The Square Moon

About

Marking collisions of culture and character, these ten short stories arise at the frontiers where Arabic tradition melds with both the modern European world and a Gothic strata of the supernatural. The resultant mix sparks tensions between the sexes, between identities, and between experimental forms of storytelling and strict narrative.

In Samman’s fiction, matchmakers still come to call but lovers go bungee jumping. A schizophrenic has a discussion with one of his personalities about murder and relationships with women. Avoiding ghosts both real and imagined, a war exile confronts class structure; the art of Paris; and the trials of being a woman, an Arab, and a writer in a country and culture not her own. The spirit of a strangled lover tells the story of his murder and of the web of love, beauty, lust, and loathing that brought about his demise.

First published in Beirut in 1994 and now ably rendered into English, Samman’s The Square Moon mixes the ghoulish with the everyday, the playful and witty with the terrifying, intermingling surprise endings, uncommon turns of plot, and the strange but realistic details of the characters’ lives.

Author/Translator

Ghada Samman is Lebanese, was born in Damascus, Syria, and currently lives in Paris, France, with her husband, Bashir. Author of Beirut ’75, which previously won the University of Arkansas Press Award for Arabic Literature in Translation, Ms. Samman has written thirty-one books, which have been translated into ten languages.

Issa J. Boullata’s translation of The First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra also won the Award for Arkansas Literature in Translation. A Palestinian writer and literary scholar, he is professor of Arabic Literature and Language at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.