A Bed for the King’s Daughter, Ujayli

A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine women’s agency and the decline of modern collective life

A Bed for the King’s Daughter

SHAHLA UJAYLI Translated by Sawad Hussain

SHAHLA UJAYLI Amman, Jordan

Shahla Ujayli is the author of four novels and two short-story collections. The Arabic edition of A Bed for the King’s Daughter (2016) won the 2017 Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story.

SAWAD HUSSAIN Cambridge, England

Sawad Hussain is the winner of the 2019 Arablit Short Story Prize and an English PEN Translates award. She holds an MA in modern Arabic literature from SOAS in London.

Emerging Voices from the Middle East

release date | january 5.5 x 8.5 inches, 60 pages

ISBN 978-1-4773-2228-4 $16.00* | £12.99 | C$17.95 paperback

ISBN 978-1-4773-2230-7 $16.00* e-book A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by award-winning Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine such themes as women’s agency, the decline of collective life and imagination under modernity, and the effects of social and political corruption on daily life. In “The Memoir of Cinderella’s Shoes,” Cinderella uses her famous glass slipper as a weapon in order to take justice into her own hands. In “Tell Me About Surrealism,” an art history professor’s writing assignment reveals the slipperiness of storytelling, and in “Merry Christmas,” the realities of apartheid interfere with one family’s celebration. Through twenty-two short stories, Ujayli animates—with brevity and inventiveness—themes relevant to both the particularities of life in the Arab world and life outside it.

Distributed for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin.