Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories

Alifa Rifaat

thg 1 2014 · Waveland Press

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“More convincingly than any
other woman writing in Arabic today, Alifa Rifaat lifts the veil on what
it means to be a woman living within a traditional Muslim society.” So
states the translator’s foreword to this collection of the Egyptian
author’s best short stories. Rifaat (1930–1996) did not go to
university, spoke only Arabic, and seldom traveled abroad. This virtual
immunity from Western influence lends a special authenticity to her
direct yet sincere accounts of death, sexual fulfillment, the lives of
women in purdah, and the frustrations of everyday life in a
male-dominated Islamic environment. Translated from the Arabic by Denys
Johnson-Davies, the collection admits the reader into a hidden private
world, regulated by the call of the mosque, but often full of profound
anguish and personal isolation. Badriyya’s despairing anger at her
deceitful husband, for example, or the haunting melancholy of “At the
Time of the Jasmine,” are treated with a sensitivity to the discipline
and order of Islam.