Saud Alsanousi Libri

Josephine escapes poverty by coming to Kuwait from the Philippines to work as a maid, where she meets Rashid, an idealistic only son with literary aspirations. Josephine, with all the wide-eyed naivety of youth, believes she has found true love. But when she becomes pregnant, and with the rumble of war growing ever louder, Rashid bows to family and social pressure, and sends her back home with her baby son, Jose...Brought up struggling with his dual identity, Jose clings to the hope of returning to his father's country when he is eighteen. He is ill-prepared to plunge headfirst into a world where the fear of tyrants and dictators is nothing compared to the fear of 'what will people say'. And with a Filipino face, a Kuwaiti passport, an Arab surname and a Christian first name, will his father's country welcome him'..The Bamboo Stalk takes an unflinching look at the lives of foreign workers in Arab countries and confronts the universal problems of identity, race and religion.

From the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction comes an apocalyptic and caustically funny novel about the power of friendship in a war-torn world that NPR calls "rich and resonant." Growing up together in the Surra section of central Kuwait, Katkout, Fahd, and Sadiq share neither ethnic origin nor religious denomination--only friendship and a rage against the unconscionable sectarian divide turning their lives into war-zone rubble. To lay bare the ugly truths, they form the protest group Fuada's Kids. Their righteous transgressions have made them targets of both Sunni and Shi'a extremists. They've also elicited the concern of Fahd's grandmother, Mama Hissa, a story-spinning font of piety, wisdom, superstition, and dire warnings, who cautions them that should they anger God, the sky will surely fall. Then one day, after an attack on his neighborhood leaves him injured, Katkout regains consciousness. His friends are nowhere to be found. Inundated with memories of his past, Katkout begins a search for them in a world that has become unrecognizable but not forsaken. Snaking through decades of Kuwaiti history well into a cataclysmic twenty-first century, Mama Hissa's Mice is a harrowing, emotional, and caustic novel of rebellion. It also speaks to the universal struggle of finding one's identity and a reason to go on, even after the sky has fallen.

Provides students at the intermediate-advanced Arabic language level the opportunity to engage with an award-winning work of contemporary fiction. This novel is a coming-of-age story of a half-Filippino, half-Kuwaiti teen who returns to his father's Kuwait.