The Collar and the Bracelet

By Yahya Taher Abdullah

Set in the Upper Egyptian village of Karnak against the backdrop of the British campaigns in Sudan, the Second World War, and the war in Palestine, The Collar and the Bracelet tells the saga of the Bishari family—a family ripped apart by the violence of history, the dark conduits of human desire, and the rigid social conventions of village life. The novella traces the grim intrigues of Hazina al-Bishari and the destinies of her son, the notorious bandit Mustafa; her daughter Fahima, tortured by a secret passion; and the tragic doom of her beautiful granddaughter Nabawiya.

The Collar and the Bracelet wins the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for translation from the Arabic

'This year’s Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for translation from the Arabic has gone to Samah Selim for his versions of Yahya Taher Abdullah’s stories collected in The Collar and the Bracelet (146pp. American University in Cairo Press; distributed in the UK by Arabia Books. £16.95. 978 977 416 145 2). Abdullah (1938–81) was known for his “virtuoso oral performances” in Cairo, which may help to explain why his tales, some of which are little over a page long, occasionally read like parables: “One day, a man cut off a viper’s tail with an iron bar, so the viper fled his house and took refuge in the house of an old widow”. The long title story, a tragic family saga, is set in the ancient Upper Egyptian village of Karnak (near Luxor). In an afterword, Selim talks of Abdullah’s use of “the ritualized, communal language of the public poet and storyteller . . . the language of the great epic cycles of rural Egypt . . . “. As a consequence, he has chosen to “translate literally . . . the many proverbs and folk aphorisms that Abdullah weaves into his writing”.' - TLS, 6 January 2010