Marilyn Booth

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Ladies of the Moon Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth Catapult, 243 pp., $16.95 (paper) Christian Sinibaldi/Guardian/eyevine/ReduxJokha Alharthi, London, May 2019 In an engrossing book published last spring called Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative, the Australian writer Jane Alison makes a trenchant observation about the “dramatic arc” long considered the foundation for plot.

When kids are exposed to Egyptian books in English, it’s mostly mummies and pharaohs. For adults, it’s mostly Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. But Egyptian literature has a tremendously rich and varied history: of cookbooks and crime novels, satire and sci fi, dystopias, and dramas. This list of 50 barely begins to poke at the surface.