The Halva-MakerThe Halva Maker (in Arabic, Al Halwani, 2022) is a three part novel, contributes through the medium of fiction to this different interpretation of the historical record, in that its third segment, entitled The Kurd, is set during the final years of the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt and the attempts by Amaury (Almaric), Crusader King of Jerusalem, to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Egyptian regime. A central figurethe Kurd of the sections titleis

or didn’t

The images in the pack are a delight and very appropriate for children as well as adults

Werner Aspenström

Some are stitched into poems (or something like poems) while others speak to the present in bizarre new ways

It is a book full of flames and scars

A cynophobic lawyer’s brief encounter with an Alsatian that loathes him loses him a case and his wife

pondering inwardly what all this might mean or amount to

Kaurismäki

Mona Zaki Thieves in Retirement by Hamdi Abu Golayyel

an important new voice in African writing

is a good measure

and here we can see not only a mutual influence but a sharing of common concerns