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THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER Paul Starkey reviews Tigers on the Tenth Day and Other Stories by Zakaria Tamer, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies The Hedgehog: A Novella by Zakaria Tamer translated by Brian O’Rourke, and Short Stories translated by Denys Johnson-Davies A harsh and sometimes puzzling world Tigers on the Tenth Day, as originally published by Quartet Books, contains translations by Denys Johnson-Davies of twenty-four selected stories by Zakaria Tamer, some (but by no means all) of which had originally been published in Arabic in a collection itself entitled al-Numūr fī al-yawm al-‘āshir (Beirut, 1978). Long out of print in the Quartet edition, the same selection of twenty-four stories was incorporated without change in a new volume published by AUC Press in 2009, which also includes three additional short stories translated by Johnson-Davies, as well as the novella The Hedgehog (al-Qunfuth) in a translation by Brian O’Rourke. The AUC republication was particularly welcome, as the Quartet edition – which brought together stories by one of the Arab world’s leading short story writers with the work of the doyen of modern Arabic-English literary translators – was by then difficult to find and has now become almost a collector’s item. Like most of Tamer’s work, the stories contained in these volumes are notable for their conciseness. With the exception of the novella itself, none of the twenty-seven stories contained in The Hedgehog 102 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015
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BOOK REVIEW Quartet Books, London, 1985. ISBN 0 7043 2465 2, 123pp, Hardback AUC Press, Cairo and New York, 2009. ISBN 978 977 416 255 8, 180pp, Hardback, £16.99/$22.95 occupies more than eight pages in English translation (the longest of them, ironically, being entitled “Nothing”), and together they take up no more than 124 pages. Tightly scripted and economical with words, they are the polar opposite of the sort of sprawling novels that appear to have become the fashion in certain quarters recently. The essential qualities of Tamer’s work, as well as some of its underlying themes, are well exemplified in the title stories of the two volumes, Tigers on the Tenth Day and The Hedgehog respectively. Tigers on the Tenth Day relates the story of a tiger brought in from the jungle and imprisoned in a cage, where his “trainer” over a period of ten days gradually breaks his will, using food as a weapon. Reduced to eating grass, the tiger is at first shocked by its taste, but gradually, of necessity, begins to find its taste pleasant. The allegorical nature of Tamer’s account is made explicit only in the story’s final sentence: “On the tenth day the trainer, [his] pupils, the tiger, and the cage disappeared – the tiger became a citizen and the cage a city”. By contrast, the novella, The Hedgehog, is narrated by a young boy, BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015 103

THE SHORT STORIES OF ZAKARIA TAMER

Paul Starkey reviews Tigers on the Tenth Day and Other Stories by Zakaria Tamer, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

The Hedgehog: A Novella by Zakaria Tamer translated by Brian O’Rourke, and Short Stories translated by Denys Johnson-Davies

A harsh and sometimes puzzling world

Tigers on the Tenth Day, as originally published by Quartet Books, contains translations by Denys Johnson-Davies of twenty-four selected stories by Zakaria Tamer, some (but by no means all) of which had originally been published in Arabic in a collection itself entitled al-Numūr fī al-yawm al-‘āshir (Beirut, 1978). Long out of print in the Quartet edition, the same selection of twenty-four stories was incorporated without change in a new volume published by AUC Press in 2009, which also includes three additional short stories translated by Johnson-Davies, as well as the novella The Hedgehog (al-Qunfuth) in a translation by Brian O’Rourke. The AUC republication was particularly welcome, as the Quartet edition – which brought together stories by one of the Arab world’s leading short story writers with the work of the doyen of modern Arabic-English literary translators – was by then difficult to find and has now become almost a collector’s item.

Like most of Tamer’s work, the stories contained in these volumes are notable for their conciseness. With the exception of the novella itself, none of the twenty-seven stories contained in The Hedgehog

102 BANIPAL 53 – SUMMER 2015

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