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Impostures (Library of Arabic Literature #65) (Paperback)

Impostures (Library of Arabic Literature #65) Cover Image
By Al-Ḥarīrī, Michael Cooperson (Translator), Abdelfattah Kilito (Foreword by)
$15.00
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Description


One of the Wall Street Journal's 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.

Product Details
ISBN: 9781479810567
ISBN-10: 1479810568
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication Date: September 7th, 2021
Pages: 542
Language: English
Series: Library of Arabic Literature