by Shahla Ujayli
translated by Sawad Hussain
University of Texas Press, 2020
Paper: 978-1-4773-2228-4 | eISBN: 978-1-4773-2230-7
Library of Congress Classification PJ7966.J39B43 2020
Dewey Decimal Classification 892.737

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS
ABOUT THIS BOOK

A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by award-winning Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine such themes as women’s agency, the decline of collective life and imagination under modernity, and the effects of social and political corruption on daily life. In “The Memoir of Cinderella’s Shoes,” Cinderella uses her famous glass slipper as a weapon in order to take justice into her own hands. In “Tell Me About Surrealism,” an art history professor’s writing assignment reveals the slipperiness of storytelling, and in “Merry Christmas,” the realities of apartheid interfere with one family’s celebration. Through twenty-two short stories, Ujayli animates—with brevity and inventiveness—themes relevant to both the particularities of life in the Arab world and life outside it.


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