Recently Published Books: "Small Things" by Samira Azzam

A collection of short stories pulsing with life. Its characters are all people we almost know; its incidents are all things we could almost swear we have passed through ourselves, or felt passing through those around us.

Samira Azzam's skill lies in her selection of these living characters whom we have known — these characters among whom we live and with whom we keep company.

As you read these stories you feel that Samira Azzam is sitting beside you, telling you the story or the tale; for her style is smooth, beautiful, simple, far from the affectation and artificiality that so often cause a story's splendor to be lost! In her stories the author knows what she wants to say, and she says it without beating about the bush. She has eyes that see what goes on around her, and she conveys the pictures in a way that makes you wonder how you never noticed them before, or how you passed them by without a second glance.

An artist who feels her surroundings and what happens in them, she draws for you real pictures and real incidents in an attractive frame that keeps you reading on, savoring that delicious atmosphere which pervades all the stories.

The story "The Newspaper Seller" is the best example of this! Have you not wondered at those boys forever crying out the news, waving the papers in their hands, leaping between the automobiles and the tramcars and the passers-by, always shouting in their motion that never rests? Have you not thought, as you watched them: how, I wonder, do they live?

Stories upon stories, all of them delight and all of them pleasure. Some of them we had read before in certain newspapers and magazines. I could have wished that all the stories of this collection were new, never published before, so that we might enjoy the largest possible share of Samira Azzam's production.

Engaging stories — I could have wished them a more beautiful outward frame, for the book's cover falls short of artistic taste, and "Dar al-Ilm" has not accustomed us to this before. But then... what does the table matter, so long as the food upon it is delicious?!