tablet & Pen
Literary Landscapes
from the Modern
middleeast
Edited by Reza Aslan, Sholeh Wolpé Regional Editor (Iran)
“Remarkable . . . a triumph . . . connects us at the level of our humanity, no matter where we may be from.” —Los Angeles Times
“This is a treasure house; a worthwhile attempt at canonizing 20th-century central-Islamicate writing…. It’s a physically beautiful book which is also compulsively readable.” —Financial Times
“A stunning rebuke to the argument that there’s a clash of civilizations [and] shows how we can move beyond politics.” —The Daily Beast
“Provocative and illuminating . . . a literary banquet with so many astonishing dishes that we can hardly complain there are not yet more on the table.” —The Jewish Journal
… among the finds (at least to this reader) is Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962), a Turk represented by a smart, sensitive excerpt from one of his novels, A Mind at Peace. ” —The Washington Post

Tablet & Pen
A Words Without Borders Anthology
The countries that stretch along the broad horizons of the Middle East—from Morocco to Iran, from Turkey to Pakistan—boast different cultures, different languages, and different religions. Yet the literary landscape of this dynamic part of the world has been bound together not by borders and nationalities, but by a common experience of Western imperialism. Keenly aware of the collected scars left by a legacy of colonial rule, the acclaimed writer Reza Aslan, with a team of four regional editors and seventy-seven translators, cogently demonstrates with Tablet & Pen how literature can, in fact, be used to form identity and serve as an extraordinary chronicle of the disrupted histories of the region.
Acting with Words Without Borders, which fosters international exchange through translation and publication of the world’s finest literature, Aslan has purposefully situated this volume in the twentieth century, beyond the familiar confines of the Ottoman past, believing that the writers who have emerged in the last hundred years have not received their full due. This monumental collection, therefore, of nearly two hundred pieces, including short stories, novels, memoirs, essays and works of drama—many of them presented in English for the first time—features translated works from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish. Organized chronologically, the volume spans a century of literature—from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Nobel laureates Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, from the great Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis to the grand dame of Urdu fiction, Ismat Chughtai—connected by the extraordinarily rich tradition of resplendent cultures that have been all too often ignored by the Western canon.
By shifting America’s perception of the Middle Eastern world away from religion and politics, Tablet & Pen evokes the splendors of a region through the voices of its writers and poets, whose literature tells an urgent and liberating story. With a wealth of contextual information that places the writing within the historical, political, and cultural breadth of the region, Tablet & Pen is transcendent, a book to be devoured as a single sustained narrative, from the first page to the last. Creating a vital bridge between two estranged cultures, "this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting, and informing" (Publishers Weekly).
Contents:
I. The Language of Invention: The Renaissance of Arabic Literature, 1910–1920
Khalil Gibran
The Future of the Arabic Language
Yahya Haqqi
The First Lesson
Tawfiq al-Hakim
Diary of a Country Prosecutor
‘Arrar
Are You Intoxicated?
The Sheikh Says . . .
My Kinsmen Say “Leave her!”
‘Abd al-Rahim Mahmud
The Aqsa Mosque
II. My Country: The Nationalization of Turkish Literature (1920-1930)
Aziz Nesin
Istanbul Boy
Ahmet Muhip Dıranas
The Gallows
Nazim Hikmet
I Love My Country
The Epic of Sheikh Bedreddin
Refik Halit Karay
The Gray Donkey
III. Once Upon a Time: Politics and Piety in Persian Literature (1930-1940)
Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh
Persian Is Sugar
Sadegh Hedayat
The Blind Owl
Nima Yushij
Cold Ashes
O People!
Parvin E’tesami
Iranian Women
A Woman’s Place
IV. Rise Up! Pakistan and the Independence of Urdu Literature (1940-1950)
Sa‘adat Hasan Manto
For Freedom’s Sake
Ismat Chughtai
The Quilt
Muhammad Iqbal
The Houri and the Poet
Heaven and the Priest
God’s Command to the Angels
Miraji
Far and Near
Devadasi and Pujari
I Forgot
N. M. Rashed
Near the Window
Deserted Sheba
Oil Merchants
Part Two: 1950-1980: V. I Am Arab: Arabic Literature at Midcentury
Ghassan Kanafani
Letter from Gaza
Abu Salma
My Country on Partition Day
We Shall Return
I Love You More
Mahmoud Darwish
To the Reader
Identity Card
Athens Airport
They’d Love to See Me Dead
Adonis
The Pages of Day and Night
The Wound
Grave for New York
Mozaffar al-Nawwab
Bridge of Old Wonders
Zakariyya Tamir
The Enemies
Yusif Idris
The Aorta
Haydar Haydar
The Dance of the Savage Prairies
Naguib Mahfouz
The Seventh Heaven
VI. Strangers in a Strange Land: Turkish Literature after Atatürk
Yas¸ar Kemal
Memed, My Hawk
Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
A Mind at Peace
Sait Faik Abasıyanık
Such a Story
Melih Cevdet Anday
The Battle of Kadesh
I Became a Tree
Barefoot
Are We Going to Live Without Aging?
Orhan Veli Kanik
Exodus I
I Am Listening to Istanbul
Oktay Rifat
Agamemnon I
Agamemnon II
Agamemnon III
VII. Those Days: Persian Literature Between Two Revolutions
Forugh Farrokhzad
Sin
Window
Wind-Up Doll
Those Days
Nader Naderpour
False Dawn
Qom
Faraway Star
Sadeq Chubak
The Baboon Whose Buffoon Was Dead
Houshang Golshiri
My China Doll
Jalal Al-e Ahmad
Gharbzadegi
Simin Daneshvar
The Playhouse
Ahmad Shamloo
I’m Still Thinking of That Crow
The Song of Abraham in Fire
Simin Behbahani
Don’t Read
My Country, I Will Build You Again
You Leave, I’ll Stay
Reza Baraheni
I Am an Underground Man
Doctor Azudi, the Professional
Zadan! Nazadan!
Hosseinzadeh, the Head Executioner
The Shah and Hosseinzadeh
VIII. Between the Dusk and Dawn of History: Urdu Literature after Partition
Intizaar Hussein
The First Morning
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Freedom’s Dawn (August 1947)
August 1952
Bury Me Under Your Pavements
Akhtar ul-Iman
Compromise
The Last Stop Before the Destination
The Boy
Ali Sardar Jafri
Robe of Flame
My Journey
Abdullah Hussein
The Refugees
Ghulam Abbas
The Room with the Blue Light
PART THREE 1980-2010: IX. Ask Me About the Future: The Globalization of Middle East Literature, 1980–2010
Zakaria Mohammad
Is This Home?
Haifa Zangana
Dreaming of Baghdad
Orhan Pamuk
The Black Book
Melisa Gürpinar
The Bank Teller Tecelli Bey
Fahmida Riaz
In the City Court
She Is a Woman Impure
Azra Abbas
Today Was a Holiday
A Dot Might Appear
Kishwar Naheed
We Sinful Women
Censorship
To the Masters of Countries with a Cold Climate
Zeeshan Sahil
Rome
Karachi
Altaf Fatima
Do You Suppose It’s the East Wind
Goli Taraghi
The Grand Lady of My Soul
Zoya Pirzad
Mrs. F Is a Fortunate Woman
The Desirable Life of Mr. F
Manouchehr Atashi
Nostalgia
Mountain Song
Pegah Ahmadi
The Dark Room
The Girl Sleeping On Top of Oil
Four Views of a Private Orange
Cemal Süreya
This Government
“Dying?”
I’m Dying, God
After Twelve PM
Can Yücel
Poem X
The Wall of Love
Cemil Kavukçu
The Route of the Crows
Zayd Mutee’ Dammaj
A Woman
Nazik al-Mala’ika
Jamilah and Us
Myths
The Lover River
Saadi Youssef
Koofa
The Bird’s Last Flight
Faraj Bayraqdar
An Alphabetical Formation
Groans
Hamid Reza Rahimi
A Quarter to Destruction
Blockage
Inclination
Alireza Behnam
What?
Hanging from the Trees of Babylon
Author Biographies
Permissions
Index of Works, Authors, and Translators