known about his life, he is the subject of a sizeable body of folk legend and is thought to have lived in the seventeenth century, in the area now called the Emirates. The tales included in Love, Death, Fame portray him as a witty, resourceful, scruffy poet, at times combative and at times kindhearted.

His poetry primarily features verses of wisdom and romance, with scenes of clouds and rain, desert migrations, seafaring, and pearl diving. Like Arabian Romantic and Arabian Satire, this collection is a prime example of Nabaṭī poetry, combining vernacular language of the Arabian Peninsula with archaic vocabulary and images dating to Arabic poetry’s very origins. Distinguished by Ibn Ẓāhir’s unique voice, Love, Death, Fame offers a glimpse of what life was like four centuries ago in the region that is now the UAE.


An English-only edition.

A brilliant cross-cultural interpretation of a key text of yoga philosophy

The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali is the foundational text of yoga philosophy, used by millions of yoga practitioners and students worldwide. Written in a question-and-answer format, The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali deals with the theory and practice of yoga and the psychological question of the liberation of the soul from attachments.

This book is a new rendering into English of the Arabic translation and commentary of this text by the brilliant eleventh-century polymath al-Bīrūnī. Given the many historical variants of the Yoga Sutras, his Kitāb Bātanjali is important for yoga studies as the earliest translation of the Sanskrit. It is also of unique value as an Arabic text within Islamic studies, given the intellectual and philosophical challenges that faced the medieval Muslim reader when presented with the intricacy of composition, interpretation, and allusion that permeates this translation.

An English-only edition.

A witty satire of the medical profession

The Doctors’ Dinner Party is an eleventh-century satire in the form of a novella, set in a medical milieu. A young doctor from out of town is invited to dinner with a group of older medical men, whose conversation reveals their incompetence. Written by the accomplished physician Ibn Buṭlān, the work satirizes the hypocrisy of quack doctors while displaying Ibn Buṭlān’s own deep technical knowledge of medical practice, including surgery, blood-letting, and medicines. He also makes reference to the great thinkers and physicians of the ancient world, including Hippocrates, Galen, and Socrates.

Combining literary parody with social satire, the book is richly textured and carefully organized: in addition to the use of the question-and-answer format associated with technical literature, it is replete with verse and subtexts that hint at the infatuation of the elderly practitioners with their young guest. The Doctors’ Dinner Party is an entertaining read in which the author skewers the pretensions of the physicians around the table.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.

Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.

Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

An English-only edition.

A collection of poems about nature and power

To Ibn al-Muʿtazz and his Abbasid contemporaries, the hunt was more than a diversion—it was the theater for their poetic and political endeavors, captured here in fifty-nine Arabic hunting poems, or ṭardiyyāt. The poems of In Deadly Embrace describe hunting expeditions with animals trained to hunt, including saluki hounds and birds of prey. Many were composed after these outings, when the hunting party gathered to enjoy the game they caught.

Poetry was central to Abbasid society and served as a method of maintaining networks of patronage and friendship; the poems in this collection reflect these power dynamics and allowed Ibn al-Muʿtazz—prince of the realm and in line for the caliphate—to explore his own relationship to social and political power and to demonstrate his fitness to rule.

Ibn al-Muʿtazz was an influential poet and literary theorist of the Modernist school of poetry. In Deadly Embrace merges the Modernists’ new techniques and styles with age-old themes: military prowess and wisdom, fitness to rule and comradeship, the camaraderie of the hunt and the cult of heroic masculinity. Groundbreaking and evocative, the poems paint vivid pictures of hunting scenes while posing deep questions about our attentiveness to the natural world and the relationship of the human to the nonhuman.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Flora, fauna, and famine in thirteenth-century Egypt

A Physician on the Nile begins as a description of everyday life in Egypt at the turn of the seventh/thirteenth century, before becoming a harrowing account of famine and pestilence. Written by the polymath and physician ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, and intended for the Abbasid caliph al-Nāṣir, the first part of the book offers detailed descriptions of Egypt’s geography, plants, animals, and local cuisine, including a recipe for a giant picnic pie made with three entire roast lambs and dozens of chickens. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s text is also a pioneering work of ancient Egyptology, with detailed observations of Pharaonic monuments, sculptures, and mummies. An early and ardent champion of archaeological conservation, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf condemns the vandalism wrought by tomb-robbers and notes with distaste that Egyptian grocers price their goods with labels written on recycled mummy-wrappings.

The book’s second half relates his horrific eyewitness account of the great famine that afflicted Egypt in the years 597–598/1200–1202. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was a keen observer of humanity, and he offers vivid first-hand depictions of starvation, cannibalism, and a society in moral free-fall.

A Physician on the Nile contains great diversity in a small compass, distinguished by the acute, humane, and ever-curious mind of its author. It is rare to be able to hear the voice of such a man responding so directly to novelty, beauty, and tragedy.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.

Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.

Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

A groundbreaking exposition of Islamic mysticism

The Essence of Reality was written over the course of just three days in 514/1120, by a scholar who was just twenty-four. The text, like its author ʿAyn al-Quḍāt, is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which that it is in all likelihood the earliest philosophical exposition of mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This important work would go on to exert significant influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and philosophical mysticism.

Written in a terse yet beautiful style, The Essence of Reality consists of one hundred brief chapters interspersed with Qurʾanic verses, prophetic sayings, Sufi maxims, and poetry. In conversation with the work of the philosophers Avicenna and al-Ghazālī, the book takes readers on a philosophical journey, with lucid expositions of questions including the problem of the eternity of the world; the nature of God’s essence and attributes; the concepts of “before” and “after”; and the soul’s relationship to the body. All these discussions are seamlessly tied into ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s foundational argument—that mystical knowledge lies beyond the realm of the intellect.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Uncovering the professional secrets of con artists and swindlers in the medieval Middle East

The Book of Charlatans is a comprehensive guide to trickery and scams as practiced in the thirteenth century in the cities of the Middle East, especially in Syria and Egypt. The author, al-Jawbarī, was well versed in the practices he describes and may well have been a reformed charlatan himself. Divided into thirty chapters, his book reveals the secrets of everyone from “Those Who Claim to be Prophets” to “Those Who Claim to Have Leprosy” and “Those Who Dye Horses.”

The material is informed in part by the author’s own experience with alchemy, astrology, and geomancy, and in part by his extensive research. The work is unique in its systematic, detailed, and inclusive approach to a subject that is by nature arcane and that has relevance not only for social history but also for the history of science. Covering everything from invisible writing to doctoring gemstones and quack medicine, The Book of Charlatans opens a fascinating window into a subculture of beggars’ guilds and professional con artists in the medieval Arab world.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

A merchant’s remarkable travel account of an African kingdom

Muḥammad al-Tūnisī (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-Tūnisī was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tūnisī set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur.

In Darfur is al-Tūnisī’s remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state, featuring descriptions of the geography of the region, the customs of Darfur’s petty kings, court life and the clothing of its rulers, marriage customs, eunuchs, illnesses, food, hunting, animals, currencies, plants, magic, divination, and dances. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author.

In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of an African society on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane.

An English-only edition.

Maqāmāt Abī Zayd al-Sarūjī is a scholarly, Arabic-only edition of the celebrated work by al-Ḥarīrī, which is also available in English translation from the Library of Arabic Literature as Impostures. Al-Ḥarīrī's text consists of fifty stories about the adventures of the itinerant con man and master of persuasion Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, as told by the equally itinerant and often gullible narrator al-Ḥārith ibn Hāmmam. Al-Ḥarīrī was a virtuoso writer of the rhymed prose narrative genre known as the maqāmah, which would continue as a popular literary form into the twentieth century.

An Arabic edition with an Arabic foreword and English scholarly apparatus.

Questions and answers from two great philosophers

Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, even if it is scarred by suffering? Spanning a vast array of subjects that range from the philosophical to the theological, from the philological to the scientific, The Philosopher Responds is the record of a set of questions put by the litterateur Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī to the philosopher and historian Abū ʿAlī Miskawayh. Both figures were foremost contributors to the remarkable flowering of cultural and intellectual life that took place in the Islamic world during the reign of the Buyid dynasty in the fourth/tenth century.

The correspondence between al-Tawḥīdī and Miskawayh holds a mirror to many of the debates of the time and reflects the spirit of rationalistic inquiry that animated their era. It also provides insight into the intellectual outlooks of two thinkers who were divided as much by their distinctive temperaments as by the very different trajectories of their professional careers. Alternately whimsical and tragic, trivial and profound, al-Tawḥīdī’s questions provoke an interaction as interesting in its spiritedness as in its content.

An English-only edition.

Wide-ranging essays on Moroccan history, Sufism, and religious life

Al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh scholar from the Middle Atlas began writing a collection of short essays on a wide variety of subjects. Completed three years later and gathered together under the title Discourses on Language and Literature (al-Muhadarat fi l-adab wa-l-lughah), they offer rich insight into the varied intellectual interests of an ambitious and gifted Moroccan scholar, covering subjects as diverse as genealogy, theology, Sufism, history, and social mores.

In addition to representing the author’s intellectual interests, The Discourses also includes numerous autobiographical anecdotes, which offer valuable insight into the history of Morocco, including the transition from the Saadian to the Alaouite dynasty, which occurred during al-Yūsī’s lifetime. Translated into English for the first time, The Discourses offers readers access to the intellectual landscape of the early modern Muslim world through an author who speaks openly and frankly about his personal life and his relationships with his country’s rulers, scholars, and commoners.

An English-only edition.

One of the Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Books of the Year

Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Translation Category

Shortlist, 2021 National Translation Award

Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award, Literature Category


Fifty rogue’s tales translated fifty ways

An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature.

Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English.

Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.

An English-only edition.

Written in mid-seventeenth-century Egypt, Risible Rhymes is in part a short, comic disquisition on “rural” verse, mocking the pretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt’s countryside.

The interest in the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious locus in its own right that is hinted at in this work may be unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature. As such, the work provides a companion piece to its slightly younger contemporary, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, which also takes examples of mock-rural poems and subjects them to grammatical analysis. The overlap between the two texts may indicate that they both emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse that circulated in Ottoman Egypt. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems—another popular genre of the day—and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbī.

Taken as a whole, Risible Rhymes offers intriguing insight into the critical concerns of mid-Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics that dominated discussions of poetry in al-Sanhūrī's day and shedding light on the literature of this understudied era.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Satirical verse on society and its hypocrisies

A master of satire known for his ribald humor, self-deprecation, and invective verse (hijāʾ), the poet Ḥmēdān al-Shwēʿir was an acerbic critic of his society and its morals. Living in the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, Ḥmēdān wrote in an idiom widely referred to as “Nabaṭī,” here a mix of Najdī vernacular and archaic vocabulary and images dating to the origins of Arabic poetry. In Arabian Satire, Ḥmēdān is mostly concerned with worldly matters and addresses these in different guises: as the patriarch at the helm of the family boat and its unruly crew; as a picaresque anti-hero who revels in taking potshots at the established order, its hypocrisy, and its failings; as a peasant who labors over his palm trees, often to no avail and with no guarantee of success; and as a poet recording in verse how he thinks things ought to be.

The poems in Arabian Satire reveal a plucky, headstrong, yet intensely socially committed figure—representative of the traditional Najdī ethos—who infuses his verse with proverbs, maxims, and words of wisdom expressed plainly and conversationally. Ḥmēdān is widely quoted by historians of the Gulf region and in anthologies of popular sayings. This is the first full translation of this remarkable poet.

An English-only edition.

A literary tour of Christian monasteries of the medieval Middle East

The Book of Monasteries takes readers on an engaging tour of the monastic centers of the medieval Middle East, illustrated with a rich variety of poetry and prose. Starting with monasteries in Baghdad, readers are taken up the Tigris into the mountains of south-eastern Anatolia before moving to Palestine and Syria, along the Euphrates down to the old Christian center of Ḥīrah and onward to Egypt. For the literary anthologist al-Shābushtī, who was Muslim, monasteries were important sites of interactions between Abbasid elites and the Christian communities that made up about half the population of the Abbasid Empire at the time.

Each section in this anthology covers a specific monastery, beginning with a discussion of its location and the reason for its name. Al-Shābushtī presents poems, anecdotes, and historical reports related to each site. He selects heroic and spectacular incidents, illustrations of caliphal extravagance, and occasions that gave rise to memorable verse. Important political personalities and events that were indirectly linked with monasteries also appear here, as do scenes of festive court life and gruesome murders. Through these accounts, al-Shābushtī offers readers a meditation on the splendor of Abbasid culture as well as moral and philosophical lessons: the ephemerality of power; the virtues of generosity and tolerance; the effectiveness of eloquence in prose and poetry; and the fleeting nature of pleasure and beauty. Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Monasteries offers an entertaining panorama of religious, political, and literary life during the Abbasid era.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Love poems from late nineteenth-century Arabia

Arabian Romantic captures what it was like to live in central Arabia before the imposition of austere norms by the Wahhabi authorities in the early twentieth century: tales of robbery and hot pursuit; perilous desert crossings; scenes of exhaustion and chaos when water is raised from deep wells under harsh conditions; the distress of wounded and worn-out animals on the brink of perdition; once proud warriors who are at the mercy of their enemy on the field of battle. Such images lend poignancy to the suffering of the poet’s love-stricken heart, while also painting a vivid portrait of typical Bedouin life.

Ibn Sbayyil (ca. 1853–1933), a town dweller from the Najd region of the Arabian Peninsula, was a key figure in the Nabati poetic tradition. His poetry, which is still recited today, broke with the artifice of the preceding generation by combining inherited idiom and original touches reflecting his environment. Translated into English for the first time by Marcel Kurpershoek, Arabian Romantic will delight readers with a poetry that is direct, fluent, and expressive, and that has entertained Arabic speakers for over a century.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Humanitarian lessons and practical insights from the prophet of Islam

The words of Muhammad, messenger of God and prophet of Islam, have a special place in the hearts of his followers. Wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an, they are cited by scholars in a vast array of disciplines—including law, theology, metaphysics, poetry, grammar, history, and medicine—and are quoted by Muslims to one another in their daily lives.

Light in the Heavens by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, a Sunni judge in the Fatimid court in Egypt, is an outstanding example of a compilation of these sayings, known as hadiths, that circulated orally and were later assembled and written down. From North Africa to India, generations have used Light in the Heavens as a teaching text for children as well as adults, and many of its 1,200 sayings are familiar to individuals of diverse denominations and ethnicities. For Muslims—who consider Muhammad’s teachings the fount of wisdom and the beacon of guidance in all things, mundane and sublime—these sayings provide a direct window into the inspired vision of one of the most influential humans to have walked the Earth.

An English-only edition.

Trenchant and witty critiques of life in Cairo under British rule

What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is a masterpiece of early twentieth-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, this highly original work was first introduced in serialized form in his family’s pioneering newspaper Miṣbāḥ al-Sharq (Light of the East) and later published in book form in 1907. Widely hailed for its erudition and mordant wit, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us was embraced by Egypt’s burgeoning reading public and soon became required reading for generations of school students.

Bridging classical genres and modern Arabic fiction, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is divided into two parts. Sarcastic in tone and critical in outlook, the first part of the book relates the excursions of its narrator, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, and his companion, the Pasha, through a rapidly westernizing Cairo and provides vivid commentary on a society negotiating—however imperfectly—the clash between traditional norms and imported cultural values. The second half takes the narrator to Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle of 1900, where al-Muwaylihi casts a critical eye on European society, modernity, and the role of Western imperialism as it ripples across the globe.

Paving the way for the modern Arabic novel, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is invaluable both for its insight into colonial Egypt and its pioneering role in Arabic literary history.

An English-only edition.

Uncovering the professional secrets of con artists and swindlers in the medieval Middle East

The Book of Charlatans is a comprehensive guide to trickery and scams as practiced in the thirteenth century in the cities of the Middle East, especially in Syria and Egypt. Al-Jawbarī was well versed in the practices he describes and may have been a reformed charlatan himself. Divided into thirty chapters, the book reveals the secrets of everyone from “Those Who Claim to be Prophets” to “Those Who Claim to Have Leprosy” and “Those Who Dye Horses.”

The material is informed in part by the author’s own experience with alchemy, astrology, and geomancy, and in part by his extensive research. The work is unique in its systematic, detailed, and inclusive approach to a subject that is by nature arcane and that has relevance not only for social history but also for the history of science. Covering everything from invisible writing to doctoring gemstones and quack medicine, The Book of Charlatans opens a fascinating window into a subculture of beggars’ guilds and professional con artists in the medieval Arab world.

An English-only edition.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded pits the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” urban population. In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion, and rural dervish—offering anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, and criminality of each. In Volume Two, he presents a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day, with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire with digressions into love, food, and flatulence.

Volume Two of Brains Confounded is followed by Risible Rhymes, a concise text that includes a comic disquisition on “rural” verse, mocking the pretensions of uneducated poets from Egypt’s countryside. Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzle poems, which were another popular genre of the day, and presents a debate between scholars over a line of verse by the fourth/tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbī. Together, Brains Confounded and Risible Rhymes offer intriguing insight into the intellectual concerns of Ottoman Egypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, and stylistics and shedding light on the literature of the era.

An English-only edition.

The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the establishment of a substantial network of maritime trade across the Indian Ocean, providing the real-life background to the Sinbad tales.

An exceptional exemplar of Arabic travel writing, Accounts of China and India is a compilation of reports and anecdotes about the lands and peoples of this diverse territory, from the Somali headlands of Africa to the far eastern shores of China and Korea.

Traveling eastward, we discover a vivid human landscape—from Chinese society to Hindu religious practices—as well as a colorful range of natural wilderness—from flying fish to Tibetan musk-deer and Sri Lankan gems. The juxtaposed accounts create a kaleidoscope of a world not unlike our own, a world on the road to globalization. In its ports, we find a priceless cargo of information. Here are the first foreign descriptions of tea and porcelain, a panorama of unusual social practices, cannibal islands, and Indian holy men—a marvelous, mundane world, contained in the compass of a novella.

An English-only edition.

Uplifting tales from one of the most influential Arabic books of the Middle Ages

One of the most popular and influential Arabic books of the Middle Ages, Deliverance Follows Adversity is an anthology of stories and anecdotes designed to console and encourage the afflicted. Regarded as a pattern-book of Arabic storytelling, this collection shows how God’s providence works through His creatures to rescue them from tribulations ranging from religious persecution and medical emergencies to political skullduggery and romantic woes.

A resident of Basra and Baghdad, al-Tanukhi (327–84/939–94) draws from earlier Arabic classics as well as from oral stories relayed by the author’s tenth-century Iraqi contemporaries, who comprised a wide circle of writers, intellectuals, judges, government officials, and family members. This edition and translation includes the first three chapters of the work, which deal with Qur'anic stories and prayers that bring about deliverance, as well as general instances of the workings of providence. The volume incorporates material from manuscripts not used in the standard Arabic edition, and is the first translation into English. The complete translation, spanning four volumes, will be the first integral translation into any European language.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

The adventures of the man who created Aladdin

The Book of Travels is Ḥannā Diyāb’s remarkable first-person account of his travels as a young man from his hometown of Aleppo to the court of Versailles and back again, which forever linked him to one of the most popular pieces of world literature, the Thousand and One Nights.

Diyāb, a Maronite Christian, served as a guide and interpreter for the French naturalist and antiquarian Paul Lucas. Between 1706 and 1716, Diyāb and Lucas traveled through Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, Tripolitania, Tunis, Italy, and France. In Paris, Ḥannā Diyāb met Antoine Galland, who added to his wildly popular translation of the Thousand and One Nights several tales related by Diyāb, including “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” When Lucas failed to make good on his promise of a position for Diyāb at Louis XIV’s Royal Library, Diyāb returned to Aleppo. In his old age, he wrote this engaging account of his youthful adventures, from capture by pirates in the Mediterranean to quack medicine and near-death experiences.

Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Travels introduces readers to the young Syrian responsible for some of the most beloved stories from the Thousand and One Nights.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Wide-ranging essays on Moroccan history, Sufism, and religious life

Al-Hasan al-Yusi was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh scholar from the Middle Atlas began writing a collection of short essays on a wide variety of subjects. Completed three years later and gathered together under the title Discourses on Language and Literature (al-Muhadarat fi l-adab wa-l-lughah), they offer rich insight into the varied intellectual interests of an ambitious and gifted Moroccan scholar, covering subjects as diverse as genealogy, theology, Sufism, history, and social mores.

In addition to representing the author’s intellectual interests, The Discourses also includes numerous autobiographical anecdotes, which offer valuable insight into the history of Morocco, including the transition from the Saadian to the Alaouite dynasty, which occurred during al-Yusi’s lifetime. Translated into English for the first time, The Discourses offers readers access to the intellectual landscape of the early modern Muslim world through an author who speaks openly and frankly about his personal life and his relationships with his country’s rulers, scholars, and commoners.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Delectable recipes from the medieval Middle East

This popular thirteenth-century Syrian cookbook is an ode to what its anonymous author calls the “greater part of the pleasure of this life,” namely the consumption of food and drink, as well as the fragrances that garnish the meals and the diners who enjoy them.

Organized like a meal, Scents and Flavors opens with appetizers and juices and proceeds through main courses, side dishes, and desserts. Apricot beverages, stuffed eggplant, pistachio chicken, coriander stew, melon crepes, and almond pudding are seasoned with nutmeg, rose, cloves, saffron, and the occasional rare ingredient such as ambergris to delight and surprise the banqueter. Bookended by chapters on preparatory perfumes, incenses, medicinal oils, antiperspirant powders, and after-meal hand soaps, this comprehensive culinary journey is a feast for all the senses.

With the exception of a few extant Babylonian and Roman texts, cookbooks did not appear on the world literary scene until Arabic speakers began compiling their recipe collections in the tenth century, peaking in popularity in the thirteenth century. Scents and Flavors quickly became a bestseller during this golden age of cookbooks and remains today a delectable read for cultural historians and epicures alike.

An English-only edition.

The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic

Mission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia.

In this colorful documentary from the tenth century, the enigmatic Ibn Fadlan relates his experiences as part of an embassy sent by Caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, body painting, and a striking account of a ship funeral. Together, these anecdotes illuminate a vibrant world of diversity during the heyday of the Abbasid Empire, narrated with as much curiosity and zeal as they were perceived by its observant beholder.

An English-only edition.

Fantastic tales of magic and wonder

Translated into English for the very first time, A Hundred and One Nights is a marvelous example of the rich tradition of popular Arabic storytelling. Like the celebrated Thousand and One Nights, this collection opens with the frame story of Scheherazade, the vizier’s gifted daughter who recounts imaginative tales night after night in an effort to distract the murderous king from taking her life. A Hundred and One Nights features an almost entirely different set of stories, however, each one more thrilling, amusing, and disturbing than the last. Here, we encounter tales of epic warriors, buried treasure, disappearing brides, cannibal demon-women, fatal shipwrecks, and clever ruses, where human strength and ingenuity play out against a backdrop of inexorable, inscrutable fate.
Distinctly rooted in Arabic literary culture and the Islamic tradition, these tales draw on motifs and story elements that circulated across cultures, including Indian and Chinese antecedents, and features a frame story possibly older than its more famous sibling. This vibrant translation of A Hundred and One Nights promises to transport readers, new and veteran alike, into its fantastical realms of magic and wonder.

An English-only edition.

Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an.

The words of Muhammad (d. 11/632), God's messenger and prophet of Islam, have a special place in the hearts of his followers. Wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an, Muhammad’s hadith are cited by scholars as testimonial texts in a vast array of disciplines—including law, theology, metaphysics, poetry, grammar, history, and medicine—and are quoted by Muslims to one another in their daily lives.

Assembling Muhammad’s words has been a major preoccupation for scholars throughout the fourteen centuries since his death, resulting in an abundance of compilations. Among the legally-grounded collections, which aimed to guide the community in its practice of religious law and ritual worship, one which stands out in particular is Light in the Heavens (Kitab al-Shihab) by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, a Shafi'i judge in the Fatimid court in Egypt. The collection’s overall conceptualization is distinctively ethical and pragmatic, and offers humanitarian lessons and practical insights with universal appeal.

From North Africa to India, generations have used Light in the Heavens as a teaching text for children as well as adults, and many of its 1200 sayings are familiar to individuals of diverse denominations and ethnicities. For Muslims—who consider Muhammad’s teachings the fount of wisdom and the beacon of guidance in all things, mundane and sublime—these sayings provide a direct window into the inspired vision of one of the most influential humans to have walked the Earth.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah of Damascus was one of the great women scholars in Islamic history. Born into a prominent family of pious scholars and Sufi devotees, 'A'ishah received a thorough religious education and memorized the Quran at age eight. A mystic and a prolific poet and writer, she composed more works in Arabic than any other woman before the twentieth century. Yet despite her extraordinary literary and religious achievements, 'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah remains largely unknown. For the first time, her key work, The Principles of Sufism, is available in English translation.

The Principles of Sufism is a mystical guide book to help others on their spiritual path. Outlining the four principles of repentance, Sincerity, Remembrance, and Love, it traces the fundamental stages and states of the spiritual novice’s transformative journey, emphasizing the importance of embracing both human limitations and God’s limitless love. Drawing on lessons and readings from centuries-old Sufi tradition, 'A'ishah advises the seeker to repent of selfishness and turn to a sincere life of love. In addition to his lucid translation, Th. Emil Homerin provides an insightful introduction, notes and a glossary to 'A'ishah al-Ba'uniyyah’s remarkable account of the pursuit of mystical illumination.

An English-only edition.

This lively volume collects poems by Hmedan al-Shwe'ir, who lived in Najd in the Arabian Peninsula shortly before the hegemony of the Wahhabi movement in the early eighteenth century.

A master of satire known for his ribald humor, self-deprecation, and invective verse (hija'), Hmedan was acerbic in his criticisms of society and its morals, voiced in in a poetic idiom that is widely referred to as “Nabati,” here a mix of Najdi vernacular and archaic vocabulary and images dating back to the origins of Arabic poetry. In Arabian Satire, Hmedan is mostly concerned with worldly matters, and addresses these in different guises: as the patriarch at the helm of the family boat and its unruly crew; as a picaresque anti-hero who revels in taking potshots at the established order, its hypocrisy, and its moral failings; as a peasant who labors over his palm trees, often to no avail and with no guarantee of success; and as a poet recording in verse how he thinks things ought to be.

The poems in Arabian Satire reveal a plucky, headstrong, yet intensely socially committed figure—representative of the traditional Najdi ethos—who infuses his verse with proverbs, maxims, and words of wisdom expressed plainly and conversationally. Hmedan is accordingly quoted by historians of the Gulf region and in anthologies of popular sayings. This is the first full translation of this remarkable poet.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Insights into a life of integrity by a master of Arabic eloquence

A Treasury of Virtues is a collection of sayings, sermons, and teachings attributed to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40/661), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the first Shia Imam and the fourth Sunni Caliph. An acknowledged master of Arabic eloquence and a sage of Islamic wisdom, 'Ali was renowned for his eloquence: his words were collected, quoted, and studied over the centuries, and extensively anthologized, excerpted, and interpreted.

Of the many compilations of 'Ali’s words, A Treasury of Virtues, compiled by the Fatimid Shafi'i judge al-Quda'i (d. 454/1062), arguably possesses the broadest compass of genres and the largest variety of themes. Included are aphorisms, proverbs, sermons, speeches, homilies, prayers, letters, dialogues, and verse, all of which provide instruction on how to be a morally upstanding human being. The shorter compilation included here, One Hundred Proverbs, is attributed to the eminent writer al-Jahiz (d. 255/869). This volume presents the first English translation of both of these important collections.

An English-only edition.

Unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day.

In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish—offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt’s Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Unique in pre-twentieth-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī’s Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day.

In Volume One, al-Shirbīnī describes the three rural “types”—peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish—offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abū Shādūf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbīnī responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence.

Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt’s Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the “coarse” rural masses against the “refined” and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Collecting 635 meticulous recipes, Scents and Flavors invites us to savor an inventive cuisine that elevates simple ingredients by combining the sundry aromas of herbs, spices, fruits, and flower essences.

This popular thirteenth-century Syrian cookbook is an ode to what its anonymous author calls the “greater part of the pleasure of this life,” namely the consumption of food and drink, as well as the fragrances that garnish the meals and the diners who enjoy them.

Organized like a meal, it opens with appetizers and juices and proceeds through main courses, side dishes, and desserts, including such confections as candies based on the higher densities of sugar syrup—an innovation unique to the medieval Arab world. Apricot beverages, stuffed eggplant, pistachio chicken, coriander stew, melon crepes, and almond pudding are seasoned with nutmeg, rose, cloves, saffron, and the occasional rare ingredient like ambergris to delight and surprise the banqueter. Bookended by chapters on preparatory perfumes, incenses, medicinal oils, antiperspirant powders, and after-meal hand soaps, this comprehensive culinary journey is a feast for all the senses.

With the exception of four extant Babylonian and Roman specimens, cookbooks did not appear on the world literary scene until Arabic speakers began compiling their recipe collections in the tenth century, peaking in popularity in the thirteenth century. Scents and Flavors quickly became a bestseller during this golden age of cookbooks, and remains today a delectable read for epicures and cultural historians alike.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

A modern translation of a foundational document of Islamic jurisprudence

The Epistle on Legal Theory is the oldest surviving Arabic work on Islamic legal theory and the foundational document of Islamic jurisprudence. Its author, Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (d. 204/820), was the eponym of the Shafi'i school of legal thought, one of the four rites in Sunni Islam. This fascinating work offers the first systematic treatment in Arabic of key issues in Islamic legal thought. These include a survey of the importance of Arabic as the language of revelation, principles of textual interpretation to be applied to the Qur'an and prophetic Traditions, techniques for harmonizing apparently contradictory precedents, legal epistemology, rules of inference, and discussions of when legal interpretation is required. The author illustrates his theoretical claims with numerous examples drawn from nearly all areas of Islamic law, including ritual law, commercial law, tort law, and criminal law. The text thus provides an important window into both Islamic law and legal thought in particular and early Islamic intellectual history in general .

This new translation by a leading scholar of al-Shafi'i and his thought makes available in lucid, modern English one of the earliest complete works on Islamic law—one that is centrally important for the formation of Islamic legal thought and the Islamic legal tradition.

An English-only edition.

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), renowned for his profound knowledge of hadith—the reports of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds—is a major figure in the history of Islam. Ibn Ḥanbal’s piety and austerity made him a folk hero, especially after his principled resistance to the attempts of two Abbasid caliphs to force him to accept rationalist doctrine. His subsequent imprisonment and flogging became one of the most dramatic episodes of medieval Islamic history. Ibn Ḥanbal’s resistance influenced the course of Islamic law, the rise of Sunnism, and the legislative authority of the caliphate.

Virtues of the Imam Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal is a translation of the biography of Ibn Ḥanbal penned by the Baghdad preacher, scholar, and storyteller, Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201). It includes insights into Ibn Ḥanbal’s childhood, travels, and teachings, as well as descriptions of his way of life. This second and final volume gives a vivid account of Ibn Ḥanbal’s legendary confrontation with the caliphal Inquisition, including his imprisonment, trial, and flogging. Ultimately, it recounts how the people of Baghdad came to admire him as a symbol of Sunni Islam.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Fantastic tales of magic and wonder

Edited and translated into English for the first time, A Hundred and One Nights is a marvelous example of the rich tradition of popular Arabic storytelling. Like its more famous sibling, the Thousand and One Nights, this collection opens with the frame story of Shahrazad, the gifted vizier’s daughter who recounts imaginative tales night after night in an effort to distract the murderous king from taking her life. A Hundred and One Nights features an almost entirely different set of stories, however, each one more thrilling, amusing, and disturbing than the last. In them, we encounter tales of epic warriors, buried treasures, disappearing brides, cannibal demon women, fatal shipwrecks, and clever ruses, where human strength and ingenuity play out against a backdrop of inexorable, inscrutable fate.

Although these tales draw on motifs and story elements that circulated across cultures, A Hundred and One Nights is distinctly rooted in Arabic literary culture and the Islamic tradition. It is also likely much older than Thousand and One Nights, drawing on Indian and Chinese antecedents. This careful edition and vibrant translation of A Hundred and One Nights promises to transport readers, new and veteran alike, into its fantastical realms of magic and wonder.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

With What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us, the Library of Arabic Literature brings readers an acknowledged masterpiece of early twentieth-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, this exceptional title was first introduced in serialized form in his family’s pioneering newspaper Miṣbāḥ al-Sharq (Light of the East), on which this edition is based, and later published in book form in 1907. Widely hailed for its erudition and its mordant wit, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us was embraced by Egypt’s burgeoning reading public and soon became required reading for generations of Egyptian school students.

Bridging classical genres and the emerging tradition of modern Arabic fiction, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is divided into two parts, the second of which was only added to the text with the fourth edition of 1927. Sarcastic in tone and critical in outlook, the book relates the excursions of its narrator ʿĪsā ibn Hishām
and his companion, the Pasha, through a rapidly Westernized Cairo at the height of British occupation, providing vivid commentary of a society negotiating—however imperfectly—the clash of imported cultural values and traditional norms of conduct, law, and education. The “Second Journey” takes the narrator to Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle of 1900, where al-Muwayliḥī casts the same relentlessly critical eye on European society, modernity, and the role of Western imperialism as it ripples across the globe.

Paving the way for the modern Arabic novel, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is invaluable both for its sociological insight into colonial Egypt and its pioneering role in Arabic literary history.

A bilingual Arabic-English edition.