![]() ![]() Badriyya’s despairing anger at her deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline and order of Islam. Translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound anguish and personal isolation. ![]() When Bahiyya’s husband dies in Bahiyya’s Eyes, Bahiyya feels like a stranger in her own village: other women avoid her for fear that she’ll steal their husbands. This virtual immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a male-dominated Islamic environment. In Distant View of a Minaret, the wife is not emotionally connected to her husband, and she feels calm when he dies. Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories (African Writers Series No. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. Author of African Short Stories, Distant view of a minaret, Escritoras rabes. ![]() ![]() “More convincingly than any other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian author’s best short stories. ![]()
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