Markaz Stories

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Short stories that illuminate levantine life from some of the preeminent writers in Middle Eastern letters.

For decades, the Arab/Muslim world and its broader disaporic communities have faced discrimination and grave misunderstanding, not least at the hands of a Eurocentric culture industry. This collection of short stories seeks instead to locate the markazthe word aptly means center in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, and Urduin the works of Middle Eastern authors whose writing both highlights their own vanguard creativity and everyday humanity, as well as that of the populations represented in their pieces.

These seventeen stories illustrate some of the very best published in The Markaz Review between 2020 and 2023, by authors of all gender and sexual orientations, and with roots in Egypt, Greece, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine and Sudan, to name a few places. In Raise Your Head High, Leila Aboulela writes of a rift between sisters that may only be healed by their solidarity during the Arab Spring; in Counter Strike, MK Harb tells a queer coming-of-age story set in Lebanon; in Untitled, Karim Kattan Eleazar crafts a tale about a Palestinian family who mysteriously disintegrates. These stories will be new to many readers, now collected and published in a book in English for the first time.

Contributors include: Salar Abdoh, Leila Aboulela, Farah Ahamed, Omar El Akkad, Sarah AlKahly-Mill, Nektaria Anastasiadou, May Haddad, Malu Halasa, Mohamad Khalil (MK) Harb, Alireza Iranmehr, Karim Kattan, Hanif Kureshi, Sahar Mustafah, Ahmed Naji, Mai Al-Nakib and Natasha Tynes.