An Arab tyrant once infamously declared, "I see heads that are ripe for plucking." In Mahmoud Al-Wardani's novel of tyranny and oppression, an impaled head seeks solace in narrating similar woes it sustained in previous incarnations. Beheadings, both literal and metaphorical-torture, murder, decapitation, brainwashing, losing one's head-are the subject of the six stories that unfold. The narrative takes us from the most archetypal beheading in Arabo-Islamic history, that of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, via a crime passionel, the torture of Communists in Nasser's prisons, the meanderings of a Cairene teenager unwittingly caught in the bread riots of 1977, a body dismembered in the 1991 Gulf War, and a bloodless beheading on the eve of the new millennium, into a dystopic future where heads are periodically severed to undergo maintenance and downloading of programs.
Read full publisher description Product information:
- Publisher: American University In Cairo
- Year: 2008
- Format: Hardback
- Pages: 174pp
- Illustrated: No
- Dimensions: 197x125mm
- ISBN: 9789774161889
- Condition: New
- Weight: 0.3kg
Product code:
400739
Product information
Full publisher description
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