Aswat Muasira

"Aswat Muasira is a welcome resource for advanced students of Arabic language and literature. Elbousty has carefully selected short stories that showcase a wide range of aesthetics, themes, and regional realities. The exercises nurture the close reading skills and interactive, communicative learning essential for a meaningful encounter with literature." — Johanna Sellman, assistant professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University

"While the initial development of the short story genre may have been focused on what one might call the "central regions" of the broader Arabic-speaking world — Syro-Lebanon and Egypt — cultural movements, publication outlets, and calls for change and innovation now emerged in force "from the Ocean to the Gulf." They revealed by the beginning of the twenty-first century a remarkable level of literary creativity and experimentation. It is this moment that Jonas Elbousty's collection Aswat muasira: Short Stories for Advanced Arabic so effectively illustrates. In this book, readers can savor the modern Arabic short story in all its varieties—regional, topical, structural, and stylistic." — Roger Allen, emeritus professor, University of Pennsylvania; award-winning translator; from the introduction

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"A masterfully curated collection of short stories on a range of engaging themes and in an array of styles and voices. Awat Muaira places literature and cultural competence at the center of communicative language learning and prepares the student of Arabic for the leap toward near native proficiency." — Huda Fakhreddine, Associate Professor of Arabic Literature, The Univesity of Pennsylvania