The Fate of a Prisoner: And Other Stories

by Denys Johnson-Davies

The themes in this unusual collection of short stories range from the lost innocence of childhood, betrayal, greed and the battlefield of sex, to the courage of old age. The settings include desert wadis in the Arabian Gulf, a small Sudanese village, the packed streets of Cairo, and a sniper's alley in Beirut. "Deal Concluded," the tale of an arms sale with more to it than the salesman suspects, shows a sardonic sense of humor. The same humor is present in the volume's title story, in which the ruler of a Gulf sheikhdom and his English commandant of police engage in an elaborate dance of deadly etiquette over the fate of a young murderer. The writing is fluid and compelling.

222 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2000

About the author

Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (1922-2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.

Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.

Born in 1922 in Vancouver Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000.

Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...

Reviews

[Kathy Piselli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson-Davies recently died and in his obituary I read that he had also written his own short stories, instead of only translating those of others. This collection is both ordinary and extraordinary. The stories read like many of the Arabic short stories he has translated. He is a very good writer, including what needs to be included and leaving out what should be left out using the difficult short story format.

Each story takes the reader into the mind of an individual, seeing what he sees. A recurring theme is that of the expat who has lived for many many years in a foreign country and whose grasp of things still isn't quite all there. It is an excellent and illuminating collection.