Banner Icon Literature Blogger 'Arablit' asked ten acclaimed Arab women writers to choose their favorite novels by other Arab women writers. * RECOMMENDATION FROM Mansoura Ezz Eldin: Hoda Barakat’s Stone of Laughter (English version available from Interlink, trans. Sophie Bennett) “The novel that I’ve loved the most by an Arab…

Paris, September 2004. Translated By Catherine Cobham Smoke During the burning of Baghdad by American missiles last year, my eyes, my body, my bones became swollen with weeping. I had kept silent as my soul disintegrated, but now weeping was my sole pleasure, apart from her, Hélène. I picked up…