Doha, February 01 (QNA) - Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (BQFP) has recently published the English edition of 'The Bamboo Stalk' novel by Kuwait novelist Saud Alsanousi and translated by Jonathan Wright.
Daring and bold, 'The Bamboo Stalk' takes an unflinching look at the universal struggles of identity, race, and class as they intersect between tow disparate societies; Kuwait and the Philippines.
Josephine comes to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, a spoiled but kind-hearted only son. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and the rumble of the Gulf War growing ever louder, Rashid abandons her and sends her back home with their baby son Jose.
Masterfully written, 'The Bamboo Stalk' is the winner of the 2013 international Prize for Arab Fiction, chosen both for its literary qualities and for "its social and humanitarian content". Through his complex characters, Alsanousi crafts a captivating saga that boldly deals with issues of identity, alienation, and the phenomenon of foreign workers in Arab countries.
Saud Alsanousi is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist, born in 1981. His work has appeared in a number of Kuwaiti publications, including Al Watan newspaper and Al-Arabi, and he currently writes for Al-Qabas newspaper. His debut novel 'The Prisoner of Mirror (2010) won the Laila al-Othman Prize.
Jonathan Wright studied Arabic at Oxford University and was a journalist for 30 years. He later moved into literary translation, starting with Khaled al-Khamissi's popular work 'Taxi'. He has since translated other works from across the region. In 2014 he was joint winner of the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for Youseff Ziedan's 'Azaseel' and winner of the Independent Foreign Prize for Hassan Blasim's short story collection 'The Iraqi Christ'. (QNA)