Impostures – al-Hariri (Paperback / Soft Cover)

One of the ? Wall Street Journals ? Top 10 Books of the Year

Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Translation Category

Shortlist, 2021 National Translation Award

Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award, Literature Category

Fifty rogue’s tales translated fifty ways

An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in ? Impostures , a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature.

Impostures ? follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East ?we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English.

Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, ? Impostures ?brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.

An English-only edition.

Author: al-Hariri
Format: Paperback / Soft Cover
Pages: 542
Size: Not Specified
Weight: Not Specified