Hikayat; Galpa; Povídky; Katha; Scéalta; Dinaane; Qissat; Afsaneh – these evocative words from other languages conjure up images of far-flung countries and cultures.

They have been cleverly used by the innovative publisher Telegram as titles for their ongoing series of anthologies of short stories by women from around the world.

The range and breadth of the stories in these eight collections is remarkable, but perhaps not surprising considering that women’s experiences from across the globe have been drawn together by the editors. From Ireland to India, South Africa to the Lebanon, Palestine to Bangladesh and Iran to the Czech Republic, these storytellers reveal the particularities of life in their homelands, but also – whether they know it or not –  the universality of their experiences and the common bonds they share with women hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Given that many of these stories are set in countries riven at some time in their recent history by war and hatred, it is not surprising that conflict features prominently. However, it should be emphasised that, like the best short fiction, each story plunges us into people’s lives for an instant but leaves us with an indelible image of their circumstances.

In five brief pages, for example, ‘Improvisations on a Missing String’ by Lebanese writer Nazik Saba Yared (Hikayat), explains the circumstances behind a couple’s decision to leave their country forever: no longer able to carry on their work as artist and surgeon, they have no choice but to run away to Canada, where their skills will not be recognised. Two stories in Qissat ‘deal with was has become one of the most pervasive features of Palestinian life – the checkpoint’, as the volume’s editor Jo Glanville writes in her introduction.

The longer-term effects of war are described in Parag Chowdhury’s ‘Why Does Durgati Weep?’ (from Galpa), the story of Jamila and her daughter, who was conceived when her mother was raped during the Bangladeshi civil war: ‘What difference did it make that the country was free? Everyone said it was such a awonderful thing. No one had to serve the Punjabis any more. But what had happened to the Jamilas? Jamila’d sacrificed her life at the feet of this freedom. It didn’t finish her off at one stroke. Oh no.’

But life goes on for Jamila, caring for her child, preparing food, existing as part of a community. She is not alone – many of the other stories in the series are about marriage, status, honour, family and the generational tensions between the old, disappearing world and the new.

Rites of passage and stories from the viewpoint of children also feature prominently. ‘Me (the Bitch) and Bustanji’ by Selma Dabbagh (Qissat) is about a teenager’s boring summer in Kuwait dramatically and tragically altered when Saddam Hussein’s forces invade. In Eithne McGuinness’s ‘Feather Bed’ (Scéalta), a girl is forced to deal with her philandering mother’s aborted child, then sent to a psychiatric hospital for her pains.

Not all the stories are contemporary (‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein (Galpa) was first published in 1905), but for many of these writers, the freedom to express themselves is a relatively recent phenomenon. ‘Prior to 1931,’ Kaveh Basmenji, editor of Afsaneh, writes, ‘there is only one mention of a female writer within Persian literature: the mythical storyteller Sheherezad’, and it wasn’t until the 1950s that the writing of Lebanese women gained prominence. In Europe, Czech writers were constrained by their Communist leaders and ‘forced to conform to the demands of building a socialist society’ or go into exile as Nancy Harker says in her introduction to Povídky. This recent flowering both of freedom and, to varying extents, equal opportunities for women is abundantly evident in these books.

Many of these stories have been translated into English for the first time. Translators are the unsung heroes of modern literature and deserve high praise (as do the editors) for bringing these tales – which raise our awareness of women’s lives and writing from other cultures – to the attention of an English readership all too often preoccupied with stories set in their own small country.

James Smith (September 2007)

Hikayat: short stories by Lebanese women edited by Roseanne Saad Khalaf
Galpa: short stories by women from Bangladesh edited by Niaz Zaman & Firdous Azim
Povídky: short stories by Czech women edited by Nancy Hawker
Katha: short stories by Indian women edited by Urvashi Butalia
Scéalta: short stories by Irish women edited by Rebecca O'Connor
Dinaane: short stories by South African women edited by Maggie Davey
Qissat: short stories by Palestinian women edited by Jo Glanville
Afsaneh: short stories by Iranian women edited by Kaveh Basmenji

Telegram Books

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