Customer Reviews

Fatma: A Novel of Arabia (Middle East Literature in Translation)

5 star:		(3)
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These two writers are a fabulous team. Alem's story takes you on a mind-stretching visit inside a culture that I have far less understand of than I wish. The story of Fatma fascinates, and evokes all kinds of questions. The strange world she lives in, as well as the relationship she develops with the snakes make for an adventure unlike any I have read before. Although significant sections of the book are about a mixture of mysterious and mystical events, it takes the reader into another way of seeing inside a life of one who wants the truth, and can follow where her experiences take her. She lives between two worlds; worlds unlike what most of us have experienced or can fathom.

Raja Alem has gifted English speakers with this wonderful tale about a young Arab woman and her strange life. Raja wrote Fatma in English with some help from Tom McDonough, these two should collaborate more often! It's intense stuff, and yes Raja does mean it. She's one of a kind, and you should all thank whatever you consider sacred that her stuff is getting published. She's the closest thing to a modern day profit I know of, and if you hear her talk you'll realize she isn't playing around. Poetic, beautifully written, every word is meant to be there, readable and very enjoyable, and if you let it Fatma can make you think differently about life. It is capable of rehumanizing the most jaded soul. It's like the opposite of Kafka's The Castle, Raja is the 'Anti-Michel Houllebecq'- and it would be funny to see what her mind's creations would do to a sad balding Frenchman. Raja's stuff is great, her sister Shadia did the cool cover art. Now, having been BLESSED with owning and reading Fatma, I and many others fervently wish for her other books to be published in English... she's a genius, you've just got to love this woman.

Well, I'm the second person to write a review, and I should probably wait until I finish the last ten pages. But I can't wait! This books is wild, unlike any other book that I've read from the Middle East. Fatma's life keeps spinning, twisting, reshaping, and surprising. What an amazing ride!