Can love transform in the face of bombs, drones, AI surveillance, snipers, annexation, and expulsion?
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Our literary editor takes us on a deluxe reader's tour of the stories behind the stories in the double summer fiction issue for 2024.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Malu Halasa
In Qais Akbar Omar’s short story, a surprise homecoming threatens to upend the lives of a 14-year-old and her independent mother in Kabul.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Qais Akbar Omar
The diaries provide a complex double-layered narrative of Nika as a victim of regime brutality, and of Atrash as a survivor of state horror.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Poupeh Missaghi
Omani writer Hamoud Saud’s short story “A Blind Window on Childhood” translated from Arabic by Zia Ahmed, reveals a family's secret history.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Hamoud Saud, Zia Ahmed
In a stream of consciousness short story by Odai Al Zoubi, a minister under investigation in the Syrian government awaits his fate.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Odai Al Zoubi, Ziad Dallal
In the violence of the Gaza war, a love that dares not speak its name blossoms at a hefty price in flash fiction by Stanko Uyi Sršen.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Stanko Uyi Srsen
In this latest story by Nora Nagi, an Egyptian woman trapped in a loveless marriage far from home finds freedom.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Nora Nagi, Nada Faris
Iraqi novelist Diaa Jubaili's short story, translated by Chip Rossetti, portrays dolls as unlikely victims of life under the Islamic State.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Diaa Jubaili, Chip Rossetti
While studying abroad in Alexandria, Bel Parker becomes a butcher's apprentice to immerse herself in the local language and culture.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Bel Parker
In exercises to “release your inner child,” meditation, or psychotherapy, Beirutis search for mental and physical relief, in MK Harb's latest short story.
05 JULY, 2024 • By MK Harb
In Haidar Al Ghazali's short story, a Palestinian father during the war on Gaza makes an impossible choice.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Haidar Al Ghazali, Rana Asfour
An excerpt from Omani writer Huda Hamed’s bittersweet coming-of-age novel about race and self in a new English translation by Zia Ahmed.
05 JULY, 2024 • By Huda Hamed, Zia Ahmed
