30 Short Stories

By Ahmed Fagih

These are thirty of the finest short stories selected from the large out put of the master of the craft Dr Ahmed Fagih, to give some insight of the writer and his works.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 27, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469100418

Ahmed Fagih

Ahmed Fagih, PhD. is a writer of international standing. His writings include the award winning trilogy “Gardens of the night” and a large body of novels, plays, short story collections, and essays. His dramas were performed in so many countries and his books widely read and translated. He found and chaired many institutions in his county and abroad among the posts he occupied the chairman of Arab Cultural Trust. The general secretary of union of writers and artists, the director of the national institute of drama and music. He directed and performed many plays for the theatre group he founded in Tripoli “The New Theatre”. He served as the head of his countries diplomatic missions in Athens and Bucharest. He is the chairman of the Mizda heritage society and was awarded the highest medal in his country The grand al-fatah medal.

Book preview

Copyright © 2008 by Ahmed Fagih.

Edited by Lamia Ahmed Fagih

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Ahmed Fagih

A writer at night

Ahmed Fagih:

A literary profile

The trilogy

by professor Ali Ehmida

Gardens of the night

by prof. Aida Bamia

Quotations on the trilogy

Condemning humans and praising dogs

Condemning humans and praising donkeys

Condemning humans and praising rats

Condemning humans and praising scorpions

Condemning humans and praising cocks

Condemning humans and praising ants

Condemning humans and praising snakes

Condemning humans and praising goats

The night of the masks

Condemning humans

and praising cockroaches

The wolves

The locusts

Who’s afraid of Agatha Christie?

The last station

Charles, Diana, and me

A man from Ireland

Don’t kill the dog

Lying

Never seen a river

Radiant as the sun

The stars have disappeared…

so where are you?

The sea has run dry

A page from the book of the dead

A drink of water

A story from the babies’ ward

Love me tonight

Fasten your seat belts

The death of the water carrier

The grinding mill

The sun which never shines

There is a sense of genius in what he writes

The Guardian

These are thirty of the finest short stories selected from the large out put of the master of the craft Dr Ahmed Fagih, to give some insight of the writer and his works we republish some of what the press has to say about him starting with the book page editor in the Guardian of London which was very truthful in recognizing the genius behind the writings of Ahmed Fagih when it says that there is a sense of genius in what he writes and here is the article:

Charles, Diana and me and other stories

Ahmed Fagih

(Kegan Paul, £19.95)

This is one of five slim books by Libya’s greatest living writer, published by Kegan Paul—a distinguished imprint for more than 100 years, but now rather caught in the interstices of international publishing. There’s real literary quality in the tales themselves, the title one about Diana (written before her death) being the ironical address of an obsessive to the princess. The effect is rather as if a British writer had written a similar story about Colonel Gadafy.

The other books in the series are: Valley of the Ashes (a coming-of-age novella), Who’s Afraid of Agatha Christie? (more short stories), Gazelles (plays) and Libyan Stories, a collection of the work of others edited by Fagih.

Fagih is clearly quite brilliant, but the translation feels bad: it is a further mark of Fagih’s abilities that his merit shines through nonetheless. In other words, you get a sense of genius brought low. And by itself, too: Fagih reportedly translated the works himself with the help of friends.

Nor, alas, have the books been packaged in a very attractive way—it doesn’t inspire confidence that the publisher misspells its own name on the cover of Libyan Stories. But Keegan Paul is to be congratulated for bringing Fagih’s intriguing work to Britain.

And that is what an expert on Arabic Literature being the editor-in-chief of the only English |magazine specializing in this field has to say after reading his works and meeting him for an interview:

Ahmed Fagih

A writer at night

By Margret Obank

(Editor of Banipal)

Libyan author and playwright Ahmed Fagih was on one of his frequent visits to London, and it was a good occasion to meet him. Ahmed Fagih has now published 28 books in Arabic and a growing number in other languages. They include essays, novels, plays and six collections of short stories, all completed while writing scripts for television programmes, and holding positions as columnist, diplomat, journalist. and director of an institute of music and drama.

Before we started the interview, Ahmed was very encouraging about Banipal, giving helpful advice. Then we talked about him, his life and careers in Libya. Britain and Egypt.

Margaret Obank

How did you manage to combine the life of a writer with working in different professional capacities all your life?

Well, our societies are not like these advanced societies. In the Arab world, people would laugh at you if you didn’t have a job as well as being a writer, it’s not like in Europe where a writer can just type away. As an Arab writer you have to do both. Once when Khalid ibn Walid was starting to read the Qu’ran, he made a mistake, which someone brought to his attention with a loud ‘kh khm’; later he made another mistake which was followed by another ‘kh khm’. He said: Well, we were busy implementing the Qu’ran, carrying it out, we had no time for learning it by heart. Likewise, as writers, we do the thinking, the arguing and the implementing. I had so many jobs myself. Even though writing was my main task, in my jobs no one recognised that while I was engaged in them. I produced all my work in addition to my daily jobs.

There is almost a tradition in the Arab world that writers write at night. However, this is not because they love the night but because they have to do something else during the day. That day work might not be done well, but it is work and has to be done.

Naguib Mahfouz, for instance, was never a full-time writer until he retired. He was a government employee from the ‘30s until he retired. Working at a job such as his is not a matter of choice for a writer. To have a job completely separate from writing, such as working in a bank, allows all your energy to be reserved, saved from being released into, say, an academic post or journalism, jobs where you lose out, because so much of your literary spirit is drained away, your literary energy is dissipated, and when it has been consumed, there is very little left to give to your writing.

In the former jobs, there is, on the contrary, pressure on the writer to release his energy into poetry, etc. Some writers are completely estranged from their jobs, some do it on purpose. T 5 Eliot, for instance, worked as a clerk, and could have chosen other work, although at one time he did do editing work for a big publisher.

A good deal of your work has now been translated into English and some of your plays have also been performed here.

I have a contract now with Kegan Paul International for five books in English. I don’t know exactly how they will look as the work on them was done some time ago—so many of my short stories have already been translated over a span of about 30 years. Some were translated and published in a local newspaper in Libya, some published in anthologies; together they will make two volumes of short stories. I also have plays, some which were put on here in London, like Gazelles in 1982, and before that Evening Visitor. Other plays were performed in drama schools—all these are now collected into one volume. There is also a novel, The Valley of Ashes, which was published in Arabic, and then translated into Chinese. It had good reviews in China and a conference on it was held in Wuhan University to which I was invited and people presented papers. These new volumes will be coming out this year.

Gazelles is about the encounter between East and West, but not from East to West, but about men going to the East, to the Grand Sahara and meeting a Bedouin of that area, it’s about a trip into the Sahara, a trip into life, the hard life of chasing and hunting gazelles, an adventure into whatever hopes and dreams you have for yourselves, a voyage into what your heart cries for—and it is mostly the chasing after illusions, wasting life away.

The main characters are two Europeans, a man and a woman, and the Bedouin, plus a jeep and the gazelles and the desert. The play explores the idea, of a journey between East and West, whether it is possible or not. I went wholeheartedly along with the idea that it was possible providing everybody contributed something—gives a concession, is unselfish; for instance, there should be no ego trips.

But it is not just playing on a metaphor. The three travellers go on a picnic out of hell, running out of water, losing their way in hostile areas of the desert and their jeep comes to a stop. You can watch the interaction between two middle-aged men and a young woman, who have been left to their instincts and desires. It is also trying to bring out the question of how the Bedouin and the two Europeans face danger, havoc and difficult moments together, moments when the end is near and all masks are’ tom away and their true selves are revealed, bringing out the good elements as well as the bad.

In Gardens of the Night, your trilogy published in English three years ago and for which you were awarded the premier literary award in Lebanon in 1992 after its publication in Arabic, you weave your own stories like Scheherazade recounting the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, combining a dream world of fantasy with a problematic reality.

This is a characteristic of most of my work, the combination of illusion, imaginative work and reality. There is no place you can really draw a line between the two, they sort of fuse together—illusion becomes an extension of reality and reality becomes an extension of illusion. That comes out in so many of my short stories, it is a style that I have developed over the years since I realised there is more to reality than what we see, hear and touch—there is far more to it than that. So, the question for me is how to explore these hidden parts of realities, intuition, all of those things.

In this trilogy, the first person narrator constantly imagines how other people will react or what they are thinking, he philosophises, dreams about the other characters.

I do this especially in my short stories, building up to very high dramatic levels, from somebody sitting quietly alone at that cafe table, for instance, to the danger of grave conflict. But, talking about that trilogy, I was very unhappy with the translation. Translation is tricky, particularly literary translation, where the author’s style in the original has to be shown in the language of translation. If this is not done, then I feel strongly that the English reader cannot really grasp my way of writing.

How did you start writing? Were you writing as a child?

Yes, with me it was very early. I never thought of anything else or entertained any thoughts, as children do, of doing other things. Since the beginning, since I learnt to read and write, I was attracted to the world of fiction, of stories, and I wanted to be part of this world. If I couldn’t actually live in it, at least I could become a companion of Sinbad, or with Ali Baba; since I couldn’t become part of that life, I started to create this other world and live in it in an imginative way.

Since my early school days, primary school,. I was writing. I made newspapers. Since the age of 10 or 11, I was making newspapers, and I started writing and publishing in journals at an early age. When I was 17 I had a daily column in a local Libyan newspaper. I was also writing for the radio and a daily journal, where I published my first short story. I wrote my first book later, when I was 22. It won me a Prize. for Short Story Writer—that was in 1965. It brought me good critical reviews all over the Arab world, particularly in Egypt and Syria—Part of it was translated into other languages, so that was a very good start. That put me on-line, so-to-speak. So there I was. It didn’t leave me much choice, but really there was no way, I saw no other path to follow, I had no other field of interest other than writing.

The second book of Gardens of the Night fleetingly recalls Gulliver’s Travels: the narrator arrives at the city gates in a strange country in a different age, is made its prince and leader and learns an entirely humanitarian and unselfish, open way of living, quite foreign to his own memories and life. There is something of a mission in the way he describes his new experiences, don’t you think?

Well, it is true that I was brought up in a certain way, with a sense of mission, a message. We were living in a very backward country, so much hardship, with people really struggling, just coming out of colonial domination, poverty, illiteracy, destitution. There was nothing going for the people. That filled us with the sense of mission, of responsibility, we wanted to do something for these people, to change this situation.

So, instead of just writing fiction, I engaged in these every-day matters, by writing daily columns and articles, social critiques, protesting, crying for justice, for a better situation for these starving people, writing against the injustices inflicted on them. and about the women’s situation. Although this took up much of my time, energy and resources, all of which should have been directed towards creative writing, it in fact put me in line with and in contact with the facts and realities of life. It was an engagement with life. And it gave my stories, novels and plays that sharp edge which makes them full of life. I believe in entertaining the reader, keeping a grip on him. spinning a good ‘yarn’, even though writing is a very lonely job. You close the door and there you are. I can withdraw, that’s part of my nature, but I can’t stay there,. I must come out, so I find a good balance. I go out for shopping, so to speak. You cannot isolate yourself completely, unless you are very elderly.

How was life in Libya during those early school days?

Put it this way: I was born and brought up in a village south of Tripoli called Mizda, it’s an oasis in the middle of nowhere, a crossroads. It has its own characteristics which are different from the traditional village in Arabic literature. From the beginning I was made aware of these differences. There was no way I could imitate what was already’ written. How I described and depicted this was completely down to me.

In fact, I was upset that there, in that village, I couldn’t find any struggle between peasant and landlord, mukhtar, or sheikh, but what could I do—I wanted to write. I was upset, I was angry, what could I do, how could I write? So, being left alone, with no help whatsoever, I had to create my own situations, which of course confronted me with a great challenge and put on my shoulders the responsibility to write something different.

Apart from that, the village was a village, with a primitive way of teaching, lessons beneath a tree with someone reciting the Qu’ran, getting us boys to learn it by heart. That’s how I started, just like every other person of my age and generation, and those before us. Of course, I was born when the ways and means of production, the way of life, were as they were thousands of years before—with none of the now familiar instruments and machines. People used to plough and sow the land with primitive tools. There was no electricity, no television, no radio. Of course, not having electricity affected so many things.

But I had the chance to see the transformation: I was witness to the coming of radio, of television, camera, ‘that entertaining Japanese toy’ the video recorder, electric cookers, refrigerators, all these things. I have been fortunate enough to live in the age without these tools of modem life as well as in the age with them, arid it is elements of this good fortune that entered later into my writings.

So I grew up, then, on the edge of the desert. My father, like any other person in the village, had to do so many other jobs to make ends meet, he had, for example, to run a small shop. When it was time for ploughing, he would go and do that in the valleys. Then they would wait till rain came—and that was very seldom. When it came, they would go to the valleys and sow wheat or barley. In the harvest season, they would go and harvest.

In the spring, when there was a little grass, they would graze their sheep and we would benefit from the milk. So we lived with the Seasons.

It was a very difficult life. We survived on the minimum—the minimum of the minimum. A meal could be a loaf of bread made of barley and a small cup of tea. Yes, that would be a meal, swallowing bread down with a gulp of tea. Another meal would be some tomatoes with onions and bread, or a handful of dates and a glass of sheep’s milk.

You worked in Libya as a journalist and dramatist. Later you became a diplomat in London and then gained a doctorate from Edinburgh University. You have kept up a strong relation with Britain. How did you start your professional career?

I was about 14 when I finished my schooling and went to Tripoli, which was a larger community, a place where I could find the books

I wanted to read, there was theatre, music, shows, films. There I was meeting people—a little older than me—who had already started writing and I took part in that literary world. Some people in the school also had the same interests as me. After almost three years in Tripoli, I started writing and a year after that was publishing and writing in newspapers. When I was nearly 19, I finished my schooling and went to Egypt on a scholarship. That put me in contact with so many Arab writers and the literary society. There I really set out on my literary career. It started to establish itself. These basic stages in my life contributed to establishing me as a writer.

Later on, I was busy in radio and newspapers and always working towards the chance to come to Britain, which I finally did in 1968. That timing was not early or late, but OK for me. It was another new stage in my life and a chance to acquire the language of English for communicating with the outside world. It was a very good experience for me.

I studied drama at the New Era Academy of Drama and Music and since then, I have never been long away from this country. Always coming and going. I came back in the mid-seventies to do a PhD, and then I was appointed head of the Press Department at the Libyan Embassy in London, but I found it impossible to study and work at the same time, so I had to forget about my PhD for the four years I was a diplomat.

It was only after that that I was able to go to Edinburgh University, studying full-time for three years for a doctorate in Modem Arabic literature and I still keep in touch—with whatever is going on here. A group of, us formed what we called the Arab Cultural Trust. We put on a cultural season, produced a magazine called Azure similar toBanipal. So many writers contributed to it, for example, Peter Mansfield, Louis Eakes, the critic art publisher Timothy O’Keefe. And there was Anthony Thwaite, the poet, and some Arab writers, among them Sabri Hafez and myself. We tried to bridge the gap, yes, bridge that gap. Between 1977 and 1983 we managed to bring out 13 issues. And all the time I was writing as well-short stories, novels and plays.

In Libya I was running journals and magazines. I was responsible for Al-Ispou’ a al-Thaqafi [Cultural Week]; also for a monthly magazine we issued in Lebanon called alThaqafa al-Arabiya [Arabic Culture].

In the mid-sixties I was on the staff of the magazine AI-Ruwaad [Pioneers] as managing editor. On top of that, I was a working journalist, not just writing columns, but checking, proof-reading, writing headlines, taking copy to printers, attending press conferences, whatever was needed.

At one time, on account of my great interest and work in drama, I became director of Libya’s National Institute of Music and Drama. I wrote a musical, Hind and Mansur, while I was there so that the students, male and female, could work and perform together. I also worked in Morocco for four years with the Arab cultural organization. And, then, I used to write a daily column for AI-Sharq al-Awsat called ‘Kul Youm’ [‘Every Day], and even now I still write weekly for three Arab journals, for the Cairo AI-Ahram every Thursday, for AI-Arabi journal, Al-Raya in Qatar, and. my cooperation with AI-Sharq al-Awsat is still there. I used to write long articles every week, not just a column, and did that as well as writing literature. So I am quite busy, I keep myself busy.

I also wrote some programmers for television. For one of them,. I created interviews with historical figures: I took Hannibal and questioned him, I took Harun al-Rashid, Ibn Rushd, al-Mutanabbi, Antar, Khalid Ibn Walid, Abu Ziad, philosphers like Ibn Khaldoun. I took more than 20 poets and leaders and made ‘interviews’ with them. I devised questions which would let them answer their critics, so that the programmes were not sycophantic or saccharine. I included interviews with ladies like Laila AI-Ameyria herself, cleopatra, Queen Shajarat al-Durr, although I found it difficult interviewing these ladies!

I have just published, in Arabic, a new volume of plays entitled TIre Singing of the Stars, and a new edition of my novel Field of Ashes. Another novel, Homeless Rats, which came out of an experience I lived through, myself, in those starvation years, has been serialized in journals.

Can you tell me about the literary scene in Libya now?

In Libya, now, there is a very active literary scene. Writers are mainly concerned with short stories and there are many excellent short-story writers. Some have dedicated a lifetime to this genre, about bring to it great finesse and sophistication. It is as if there is something in Libyan society that is conducive to short story writing. I looked at this in my thesis, ‘Country of Oases’, where I show how the short story is very expressive of this kind of society. As society developed and there is more integration of people, the monopoly of the short story has given way to emergence of the novel form, which can express the complex situations and multiple problems reflected in this transformation of society. Ibrahim aI-Kuni, for example, is a most popular novelist and very successful—he has been writing novels for less than ten years, before that he wrote short stories.

I would like to finish with a short excerpt from the last part of Gardens in the Night, where there is a description of Tripoli which aptly expresses elements of both the old and the new and also the rueful sense of loss which you express for your ‘lost gardens of childhood’.

We went out for a drive around the streets of Tripoli in search of a moment when we could be at one with it… but in spite of the fact that we had Tripoli in our very blood, the city still appeared grim and devoid of happiness. It was stuck in a time-warp, no longer a village but not yet a city. It was neither Eastern nor Western. It did not belong to the past nor the present. It was suspended between the sea and the desert, between an age which had passed, and another which had not yet begun—a historical oddity… Gone were the old times with their Bedouin parties and popular markets where the saints’ feasts, the circumcisions and wedding celebrations were held" . . . The city had been taken by surprise by a new time… From the modem world it had taken an asphalt road system, which the sun scorched, and windswept highrise buildings, surrounded by piles of dust and inhabited by people who, having left the security of their tribes, could deal with their neighbours from other tribes only by giving them the sort of look that one would find on the face of a hanged man

Banipal spring 1999

In a seminar attended by prominent writers and journalist the literary editor and cultural corrospondant of many magazine Susannah Tarbush has to say, with an introduction describing the seminar:

Ahmed Fagih:

A literary profile

By Susannah Tarbush

The recent publication by Kegan Paul of five books by the leading Libyan writer Ahmed Fagih was marked by a reception at London’s Kufa Gallery, a showcase for the arts and culture of the Arab world. Many testimonials were given by speakers who included Dr Salah Niazi, the Iraqi poet and editor of the literary magazine (al-Ightirab al-Adabi) and the Sudanese writer Tayib Salih whose novel Bandarshah was also published by Kegan Paul. The following is an excerpt from an address delivered at the reception by Susannah Tarbush.

‘It is a pleasure to be in at the birth of these five books—should it be a quintet, the Tripoli quintet perhaps? Or a pentad of books? For those of us who have followed the process since Peter Hopkins first announced that Kegan Paul would be publishing the five books it has been a long gestation, but having had the chance to have a preview of the books I can say the wait was worth it.

At a recent conference in London on Arabic literary translation, the Director General of the British Council, David Green, said that although Arabic like English is a great diaspora language that is now spoken in every continent, simple observation in any book shop in London shows that there is far less Arab work on the shelves than there should be. I would guess that these five books will comprise a good fraction of the literature translated from Arabic into English published in London this year.

If we look at the Arab map of translated fiction then some countries are much better represented than others. From North Africa, works by many writers from Egypt, Morocco and Algeria (sometimes writing in French) are translated, as are some writers from Tunisia. In the Mashreq, Lebanon has probably been better represented so far than Syria. Unfortunately, little fiction by Iraqi writers seems to be translated into English at the moment. Libya is one of those Arab countries that is as yet poorly represented in translation into English, so these books help fill that gap.

Ahmed was a key figure on the Arab cultural scene in London in the 1970’s and early 1980’s when he was Editor-in-Chief of Azure—a glossy English-language magazine covering all the Arab arts including theatre, heritage, civilisation, antiquities, art and literature—and when his play Gazelles was put on at the Shaw Theatre in 1982. Ahmed came to England first in 1968. Like so many others of his generation, he had been deeply shocked by the 1967 war, and coming to Britain represented a change of scene. He first went to a tutorial college and then studied drama in London. After the revolution in Libya he held various positions, including being Director of the Institute of Music and Drama and Head of the Department of Arts and Literature at the Ministry of Information and Culture. Some years later he did a doctorate at Edinburgh University on the Libyan short story. Ahmed has been a prolific writer since his teens. He has worn many hats in his time—short story writer, novelist, journalist, academic, diplomat, actor, dramatist, playwright, TV personality.

A few biographical notes. Ahmed was born in Mizda, an oasis village south of Tripoli. This rural background and his knowledge of village life, its rituals, gossip and hardships is an important element in his writing. Many of Ahmed’s works also have ecological and environmental components. A recurrent theme is women and the relations between the sexes. Ahmed’s stories often start with a premise which is then developed with some kind of logic into a more and more fantastic scenario, and yet the whole exercise is carefully controlled and well crafted. Although Ahmed’s stories are engaging and often very comic with a well-developed sense of the absurd, they have disturbingly dark undertones. In the stories there is a world of floating people, often in transit, suffering alienation and isolation. Several of the stories published here tell of journeys, of a man and a woman and of the gulf of understanding between them.

One of the five books published here is a collection of twelve short stories by Libyan writers edited by Ahmed. In the introduction to this volume, Ahmed describes the dire impact of the Italian occupation on Libyan literature and culture, and how after independence in 1949, at which time the United Nations described Libya as the poorest country, a new literary era started. As he writes, ‘the short story, a form newly introduced to the literary scene in Libya, provided a suitable and convenient medium to express the anger and grievances of the writers and to convey their strong indignation against a backward and unjust social system". The advent of large-scale oil revenues in the 1960’s brought new issues and social and cultural upheavals, which were reflected in the writing of the time. Then in the 1970’s after the revolutions there was state subsidising of publishing and new types of material started to appear and new types of issues emerged, all captured by Libyan writers.

These five books are a superb introduction to the work of Ahmed Fagih and I hope this brief survey has given you an appetite to read some of these stories, plays and the novel for yourself."

Among the large body of critical articles appearing in English on the works of the author we chose these articles to give the reader some insight of the literary out-put of this Libyan writer with international standing and humanitarian out-look Dr Ahmed Fagih:

The trilogy

by professor Ali Ehmida

Literature, films, and oral traditions are important but often Neglected resources for the study of social and political life in Middle East studies.These non-conventional resources provide a counte rview too fficial state history.(1) The need for social sources is even more urgent in the case of Libyan studies in the United States, where most of the journalistic and scholarly writings on Libya are characterized by affixation on a state-centered perspective, especially the persona of Col. Muamar al-Qaddafi and terrorism. Yet no state exists without a society, and, unless one assumes that political leaders—like Qaddafi—are above society, then taking society seriously is an essential prerequisite for understanding any culture.(2) Extending a study to include Libyan society and analyzing its diverse voices by exploring its literature will shed new light on understanding where Qaddafi originates and how Libyan society has reacted to state policies. As a political scientist deeply involved with literature, one of my objectives is to recapture some neglected aspects of Libyan politics and culture. This essay attempts to introduce the magnum opus of the leading Libyan writer Ahmad Ibrahim al-Faqih and to analyze how he interprets questions of identity, cultural encounter, and social alienation in contemporary Libya.

The focus of this review is the most recent work of al-Faqih, his Trilogy Sa Ahbiqa Madinatu Ukhra, Hadhihi Tukhum Mamlakati, and Nafaq Tudiuhu Imra Wahida (I Shall Present You With Another City: 1; These Are The Borders of My Kingdom: II; and A Tunnel Lit by A Woman: III). These three volumes won the award for best novel in Beirut’s book exhibition of 1991.

Al-Faqih narrates the story of his childhood in the village of Mizda and in the city of Tripoli. The narrative reflects his perception of Libyan culture and politics under two regimes: the monarchy from 1951-1969 and the Republic/Jamahiriya after 1969. A review of Libyan literature since the 1960s is important to place al-Faqih’s trilogy in the larger social and cultural context.

Al-Faqih is a middle class modernist writer who belongs to what is Called in Libya the 1960s generation. This group includes prominent Libyan fiction writers such as Sadiq al-Naihum, Yusif al-Sharif, Ali al-Rgaii, Muhammad al-Shaltami, and Ibrahim al-Kuni. These writers began to publish poetry and short stories in the early 1960s.(3) Recently, al-Faqih and al-Kuni have gained acclaim in the Arab world and some of their works have been translated into other languages, such as Russian, German, Chinese, and English.(4) Al-Faqih received critical acclaim as one of the most talented short story writers inside Libya.