Short stories
مرايا الناس
Not translated into English
Widad Sakakini · 1945
Synopsis
Scenes from Damascus taken inside people's homes: a second wife and the first, neighbours who watch one another, daughters being married off, mistresses of the house who keep up their rank. The author lingers over what her characters dare not say and over the arrangements each finds in order to live in the place she has been left.
Context
The volume gathers the author's first short stories and was published in Cairo, where she then lived part of the year. The Egyptian journal al-Risala devoted a review to it that praises the writer and demolishes the book: narrow outlines, sinuous lines, faded colours, defects that the critic attributes to a life as a prisoner of the marital home. A Moroccan journal saw in it, on the contrary, the first Syrian book to bear that particular colour, and praises the acuity with which the women characters are probed in it.
Who it is for
A collection of short stories in Arabic, written in a polished language. It is worth knowing that the characters are mostly women and that nothing momentous happens in it.
Prizes and reception
The first of its author's five collections, and the book that made her known as one of the few women writing short stories in Arabic at that date.