In 2014, Egyptian novelist Mansoura Ez Eldin won the best-novel award at the Sharjah International Book Fair for her Emerald Mountain. It has since been translated into French by the celebrated Stéphanie Dujols (2017), and Ez Eldin will appear later this month at a book event in Paris.

In the book, there is a search for a lost tale from the 1,001 Nights amidst the upheavals of Egypt, 2011. The narrator, Bustan, seeks to restore the story of Mount Qaf, or the titular the Emerald Mountain:

Road Dust

By Mansoura Ez Eldin, trans. Tim Gregory

I do not belong to myself… I was sworn to a mystery.

All I can do is go on and join with my fate

My name is Bustan.

Those who know me well, and very few do, call me “the Priestess of Black and White.” Others, well, they just think I’m peculiar. Someone writing about me might call me…