Under a cup of coffee

The author: Hanan Farhat Number of pages: 135 pages Publisher: Arab House for Science Publishers The introduction to this collection of stories is only complete with what the author wishes to say in the preface with which she begins the book: "Under the shadow of a cup of coffee, there are three: coffee, a cup, and a shadow. As for the secret of the cup, it is a secret that is permitted on every table in every café perched on one of the patches of the homeland... And as for its shadow, it is an open secret behind which everyone hides from the echo of their voices... And as for the coffee, it is grains that succeed in convincing me that its bitterness has a sweetness. And as for me, I am bitter on one side of the cup, I recorded its words and left searching for another." In this work, Hanan Farhat practices her narrative expertise with a clear control of her tools, combining the omniscient observer narrator and the participating narrators in the events, moving seamlessly from scene to scene, sometimes combining more than one scene and more than one narrator within the same narrative unit, through a mixture of facts, events, and characters in a lively movement that gives vitality to the text. All of this comes according to the requirements of the artistic novelistic game, which calls for presentation, delay, association, mention, and detail. The language of narration is smooth, elegant, and sometimes employs satirical caricature, capturing movements, details, and nuances; it refers to real life, highlighting the author's ability to bring each story to life in the appropriate discourse and the reference world it alludes to. This means that we are reading a contemporary text, or rather a modern one in form and content.