Fullblood Arabian

24 February 2014

Osama Alomar (Author), C. J. Collins (Translator)

With a Preface by Lydia Davis

Description

A New Directions Poetry Pamphlet by one of the most well-respected Arabic poets writing today, with an introduction by Lydia Davis

A prominent practitioner of the Arabic “very short story” (al-qisa al-qasira jiddan), Osama Alomar’s poetic fictions embody the wisdom of Kahlil Gibran filtered through the violent gray absurdity of Assad’s police state. Fullblood Arabian is the first publication of Alomar’s strange, often humorously satirical allegories, where good and evil battle with indifference, avarice, and compassion using striking imagery and effervescent language.

Reviews

"Marvellous compressions." — John Madera, Big Other

"In Alomar''s stories [...] fantasy never devolves into mere whimsy. His magical imaginative creations are, every one, inspired by his deeply felt philosophical, moral, and political convictions, giving these tales a heartfelt urgency" — Lydia Davis, The New Yorker

"The stories'' distinctive flavour comes from Alomar''s masterful shifts of character perspective within extremely tight parameters […] The book is full of these moments which trip you up, swing bluntly from one psyche to another, rapidly decelerate time and play with scale, all of it exposing the delicate balance of our presumptions and allegiances; the small dictatorships that we foster second by second." — Emma Jacobs, Asymptote Blog

"[His stories] convey a raw combination of beauty and resignation, as if the two were created to reside under the same roof, hope and hurt at one […] Alomar is a man of small but universally affecting insights." — The American

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Paperback

9780811221764

152 x 229 mm • 48 pages

£8.99

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