Heads Ripe for Plucking |
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Author:
| Al-Wardani, Mahmoud |
Translator:
| Halim, Hala |
ISBN: | 978-1-61797-424-3 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2008 |
Publisher: | I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited
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Book Format: | Digital (delivered electronically) |
List Price: | USD $34.43 |
Book Description:
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An Arab tyrant once infamously declared, "I see heads that are ripe for plucking." In Mahmoud Al-Wardani's novel of tyranny and oppression, an impaled head seeks solace in narrating similar woes it sustained in previous incarnations. Beheadings, both literal and metaphorical--torture, murder, decapitation, brainwashing, losing one's head--are the subject of the six stories that unfold. The narrative takes us from the most archetypal beheading in Arabo-Islamic history, that of...
More DescriptionAn Arab tyrant once infamously declared, "I see heads that are ripe for plucking." In Mahmoud Al-Wardani's novel of tyranny and oppression, an impaled head seeks solace in narrating similar woes it sustained in previous incarnations. Beheadings, both literal and metaphorical--torture, murder, decapitation, brainwashing, losing one's head--are the subject of the six stories that unfold. The narrative takes us from the most archetypal beheading in Arabo-Islamic history, that of al-Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, via a crime passionel, the torture of Communists in Nasser's prisons, the meanderings of a Cairene teenager unwittingly caught in the bread riots of 1977, a body dismembered in the 1991 Gulf War, and a bloodless beheading on the eve of the new millennium, into a dystopic future where heads are periodically severed to undergo maintenance and downloading of programs.