| Impostures Contributor(s): Al-Ḥarīrī (Author), Cooperson, Michael (Translator), Kilito, Abdelfattah (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 1479810568 ISBN-13: 9781479810567 Publisher: New York University Press OUR PRICE: $16.20 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2021 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Collections | Middle Eastern - Literary Criticism | African |
| Dewey: 892.783 |
| Physical Information: (1.50 lbs) 542 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: One of the Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Books of the Year Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Translation Category 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. |