The Bamboo Stalk
Saud Alsanousi
Apr 2015 · Bloomsbury Publishing
5.0star
1 review
Ebook
384
Pages
About this ebook
Winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction
Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her baby son, José.
Brought up struggling with his dual identity, José clings to the hope of returning to his
father's country when he is eighteen. He is ill-prepared to plunge headfirst into a world where the fear of tyrants and dictators is nothing compared to the fear of 'what will people say'. And with a Filipino face, a Kuwaiti passport, an Arab surname and a Christian first name, will his father's country welcome him?
The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the lives of foreign workers in Arab countries and confronts the universal problems of identity, race and religion.
Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her baby son, José.
Brought up struggling with his dual identity, José clings to the hope of returning to his
father's country when he is eighteen. He is ill-prepared to plunge headfirst into a world where the fear of tyrants and dictators is nothing compared to the fear of 'what will people say'. And with a Filipino face, a Kuwaiti passport, an Arab surname and a Christian first name, will his father's country welcome him?
The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the lives of foreign workers in Arab countries and confronts the universal problems of identity, race and religion.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
About the author
Saud Alsanousi is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist, born in 1981. His work has appeared in a number of Kuwaiti publications, including Al-Watan newspaper and Al-Arabi and he currently writes for Al-Qabas newspaper. He lives in Kuwait City.
Jonathan Wright has translated a dozen novels and other major works from Arabic to English, starting in 2008 after thirty years as a journalist, mostly in the Middle East. He won the 2013 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for Youssef Ziedan's Azazeel and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014 for his translation of Hassan Blasim's The Iraqi Christ.
Jonathan Wright has translated a dozen novels and other major works from Arabic to English, starting in 2008 after thirty years as a journalist, mostly in the Middle East. He won the 2013 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for Youssef Ziedan's Azazeel and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014 for his translation of Hassan Blasim's The Iraqi Christ.
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