Description: "Hisham lives at home with his impoverished mother in Minya, on the western bank of the Nile. Like so many other young people in Egypt, who have managed to attend college, he lacks the connections to find well-paying work. So he makes ends meet finding and reselling old and rare books, driven by a selfless passion for the history of Islam, its great thinkers and currents of ideas. His interests lead him to a mentor, for whom he finds books and manuscripts. Although an apprentice, Hisham shares with his teacher valuable insights into the old texts. While he is given no credit and his work is taken for granted, he is led to discover his own double. Hisham dreams a recurring dream of falling jasmine flowers. Then one night, a man appears in his dream. He knows this man's name, he knows who he is."--
Brief description: Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an award-winning Egyptian novelist and short story writer, born in 1976. She is the author of six novels and three short story collections and her works have been translated into more than ten languages. In 2010, she was the youngest writer to be shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for her novel Beyond Paradise. The Orchards of Basra was longlisted for IPAF in 2022.
Review Quotes: "A subtly musical voice, untrammeled storytelling, beyond the beaten paths of folklore and picturesque charm that we associate with Arab literature or, to be more exact, what we imagine to be Arab literature, and at the same time, with a stroke of genius - and this is the most delightful and important thing - that knows how to pay tribute to those same beaten paths by following them all the way to their source, deepening and adding perspective to a millennial Arab culture."--Ersi Sotiropoulos