Rustic Sunset (Three Continents Press)
by Ramzi M. Salti
Category: Fiction

The Native Informant & Other Stories is a collection of six short stories dealing with "unmentionable" aspects of Arab life in parts of the Arab world and in the West. Inspired by such modern writers as Alifa Rifaat, Nawal al-Sadawi, and Youssef Idris - authors who have, despite immeasurable odds, managed to emphasize subjects ranging from feminism to homosexuality in their works - these short stories attempt to further engage various social and political issues that remain, for the most part, largely ignored or silenced in modern Arabic literature. Most of the stories in The Native Informant & Other Stories operate on a dual level by addressing not only issues related to women, homosexuals, and victims of violence in southwest Asia, but also by examining the seemingly conflicting relationship between notions of Arabness, Islam, and the West. The collection thus aims at highlighting the plight of marginalized groups in Arab countries by broaching various issues on the social spectrum, ranging from religious intolerance, to the subjugation of women, to homophobia, to domestic violence, to Western and Eastern concepts of terrorism and neo/post coloniality, to the ethnic experience of being an Arab in the United States at a time when the media seems to be promulgating the negative stereotype of the Arab.