Ten again
Subtitle: and other stories
By: Ibrahim al-Mazini ; translated by William M. Hutchins
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Cairo, Egypt; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9789774249471
Subjects: Māzinī, Ibrāhīm ʻAbd al-Qādir, -- 1889-1949 -- Translations into English
Genres: Translations into English
Work titles: Short stories.
Description: "Ibrahim al-Mazini was one of the great humorists and stylists of twentieth-century Arabic prose literature, capturing the foibles and triumphs of Cairo's middle classes of the 1930s and 1940s in exceptionally stylish prose. This collection gathers in one volume some of al-Mazini's best short fiction, including two novellas: Midu and His Accomplices and Ten Again. Midu is an engaging, well-liked army officer who, assisted by almost every other character in the story, arranges a faux heist from his uncle's library in order to allow young love to run its course. In Ten Again, a man awakes to find that he has returned to childhood, on the day of his tenth birthday: his wife, who is being wooed by a most obnoxious suitor, is now his mother, and his two sons torment him mercilessly at his birthday party. In al-Mazini's skillful hands, the short stories included here illuminate a lively fictional world: from a drunken encounter with a parrot to an undertaker's attempt to provide a cadaver with a believer's contented smile."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. xii)
Table of contents: title: Midu and his accomplices; title: A night unlike any other; title: Smile of belief; title: Ten again; title: The dream; title: History of a life; title: The fugitive