Dinarzad’s Children
An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Fiction

Edited by Pauline Kaldas and Khaled Mattawa

The first anthology to focus exclusively on short fiction by Arab Americans.

In The Thousand and One Nights it is Shahrazad’s sister, Dinarzad, who each night asks for a story. This collection of twenty-four modern tales by eighteen authors offers up a mix of previously published and new works, creating a literary road map to Arab American literature today.

Here authors of Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Egyptian, and Libyan descent, some with established reputations, others new young writers, tell tales about Muslims and Christians, recent immigrants and fully assimilated Americans, teenagers and grandmothers, guerillas and peaceniks, professors, housewives, grocers, bookies, those who long for their homeland, and those who refuse to speak Arabic. A number of the stories center on conflicts between immigrants and their American-born children. Others wrestle openly with topics such as in-group stereotyping, domestic violence, familial discord, and other difficult issues. But what sets this literature apart from other ethnic literatures is its tendency to keep an eye on the overseas political situation. By turns sassy or lyrical, biting or humorous, always moving, the stories in this collection are good reading and an important contribution to the body of ethnic American literature.

“[This] ground breaking collection of stories . . . brings Arab American experience to life in new and dynamic ways. . . . The best of these stories are so skillfully rendered that they took my breath away. . . . Dinarzad’s Children is for anyone who simply enjoys sitting down to a well-written story, and who values the expansion of consciousness which good literature invariably brings.”

— Lisa Suhair Majaj, co-editor of Intersections: Gender, Nation, and Community in Arab Women’s Novels

“Filled with diverse riches, this important anthology reminds us of the core values of literature: giving voice, and furthering understanding. Remarkable, enlightening, essential reading.”

—Peter Ho Davies, director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing, University of Michigan and author of Equal Love