I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops

I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops / Hanan al-Shaykh
trans. from the Arabic by Catherine Cobham
NY: Doubleday, c1998.
267 p.

I picked up this collection at a used book store after having heard a few people talking about it last year during WIT Month. There are 17 stories here, set in a variety of locations, from Yemen to Lebanon to London, England. I thought that some of the stories were quite good, but as a whole this collection didn't really work for me.  

The first four stories caught me, as well as a later one, Funfair. But the rest, especially those set in England, just didn't. I felt that some of them were underdeveloped or just a little basic. The author is taking on themes of women, marriage, self-determination, fate, romance and sex -- and in some stories I really liked the approach. The first story, A Season of Madness, features a woman who is feigning madness to try to get her husband to divorce her, since she has found a man who she is really in love with. But unfortunately for her, her husband is kind and caring and swears to do whatever he can to heal her, he will never abandon her! A spectacular backfire there. The hint of irony and black humour appealed to me. The next two stories explore the importance of a man in his absence, first with a beloved deceased husband, and next with a girl who likes to flirt but never wants to marry. These stories develop the characters well and lay out interesting situations. 

The fourth story, Land of Dreams, is a longer one, about a Danish missionary in Yemen who finds that she is drawn further and further into the life in the village she's working in, and begins to forget her original purpose. She is enfolded into the village in the end, and somehow you can't see her proselytizing any longer. It's a situation that can stand for many things, and I liked the inconclusiveness of it, the open-ended feeling of the climax. 

I found the settings and some of the characters really appealing in this book, but didn't love all the stories. The writing style is straightforward, but sometimes felt a bit choppy or flat to me. So, a few gems here but not a complete hit.