Since the U.S. publication of Women of Sand and Myrrh -- which has now sold more than 35,000 copies and was selected as one of the Fifty Best Books of 1992 by Publishers Weekly -- Hanan al-Shaykh has attracted an ever larger following for her dazzling tales of contemporary Arab women. In these seventeen short stories -- eleven of which are appearing in English for the first time -- al-Shaykh expands her horizons beyond the boundaries of Lebanon, taking us throughout the Middle East, to Africa, and finally to London. Stylistically diverse, her stories are often about the shifting and ambiguous power relationships between different cultures -- as well as between men and women.

A compelling short story collection by the Arab world's foremost woman writer. "Hanan al-Shaykh is a writer of enormous insight". -- Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer