Cairo-born Andrée Chedid has been a prolific, critically acclaimed writer in France for decades, but this is the first time a collection of her short stories has been published in Britain. The 25 pieces here are styled as brief, poetic snapshots, designed to encompass the "full range of human emotion".
Chedid is keen to open our eyes to the "suffering, the misery and the cruelty of the world": in stories such as "One Day . . . The Enemy" and "Death in Slow Motion", she paints graphic scenes from the Lebanese civil war. But in the same breath she carries a message of hope, even where, as in the case of "My Sudanese Lady", the tale ends in tragedy and loss. Chedid draws on a wealth of personal and collective experiences, from the horrors of war and its lasting traumatic impact to the subtle intimacies of human relationships experienced in sedentary everyday lives. Her characters are a healthy mix of refugees, economic migrants and "ordinary" people who have always belonged exactly where they are.
Although Chedid conjures up some striking images, her stories suffer from their brevity – a very rare thing. Many have a self-contained beauty and resonance, but overall it feels as if she is trying too hard to make a series of points, without allowing any of them proper development.

Mary Fitzgerald