Muntaha A Village Novel

Set in the sleepy Egyptian village of Muntaha during the late 1940s, this novel paints a vibrant portrait of rural life in Egypt that is both moving and memorable. Between the turbulent events of 1948 and the final years of the British presence in Egypt, the village's inhabitants find themselves caught up against their will in the swirl of larger world events, although their daily lives, concerns, and beliefs are grounded in the timeless nature of a rural past. Hala El Badry's masterful narrative depicts, in intimate detail, her characters' relationships, not only to each other but to the natural environment that surrounds them: from fishing on the Nile and cotton and corn harvests, to chicks raised to be members of the family, crazed bulls, hordes of ravenous locusts, and donkeys and sparrows gone tipsy on overripe fruit.

NANCY ROBERTS, translator of Ghada Sammans Night of the First Billion and Mohamed El-Bisaties Over the Bridge (AUC Press 2006), has also translated works dealing with Islamic history, jurisprudence, Sufism and modern Islamic though and practice.