Product Description
A young manâs dreams for a better future as a student in the Teachersâ Institute are shattered after he assaults one of his instructors for discriminating against him. From then on, he begins his descent into the underworld. Penniless, he seeks refuge in Wikalat âAtiya, a historic but now completely run-down caravanserai that has become the home of the townâs marginal and underprivileged characters. This award-winning novel takes on epic dimensions as the narrator escorts us on a journey to this underworld, portraying - as he sinks further into its intricate relationships - the many characters that inhabit it. Through a labyrinth of tales, reminiscent of the popular Arab tradition of storytelling, we are introduced to these marginal beings, whose lives oscillate between the real and the fantastic, the contemporary and the timeless, and to the relationship between the newly marginalized middle class and the already marginal popular class. And while the narrator starts out as a spectator of these charactersâ lives, he soon becomes an integral part of the lodging houseâs community of rogues.
About the Author
Farouk Abdel Wahab, the Ibn Rushd Professorial Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago, has translated numerous Arabic works of fiction, most recently A Certain Woman by Hala El Badry (AUC Press 2003).
