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This week's CCN Book-of-the-Week
Leg over Leg: 4-volume set
by
Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (Author), Humphrey
Davies (Translator)
Description
 Leg
over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of
the Fariyaq, alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a
pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of
the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often
hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his
native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England, and France,
provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions
of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including
the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and
secular establishments, freedom of conscience, womens
rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the
manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and
the differences between contemporary European and Arabic
literatures, all the while celebrating the genius and beauty
of the classical Arabic language.
Volumes One and Two follow the hapless Fariyaq through his
youth and early education, his misadventures among the monks
of Mount Lebanon, his flight to the Egypt of Muhammad 'Ali,
and his subsequent employment with the first Arabic daily
newspaperduring which time he suffers a number of diseases
that parallel his progress in the sciences of Arabic
grammar, and engages in amusing digressions on the table
manners of the Druze, young love, snow, and the scandals of
the early papacy. This first book also sees the listof
locations in Hell, types of medieval glue, instruments of
torture, stars and pre-Islamic idolscome into its own as a
signature device of the work.
Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and
technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg Over Leg
a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially
widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious
skepticism, and its obscenity, and later editions were
often abridged. This is the first complete English
translation of this groundbreaking work.
Reviews
"Its contemporaneity is astonishing... It would be doing Leg
Over Leg a massive disservice to not make it clear how funny
it is. This is a book that for all its challenges, all its
insight into humanity, all its place in history, had me
regularly laughing out loud."-Music and Literature
"We're having a particularly good season for literary
discoveries from the past, with recent publications of
Volumes 1 and 2 of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's 'Leg Over Leg'
(1855)..."-Martin Riker, New York Times Book Review
"...Leg Over Leg by the Lebanese intellectual Ahmad Faris
al-Shidyaq, [has] long been held to be untranslatable and so
[is] appearing, in [its] entirety, in English for the first
time."-Lydia Wilson,Times Literary Supplement
"Al-Shidyaq, born in Lebanon in the early years of the
nineteenth century, was a Zelig of the Arabic literary
world, and his Leg Over Leg is a bawdy, hilarious, epically
word-obsessed, and unclassifiable book, which has never been
translated into English before
"-Sal Robinson,Moby Lives
"It is not too early to state that the publication of this
work, in this edition, is a game-changer. This is a
foundational work of modern Arabic literature and its
publication in English is long overdue but given how it is
presented here, it was perhaps worth the wait. This edition,
with helpful endnotes, the original Arabic text, and in a
translation that both reads well and appears to closely
mirror the original, seems, in almost every way, ideal
I
dont think Im exaggerating when I say that this is the
most important literary publication of a translation into
English, in terms of literary history and our understanding
of it, in years." -The Complete Review
"Humphrey Daviess masterful translation makes accessible
this unique and fascinating work, deserving of wider
recognition and study [
] The translation adroitly and
sympathetically captures the linguistic exuberance and
literary inventiveness of the original." -Banipal Magazine
"Humphrey Davies translation, published in four
dual-language volumes, is a triumph. He skillfully renders
punning, rhyming prose without breaking the spell
Leg Over
Leg stands out for both its stylistic brazenness and the
excellence of the translation. With this bilingual edition,
the Library of Arabic Literature helps fill a large cultural
gap and alters our view of Arabic literature and the formal
trajectory of the novel outside the West. Any reader for
whom the term world literature is more than an empty
platitude must read Humphrey Davies's translation."-John
Yargo,Los Angeles Review of Books
The heroic achievement of award-winning translator Humphrey
Davies marks the first ever English translation of this
pivotal work
An accessible, informative, and highly
entertaining read.-Banipal Magazine
Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1805 or 1806-1887) was a
foundational figure in modern Arabic literature. Born to a
prominent Maronite family in Lebanon, al-Shidyaq was a
pioneering publisher, poet, essayist, lexicographer and
translator. Known as "the father of Arabic journalism," al-Shidyaq
played a major role in reviving and modernizing the Arabic
language.
Humphrey Davies is an award-winning translator of
Arabic literature from the Ottoman period to the present.
Writers he has translated include Elias Khoury, Naguib
Mahfouz, Alaa Al Aswany, Bahaa Taher, Mourid Barghouti,
Muhammad Mustagab, Gamal al-Ghitani, Hamdy el-Gazzar, Khaled
Al-Berry, and Ahmed Alaidy, as well as Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
and Yusuf al-Shirbini for the Library of Arabic Literature.
He has also authored, with Madiha Doss, an anthology of
writings in Egyptian colloquial Arabic. He lives in Cairo.
Source:
Amazon.com
I havent read many novels in
translation from Arabic. What better place to begin than at
the beginning? Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaqs picaresque,
somewhat maniacal four-book opuscule, published in Paris
in 1855, may be the first of its kind in Arabic, according
to the New York Review of Books. The text is worth the
expedition it demands: a ramble through Lebanon, Egypt,
Malta, Tunis, England, and France with detours in the form
of musings, rhyming passages, and in some memorable
instances, protracted catalogues of rare words for
genitalia and their uses and through much of the
protagonists life. Al-Shidyaqs commentaries on love and
language and on places, the people who populate them, and
their customs are quite singular, and his delight in
language offers a glimpse, however pale in translation, of
the richness of a classical Arabic beyond the reach of most
readers this edition will attract.
Benjamin Soloway, assistant
editor Foreign Policy
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7
August 2011