The crow's leg (Al-Harbah)

Author's name: Yahya Amqasmedar Publisher: Dar Al-Tanweer for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2010 About the book: This novel has received notable critical attention due to the strength of the worlds it presented, along with the distinctive aesthetics that the author intends to work on. This novel tells about the surrender of the "Asira" tribes descending to the "Wadi Al-Husseini" to the leadership of the Shaml for the benefit of the new "Emirate" authority coming from the north; as well as about the necessity of parity between women and men. The cover of this book features excerpts from critical readings published in Arab newspapers; where the writer and poet Dr. Gazi Al-Qasabi says: "This artistic novel recording of an unknown region and phase in our history, among our common people, is a commendable work not only for its artistic excellence but because it is a pioneering work that Saudi Arabian novel has not known until now in writing historical novels." As for the Saudi novelist Rojaa Alam, she spoke about the novel saying: "The 'Saq Al-Gharab' surprises you with its fantastical worlds, worlds of folklore lived on a piece of land where humans and creatures celebrate the innate beauty of life, and you are enchanted by its magic; ending up burdened with sadness, towards that pure existence that left for a world transformed into a barrier between humans themselves and between them and the universe." Critic Faisal Draj confirmed that "this novel is about the free human self, about a heroic world that journeys; its people do not speak of religion because they practice virtue, nor do they sing of love because they live it, and they do not think of fear except with the advent of hostility from nature and alienation from which there is no escape, brought by a authority that creates the 'ignorant human' and denies the free human." The Tunisian critic Hussain Al-Wad says: "This novel recounts what the memory of glory preserved for the village of 'Oseira'—southwest Saudi Arabia—over two hundred years and more before and during its fracture and decline in front of another authority; the novelist Yahya Amqasmedar carefully worked on different narrative styles, with a perspective from above that knows both beginnings and ends, and with a unique language woven to build his magical world, making it a spectrum of discourses with poetic and mythic elements that harmonize with the nature of that wondrous world." It is a novel that responds greatly to anthropological readings without denying other types of readings.