/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4113705]

Is there any good modern middle-eastern fiction? I don't just mean middle-eastern authors either, but stories that actually take place in the middle east.

[Anonymous No.4113710]

Kite Runner
Prisoner of Tehran

[Anonymous No.4113720]

>>4113710

those aren't non-fiction are they?

[Anonymous No.4113722]

Abu Potter and The Pork Falafels of Doom

[Anonymous No.4113725]

The young engineer Turgut Özben investigates the reasons behind his close friend Selim Işik’s suicide. People close to Selim Işik pool their knowledge to shed light on the unknown aspects of his life. In his last days, Selim was assembling an “encyclopedia of losers” wherein he had reserved an entry for himself. The encyclopedia proves helpful in revealing self-knowledge to Turgut Özben. In the course of his investigation: he too is a loser, or a perennial nobody; to date he has been going through the motions of habit and ritual. He makes a clean break, leaves home, and boards a train never to be seen again.


Probably the most eminent novel of twentieth-century Turkish literature, a work that won high critical acclaim and popular following, Tutunamayanlar offers an endless series of tragicomic observations, an expansive and critical panorama of Turkish manners, attitudes and clichés through a profound sense of irony, parody, dark humor and existential questioning. Although it poses an earnest challenge to even the most skilled translator with its kaleidoscope of colloquialisms and sheer size (nearly 700 pages), it represents Turkish literature at its best. Its translation into the wide-known language of the world is a must.

[Anonymous No.4113729]

Orhan Pamuk's entire body of work.

[Anonymous No.4113733]

>>4113725
there is a german translation as far as i know

[Anonymous No.4113744]

>>4113733

wiki says it's only been translated to dutch

[Anonymous No.4113740]

>>4113725

ef you for teasing me with a great sounding book i can never read

OP here: works that have been translated to english please

[Anonymous No.4113758]

>>4113705
haroun and the sea of stories

[Anonymous No.4113759]

>>4113744
yeah sorry it was dutch,anyway this is such a great book it's like pale fire meets infinite jest hopefully it'll get translated someday.

[Anonymous No.4113882]

>>4113705

Desert of Souls

[Anonymous No.4113912]

I'll take this opportunity on this thread to ask: are the islamic quintet by Tariq Ali worthy reading?

[Anonymous No.4113934]

Tahar Ben jelloun

[Anonymous No.4113941]

>>4113705
I'm writing one. It's about an English businessman who has travelled to Libya to find a hidden bunker in the Saharan wastes. He's a former associate of Gadaffi and he knows the rough location of this bunker which is a mysterious treasure vault. A lot of information regarding these specifics is withheld from the reader and the story mostly focuses on the protagonist and his guides. The guides are two Berbers, a father and son.

It's going to be about communication breakdown as the father dies and the protagonist is left with the son who doesn't speak French, which is how the protagonist was communicating with the other Berber. I'm drawing influence from Camus on this.

[Anonymous No.4115165]

[Anonymous No.4115169]

[Anonymous No.4115170]

>>4113729
great author

[Anonymous No.4115174]

siddhartha m8

[Anonymous No.4115179]

Dat Mahfouz

[Anonymous No.4115216]

>>4113912
As much as I like Tariq Ali, I doubt he's much good at writing novels. The fact that they were published by Verso doesn't exactly inspire confidence either.

[Anonymous No.4115233]

>>4113705
The Yacoubian Building

[Anonymous No.4115299]

Bruce Sterling's short stories "The Gulf Wars", "In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Digital" and "We See Things Differently". i think all of them are in his collection "Globalhead".

[Anonymous No.4115302]

>>4115299
Oh, also his novel "Zeitgeist" which was largely about Culture War between east and west.

[Anonymous No.4115303]

I hear there's a really good book of Allah cartoons.