Overview

Land of Sweetheart Deals is a tragic cautionary tale that explores a government’s manipulation of print and social media as well as the sexual exploitation and trafficking of juveniles in Yemen. The narrator of this novel presents himself as the reader’s expert guide to Yemen’s slipperiest slopes, physical and moral, and then plummets down them headfirst. This amiable narrator and protagonist, Mutahhar Fadl, is assigned by the editor of a pro-government newspaper to leave his normal beat in Sana’a and travel to Hodeida to report on the rape of a child. He soon realizes that his true mission is not to cover a trial but to cover-up the crime, because the accused rapist is a government loyalist. Mutahhar’s marriage, career, and integrity are tested when the seductive perks of his assignment tempt him to become the novel’s antihero. While he tumbles down a dark rabbit hole with many twists and turns, one wonders whether Mutahhar’s government handlers know him better than he knows himself.

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9781788711012

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Ali Al-Muqri is a Yemeni author born in 1966. He worked as a cultural editor for many publications and was subject to three takfiri campaigns (1997, 2003, and 2013) by religious extremists for his opinions and writings, which they considered against the religious traditions, especially his two books al-Khamr was-al-nabīdh fī al-islām (Wine and Nabīd in Islam), 2007 and Hurrah, 2012. He left Yemen for France when the war broke out and was listed as one of the traitors whose properties were confiscated. He has published more than ten books, including Ta’m Aswad…Rā’ihah sawdā’ (Black Taste, Black Smell), Dar Saqi: Beirut, 2008; Al-Yahūdī al-Hālī (The Handsome Jew), Dar Saqi: Beirut, 2009; Hurmah, Dar Saqi: Beirut, 2012; Bukhūr ‘Adanī (Adeni Incense), Dar Saqi: Beirut, 2014; Blad al-Qaid (The Leader’s Country), Al-Mutawassit: Milan, 2019. Two of his novels – Black Taste, Black Smell, and The Handsome Jew – were longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Femme interdite (2015), the French translation of his novel Hurma, by Khaled Osman and Ola Mehanna, won the Prix de la Littérature Arabe in 2015. Another novel, Adeni Incense, was shortlisted for the Sheikh Zayd Book Award in 2015. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Kurdish, Persian, and Hebrew. In 2022, French awarded the author Ali Al-Muqri the Order of Arts and Letters with a knight’s degree. William Maynard Hutchins was born in Berea, Kentucky, and holds degrees from Yale University and the University of Chicago. He has taught at several institutions, including the University of Ghana and the American University in Cairo. Notable translations include “Return of the Spirit” by Tawfiq al-Hakim, “The Cairo Trilogy” by Naguib Mahfouz, and “New Waw” by Ibrahim al-Koni. His translation of “A Land Without Jasmine” by Wajdi al-Ahdal won the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize in 2013, and “New Waw” won the ALTA National Prose Translation Award in 2015. A three-time National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Hutchins is Professor Emeritus at Appalachian State University. Recent translations include “I’m in Seattle, Where are You?” by Mortada Gzar, “Ibn Arabi’s Small Death” by Mohammed Hasan Alwan, and “Land of Sweetheart Deals” by Wajdi al-Ahdal, published with DarArab in 2024.

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