Tawfiq al-Hakim, translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies

In The Tree Climber, a detective, a lizard, a time-traveling dervish, and a magic tree all help to turn the quiet life of a married couple upside down. "Tawfiq al-Hakim’s plays deal with themes of universal rather than local application: the role of the artist in society, the predicament of man in the face of forces he neither controls nor understands, the use and abuse of power....  More >

Russell Soaba

The only child of the last traditional chief of Makawana village, Maiba struggles to hold her people together in the face of the polarizing forces of convention and modernization. Soaba makes palpable the tensions that arise when rapid change confronts a society that has been stable for many centuries. We also follow his unlikely heroine’s journey as she overcomes the legacy of a neglected  More >

Dov Levin, translated from the Hebrew by Moshe Kohn and Dina Cohen

Fighting Back chronicles the activities of the Lithuanian Jews who fought against the Nazis—in the Soviet army, in the forests, in the ghettos of Vilna, Kovno, Shavli, and Svencian, and even in the concentration camps. Dov Levin, a member of the Kovno ghetto underground and then a fighter with the Lithuanian partisans, brings both meticulous scholarship and his own personal experience to  More >

John C. Fout, editor

This penetrating collection of essays represents the most sophisticated research undertaken in an important and long-neglected area of scholarship. Bringing together for the first time contributions by American and European specialists, German Women in the Nineteenth Century not only helps us understand more fully how German women of all classes, religions, and shades of political opinion lived,  More >

Malcolm Bradbury
Bernard Harris and Peter Skrine, general editors

"There is no such thing as Shakesperian Tragedy, there are only Shakesperian tragedies."  Taking Kenneth Muir's observation as a departure point, this volume explores the variety of modes through which the tragedies communicate their meanings—the formal conventions and structural devices that were part of the Elizabethan dramatist's stock-in-trade. The essays examine  More >

Ruth Perry and Marine Watson Brownley, editors

Recognized period specialists look at a wide variety of nurturing relationships between men and women, both sexual and platonic. Mothering is examined as a component of marriage and as a sustaining force in less traditional but equally creative relationships. In some instances, actual mothers provide the encouragement and unconditional approvals that are hallmarks of the mothering role. Crucial  More >

Chester E. Finn Jr., Diane Ravitch, and Robert T. Fancher

Against Mediocrity starts from, and argues vigorously for, the belief that the education of every American child must be founded on the humanistic disciplines. In sixteen essays, leading scholars, educators, and school policymakers eloquently assess the current condition of the humanities in the secondary schools, analyze how this state of affairs developed and what the humanities ought to be  More >

Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad, translated by Leslie McLoughlin

Set against the background of post-1967 Lebanon, this novel caused a sensation in the Arab world because of its frank and realistic descriptions of Lebanon's—and particularly Lebanese women's—problems. Tragedy awaits Tamina, who is drawn by the lure of the city to leave her Shia Muslim village for the university in Beirut. Injured in a student demonstration, she is rescued by  More >

Driss Chraibi, translated by Hugh A. Harter

Setting his novel during World War II, Chraïbi opens the door on the protected and well-to- do world of an Arab woman whose role in society is restricted to that of wife and mother. At the urging of her two sons, she seeks knowledge of the larger world with all its political, economic, and social realities. Soon, she begins to develop and express her own opinions about the ongoing World War  More >

Khalil Hawi, translated and with extensive interpretive material by Adnan Haydarand Michael Beard

Assembled in this volume are the Arabic and English texts of the three long poems that make up Hawi's Bayadir al-ju [The Threshing Floors of Hunger], The Cave, The Genie of the Beach, and Plurals in Singular Form: The Transformations of Lazarus 1962. The translators provide detailed essays that explain each poem and the specific problems encountered in translating it.  More >