Saleem Haddad

A debut novel that tells the story of Rasa, a young gay man coming of age in the Middle East Set over the course of twenty-four hours, Guapa follows Rasa, a gay man living in an unnamed Arab country, as he tries to carve out a life for himself in the midst of political and social upheaval. Rasa spends his days translating for Western journalists and pining for the nights when he can sneak his lover, Taymour, into his room. One night Rasa's grandmother -- the woman who raised him -- catches them in bed together. The following day Rasa is consumed by the search for his best friend Maj, a fiery activist and drag queen star of the underground bar, Guapa, who has been arrested by the police. Ashamed to go home and face his grandmother, and reeling from the potential loss of the three most important people in his life, Rasa roams the city's slums and prisons, the lavish weddings of the country's elite, and the bars where outcasts and intellectuals drink to a long-lost revolution. Each new encounter leads him closer to confronting his own identity, as he revisits his childhood and probes the secrets that haunt his family. As Rasa confronts the simultaneous collapse of political hope and his closest personal relationships, he is forced to discover the roots of his alienation and try to re-emerge into a society that may never accept him.

A Novel

Guapa

Samir El-Youssef

Selma Dabbagh

Mazen Maarouf

Talal Abu Shawish

Ahmed Masoud

Tasnim Abutabikh

Emad El-Din Aysha

Anwar Hamed

Majd Kayyal

Abdalmuti Maqboul

Rawan Yaghi

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians? Covering a range of approaches – from SF noir, to nightmarish dystopia, to high-tech farce – these stories use the blank canvas of the future to reimagine the Palestinian experience today. Along the way, we encounter drone swarms, digital uprisings, time-bending VR, peace treaties that span parallel universes, and even a Palestinian superhero, in probably the first anthology of science fiction from Palestine ever. Translated from the Arabic by Raph Cormack, Mohamed Ghalaieny, Andrew Leber, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Yasmine Seale and Jonathan Wright. WINNER of a PEN Translates Award 2018 'It's necessary, of course. But above all it's bold, brilliant and inspiring: a sign of boundless imagination and fierce creation even in circumstances of oppression, denial, silencing and constriction. The voices of these writers demand to be heard - and their stories are defiantly entertaining.' - Bidisha

Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba

One Last Drink at Guapa

"Narra un día en la vida de Rasa, un chico homosexual que vive en una ciudad cualquiera de un país árabe cualquiera y lucha por labrarse un futuro en medio de una situación política y social insostenible. Pero no es un día más en la vida de Rasa: Teta, su abuela y única familia, lo pilló anoche en la cama con otro hombre; su mejor amigo está desaparecido y esa misma noche está invitado a una boda que cambiará su vida para siempre"--Back cover.

ÚLTIMA NOCHE EN EL GUAPA

Vierundzwanzig Stunden, die alles im Leben des jungen Rasa verändern: In einem namenlosen Land im Nahen Osten erschüttern gewaltsame Proteste die politische Ordnung. Der Arabische Frühling steht am Scheideweg zwischen Militärdiktatur und islamischem Regime. Und auch Rasas Welt gerät völlig aus den Fugen. Auf der Suche nach seinem besten Freund, der in den Gefängnissen der Machthaber gefoltert wird, streift er durch die Slums seiner Stadt. Nach Hause zu gehen wagt er nicht, denn seine Großmutter hat sein unaussprechliches Geheimnis entdeckt. Während die wichtigsten Beziehungen in seinem Leben zu zerbrechen drohen, muss Rasa seinen Platz in einer Gesellschaft finden, die ihn vielleicht niemals akzeptieren wird. Schonungslos und ergreifend erzählt Saleem Haddad in seinem Debütroman von einer unmöglichen Liebe in Zeiten radikaler Umbrüche.

Paul Theroux

Mark Haddon

Margaret Drabble

Ramsey Campbell

Lara Williams

Sarah Schofield

David Constantine

Alan Beard

Gerard Woodward

Gaia Holmes

Bernardine Bishop

Adam Marek

Christine Poulson

Matthew Holness

Lucie McKnight Hardy

Mike Nelson

Meave Haughey

Karen Featherstone

SOMETHING HAS FALLEN AWAY. We have lost a part of ourselves, our history, what we once were. That something, when we encounter it again, look it straight in the eyes, disgusts us, makes us retch. This is the horror of the abject. Following the success of Comma’s award-winning New Uncanny anthology, The New Abject invites leading authors to respond to two parallel theories of the abject – Julia Kristeva’s theory of the psychoanalytic, intimate abject, and Georges Bataille’s societal equivalent – with visceral stories of modern unease. As we become ever-more isolated by social media bubbles, or the demands for social distancing, our moral gag-reflex is increasingly sensitised, and our ability to tolerate difference, or ‘the other’, atrophies. Like all good horror writing, these stories remind us that exposure to what unsettles us, even in small doses, is always better than pretending it doesn’t exist. After all, we can never be wholly free of that which belongs to us.

Tales of Modern Unease

The New Abject

Nella drammatica vicenda umana del giovane Rasa l’omosessualità, repressa dai regimi dittatoriali e dai fondamentalisti islamici, diventa una chiave di lettura obbligata del mondo, un punto di vista privilegiato per smascherarne le ipocrisie e le contraddizioni. Il Guapa, il luogo di ritrovo dei deviati e degli esclusi, diventa il cuore stesso della città di Rasa, il simbolo della strada e della sua ribellione. Il romanzo che più illumina le dinamiche esistenziali e culturali della Primavera araba. Una capitale mediorientale percorsa dal fremito della Primavera araba. Rasa, un giovane omosessuale non dichiarato che vive con la dispotica nonna paterna Teta, di giorno lavora come interprete e di notte si divide tra il Guapa, un locale underground nel cui seminterrato si radunano clandestinamente i gay e le lesbiche della città, e il suo amante segreto, Taymour, che fa entrare nella propria camera da letto fino al giorno in cui la nonna li scopre. Intanto il suo miglior amico, Maj, star drag queen del Guapa, viene arrestato all’interno di un cinema. I due eventi fanno precipitare la situazione già fragile di Rasa, abbandonato dalla madre quando era bambino, emigrato più tardi in America, dove però non riesce a integrarsi e tornato alla solitudine e alla vergogna della convivenza con la nonna. Rasa s’interroga anche sulla breve, intensa stagione delle proteste di piazza, prima che la repressione del regime e la conseguente estremizzazione degli scontri portassero all’emergere del fondamentalismo islamico. In uno scontro diretto con Ahmed, un leader islamista della protesta, Rasa è costretto al silenzio di fronte all’invettiva di quest’ultimo contro gli omosessuali. Il matrimonio del suo amante Taymour con Leila, una ragazza della buona borghesia, fa esplodere definitivamente il precario equilibrio di Rasa. «Un romanzo che allarga lo sguardo con la delicatezza di una poesia e la brutalità di un apriscatole». Amica

Ultimo giro al Guapa

Saleem Haddad

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