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Scattered Crumbs
Translated by Yameen S. Hanoosh
University of Arkansas Press
In the wake of the Iraqi conflict comes a timely translation: "Scattered Crumbs," a novel by Muhsin al-Ramli, translated from the Arabic by Yasmeen S. Hanoosh. Set in an Iraqi village during the Iran-Iraq war, the book tells the story of a peasant family in turmoil. The father, a fierce supporter of Saddam Hussein - here called "The Leader" - clashes with his artist son, who loves his homeland but finds himself unable to paint the leader's portrait for his father's wall. Hanoosh says the novel "evokes the processes of deterioration undergone both by the country and by the individual characters caught up in the maelstrom."
"Scattered Crumbs" was first published in Arabic in Cairo in 2000. It is the winner of the Arabic Translation Award sponsored by the University of Arkansas Press and the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas. The prize, designed to support and publish fine translations of important Arabic writing, awards $5000 to the translator and $5000 to the original author plus publication of the translation.
Hanoosh is an Iraqi-born doctoral student in Arabic language and literature at the University of Michigan.