A land that accommodates everyone

The very short story, this literary genre that touches or intersects with the boundaries of other literary genres such as poetry and essay, has become increasingly established and dominant in the contemporary literary scene. This spread is attributed to the efforts of skilled writers; we have translated some of their works here. They revived the very short story and freed it from linguistic redundancy and excessive emotional outpourings. The works of Joy Williams — which we present here for the first time to Arabic readers — and Lydia Davis's stories have received great interest and appreciation in the global literary circles, leaving imitators and followers, and sparking wide controversy and discussion as well. The ordinary, neglected, and marginal are the areas from which the three writers draw their story themes, transforming them into focal points teeming with meaning and life. Focus, conciseness, and linguistic economy are among the distinctive stylistic features of the stories in this collection. The three writers here share their attempts to observe the human self in its daily manifestations and analyze its strength and fragility. All of this is done through examining language and exploring its relationship with reality, representation, and shaping. In these texts, surrealism coexists with realism, the bizarre with the everyday, and satire with seriousness, woven into an astonishing and provocative narrative fabric.