Author(s): Osama Alomar; C.J. Collins (translator); Lydia Davis (foreword)

Short Stories

Unless he has been incarcerated or deported by the current US administration, Osama Alomar is working as a taxi driver in New York. Before moving to the US as a refugee, he was an acclaimed author in Syria, especially as a practitioner of al-qisa al-qasira jiddan (very short short stories). The two collections of his that we have in English translation place him somewhere in a rough triangle apexed by the fables of Aesop, the personification tales of Hans Christian Andersen and theRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (albeit an ‘Omar Khayyam’ arising from a world of state-sponsored torture and media-fuelled anti-Arab prejudice). These micro-fables, few longer than a few sentences, rail against injustice, are socially and politically most acute at the point where they are seemingly most ludicrous, and acknowledge despair without being without hope. A man climbs out of a narrow metal tunnel to find himself emerging from the gun barrel now pointed at his chest, a rubbish bag becomes swollen with pride at finding itself at the top of the heap of rubbish bags, a man finds a question mark in his eye when looking in the mirror. The stories often have an aphoristic feel, and are fables in that they do not intimate any further story lying beyond them (compared, for instance, with Sarah Manguso’s 500 Arguments, which are like the nuggets sieved out of novels).

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Description: A prominent practitioner of the Arabic "very short story" (al-qisa al-qasira jiddan), Osama Alomar's poetic fictions embody the wisdom of Kahlil Gibran filtered through the violent gray absurdity of Assad's police state. Fullblood Arabian is the first publication of Alomar's strange, often humorously satirical allegories, where good and evil battle with indifference, avarice, and compassion using striking imagery and effervescent language.

Review: "In Alomar's stories [...] fantasy never devolves into mere whimsy. His magical imaginative creations are, every one, inspired by his deeply felt philosophical, moral, and political convictions, giving these tales a heartfelt urgency" -- Lydia Davis - The New Yorker "The stories' distinctive flavour comes from Alomar's masterful shifts of character perspective within extremely tight parameters [...] The book is full of these moments which trip you up, swing bluntly from one psyche to another, rapidly decelerate time and play with scale, all of it exposing the delicate balance of our presumptions and allegiances; the small dictatorships that we foster second by second." -- Emma Jacobs - Asymptote Blog "[His stories] convey a raw combination of beauty and resignation, as if the two were created to reside under the same roof, hope and hurt at one [...] Alomar is a man of small but universally affecting insights." -- The American

Author Biography: Osama Alomar was born in Damascus, Syria in 1968 and now lives in Chicago. A poet, short-story writer, and musician, Alomar is the author of three collections of short stories and a volume of poetry. He is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals within the Arab world. C. J. Collins is a librarian and a translator based in Queens, NY. Lydia Davis is currently a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.