They Die Strangers (Cmes Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) [Paperback]

Mohammad Abdul-Wali (Author), Abubaker Bagader (Translator), Deborah Akers (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Cmes Modern Middle East Literature in Translation | Publication Date: January 15, 2002

They Die Strangers, a novella and thirteen short stories, is the first full-length work of the distinguished Yemeni writer Mohammad Abdul-Wali to appear in English. Abdul-Wali died tragically in an aviation accident, and his stories were collected after his death by the translators Abubaker Bagader and Deborah Akers. Abdul-Wali was born in Ethiopia of Arab Yemeni parents. His stories, filled with nostalgia and the bitterness of exile, deal with the common experiences of Yemenis like himself who are caught between cultures by the displacements of civil war or labor migration. His characters include women left behind, children raised without fathers, and men returning home after years of absence. He explores the human condition through the eyes of the oppressed and disenfranchised and is particularly sympathetic to the plight of women. Abdul-Wali writes in a realistic style, sparse and simple, a style that the translators have reproduced well in this volume.

Product Details

• Paperback: 146 pages
• Publisher: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, The University of Texas at Austin (January 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292705085
• ISBN-13: 978-0292705081
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,140,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Encapsulating and Real, November 11, 2003

By 

Lina Fairchild (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: They Die Strangers (Cmes Modern Middle East Literature in Translation) (Paperback)

The book's eponymous novella and 13 short stories offer a passionate and ultimately autobiographical evocation of the life lived by many Yemenis as economic exiles abroad or in harsh conditions at home. The author, born in Ethiopia in 1940 to an Ethiopian mother and Yemeni shopkeeper father, was sent to study in Aden at age 14. He died in a plane crash in 1973. His vividly drawn characters grapple with issues arising from cultural displacement, poverty and fear of the unknown in a period of great political and social change in Yemen, yet the book has a wider and continuing resonance. In the novella, a nurse in Addis Ababa asks an Italian doctor shocked at the condition of his mortally ill Yemeni patient, "What else can these people do ... [but] leave their homes, country, family, to chase after a living?" Abdul-Wali's translators do a fine job captur-ing his realistic, efficiently phrased style in this first English publication of his work. APC