The Hidden Light of Objects

By Mai Al-Nakib

For fans of Alice Munro and Lorrie Moore.

A young girl, renamed Amerika in honour of the US role in the liberation of Kuwait, finds her name has become a barometer of her country's growing hostility towards the West. A middle-aged man dying from cancer looks back on his extramarital affairs and the abiding forgiveness of his wife.

The headlines tell of war, unrest and religious clashes. But if you look beyond them you will see life in the Middle East as it is really lived – adolescent love, the fragility of marriage, pain of the most quotidian kind. Mai Al-Nakib's luminous stories unveil the lives of ordinary people – and the power of objects to hold extraordinary memories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9789927101144

Mai Al-Nakib

Mai Al-Nakib was born in Kuwait, though she lived in the US until the age of six. She holds a PhD in English literature from Brown University and teaches postcolonial studies and comparative literature at Kuwait University. The Hidden Light of Objects is her first collection of short stories. It won the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award in 2014, the first collection of short stories to win in the history of the award. She is currently writing her first novel.

Reviews for The Hidden Light of Objects

[kremsa-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow! I am so glad I won this book in the Goodreads giveaway. The Hidden Light of Objects is a beautifully written collection of short stories set for the most part in the Middle East. Many of the stories are connected. Sometimes it is a familial connection that spans several decades and other times it is through shared references to mundane objects that hold memories and secrets. There is a pervasive sense of loneliness and loss through many of the stories and you are kept aware of the underlying unrest in that area of the world. But for all of the sadness there is hope and beauty as well.I think what I most enjoyed about this book was the language. Al-Nakib is wonderfully adept at describing people, nature, emotions and smells. Her words flow poetically and you are instantly transported wherever she wants the stories to take you. I found myself re-reading many of the passages just to savor the combinations of words and the emotions they evoke.