# Mai Al-Nakib

Mai Al-Nakib is author of The Hidden Light of Objects, a collection of linked short stories published by Bloomsbury in 2014. The collection won the Edinburgh International Book Festival's 2014 First Book Award, the first collection of short stories to win. Her short stories have appeared in Ninth Letter, The First Line and the anthology Novel of the World. Two of her stories received honorable mention in Glimmer Train competitions. The Hidden Light of Objects is her first collection of short stories.
Al-Nakib was born in Kuwait in 1970 and spent the first six years of her life in London, Edinburgh, and St. Louis, Missouri. She attended the American School of Kuwait. She holds a PhD in English literature from Brown University and is currently an associate professor of postcolonial studies and comparative literature at Kuwait University. Al-Nakib's academic research focuses primarily on cultural politics in the Middle East. She has written articles on Ghassan Kanafani, Assia Djebar and Yasmine Zahran, among others. She has also examined the history and importance of the Palestinian community in Kuwait. Al-Nakib lives and works in Kuwait.

## The Hidden Light of Objects

The Hidden Light of Objects is composed of ten interlinked short stories; each story is preceded by a loosely related vignette. The stories deal with the capacity of everyday objects to trigger forgotten sensations and memories in the various characters and explore how this experience can affect the present and future. Erika Banerji has said that Al-Nakib has "compassion for an old, vanished world and [an] exceptional eye for the bruised landscape of the modern Middle East". All of the stories are connected to the Middle East in some way. While the stories engage familiar political events — the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the civil war in Lebanon, the situation in Palestine — the focus is on the everyday lives of ordinary people.

## An Unlasting Home

Al-Nakib's first novel An Unlasting Home centers around a philosophy professor at Kuwait University, Sara, who is accused of blasphemy, a crime which carries a potential death penalty. A work of historical fiction, the book retraces a family's past and present through a multitude of characters.

## Sources

* ↑ "First short story collection wins 2014 Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award". The Edinburgh International Book Festival Ltd. 27 October 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2015.
* ↑ "Ninth Letter - Archives". Ninth Letter. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
* ↑ "The First Line Summer 2011". bluecubiclepress.com. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
* ↑ "NOVEL OF THE WORLD". www.we.expo2015.org. Archived from the original on 20 February 2018. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
* ↑ "Glimmer Train April 2015 Very Short Fiction Award HONORABLE MENTIONS", Glimmer Train - "Glimmer Train’s August 2011 Short Story Award for New Writers HONORABLE MENTIONS", Glimmer Train
* 1 2 Peter Pierce, "Book review: The Hidden Light of Objects, by Mai Al-Nakib", The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 August 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2020.
* ↑ "Mai Al-Nakib". www.maialnakib.com. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
* ↑ "'The People are Missing': Palestinians in Kuwait". Deleuze Studies. 8 (1): 23–44. 27 January 2014. doi:10.3366/dls.2014.0132. ISSN 1750-2241.
* ↑ East, Ben, "Kuwaiti Author Mai Al Nakib’s Collection of Short Stories Captures Her Hopes for the Middle East", The National (Abu Dhabi Media), 10 May 2014. Retrieved 29 April 2015. Archived 7 April 2020 at the Wayback Machine
* ↑ Elliott Colla (23 February 2015). "'The Thing Is to Be Light as Air': An Interview with Mai Al-Nakib". Jadaliyya. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
* ↑ Erika Banerji (16 April 2014). "Shorter and sweeter: Mai Al-Nakib's debut collection of short stories hits the mark". The National. Retrieved 19 March 2020.