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by Semia Harbawi
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781843865544
What does a voyeuristic wombless virgin have in common with: a call girl yearning for her bigoted mother's love; a bride-to-be who has to have the blessing of a dead woman's hand to get married; a hairy adolescent girl who uncovers the secret of a very 'special' guest room; a woman whose brother shaved her hair as a punishment for her consorting with the 'enemy'; or a vitiligo-afflicted 'monoxide' blonde whose vision comes to radically shift in unforeseen ways?
Meet these and many other unconventional Tunisian women who struggle in the teeth of devastating odds and strive to plot their liberation beyond the frontiers of a stultifying reality in an Arab-Islamic culture where sex roles are rigidly apportioned.
It is a collection of short stories that reverberates with a poignant, often darkly hilarious and sadly shrewd reflection on the plight of Arab women constantly hovering on the brink of manifold possibilities and hazards, straddling the divide between breakdown and breakthrough, alienation and self-acceptance.
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