Thread by @MKalousian

While we are on the subject of Arabic-speaking cats, here are five Arabic novels and short story collections in which cats play - as they should - a central role.

There are many more, but if you have any particular favourites, do add them 😊

#Thread 🧵📚🐈

1️⃣ Published in 1997 & illustrated by Maha Nasrallah, What Happened to Zeeko recounts the events of the Lebanese Civil War from the perspective of a cat.

Zeeko was a real cat who belonged to Emily’s daughter & who was killed in 1982 when the family’s home in Beirut was bombed.

2️⃣ Nobody Mourns the City’s Cats by Muhammad El-Hajj [@Mu7ajj] is a collection of 6 short stories about 6 couples whose relationships - with each other & with Cairo - unravel against the backdrop of failed revolutions & crushed dreams.

Download for free:

drive.google.com/file/d/1lUX7wj…

3️⃣ Humorous and unsettling, Mahmoud Shukair’s short story collection, ‘Mordechai's Moustache and His Wife's Cats’, is a glimpse of everyday life under occupation.

The collection also includes two essays by Shukair: ‘Hemingway in Jerusalem’ and ‘My Journey in Writing’.

4️⃣ The Apartment in Bab El-Louk is a collaborative portrait of downtown Cairo by Egyptian graphic designer Ganzeer, artist and writer Donia Maher, and political cartoonist Ahmed Nady.

If there is such a thing as a ‘noisy novel’, it would be this.

5️⃣ Hashem Gharaibeh’s The Cat Who Taught Me How to Fly is the story of a political prisoner and his relationship with a character nicknamed Cat. Partly autobiographical, Gharaibeh draws on his experience of being imprisoned for his affiliation with the Jordanian Communist Party.