Leg over Leg: Volume One: 6 (Library of Arabic Literature)

by Humphrey Davies (Translator), A?mad Faris al-Shidyaq (Author)

New
Abridged
2013
$55.02

Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of `the Fariyaq,' alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women's rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European and Arabic literatures. Al-Shidyaq also celebrates the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language. Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg Over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its obscenity, and later editions were often abridged. This is the first English translation of the work and reproduces the original Arabic text, published under the author's supervision in 1855.

Synopsis

Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of `the Fariyaq,' alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women's rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European and Arabic literatures. Al-Shidyaq also celebrates the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language. Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg Over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its obscenity, and later editions were often abridged. This is the first English translation of the work and reproduces the original Arabic text, published under the author's supervision in 1855.

$55.02

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20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Abridged
Pages: 416
Edition: Abridged
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 25 Oct 2013
ISBN 10: 0814729371
ISBN 13: 9780814729373
Book Overview: This is the very first English translation of the work and reproduces the original edition, published under the author's supervision in 1855

Media Reviews

Its contemporaneity is astonishing... It would be doing Leg Over Leg a massive disservice to not make it clear how funny it is. This is a book that for all its challenges, all its insight into humanity, all its place in history, had me regularly laughing out loud. -Music and Literature
...Leg Over Leg by the Lebanese intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, [has] long been held to be untranslatable and so [is] appearing, in [its] entirety, in English for the first time. -Lydia Wilson,Times Literary Supplement
Leg over Leg will eventually be acknowledged as one of the most important translations of the twenty-first century... Humphrey Davies's virtuosic work (which he compared to climbing Mount Everest) gives English readers access at last to a quintessential novel of the era of Arabic literature's Nahda, or reawakening, and to one of the msot profoundly humanist voices in literature. -Patricia Storace,Times Literary Supplement
We're having a particularly good season for literary discoveries from the past, with recent publications of Volumes 1 and 2 of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's 'Leg Over Leg' (1855)... -Martin Riker,New York Times Book Review

Al-Shidyaq, born inLebanon in the early years of the nineteenth century, was a Zelig of the Arabicliterary world, and his Leg Over Leg is a bawdy,hilarious, epically word-obsessed, and unclassifiable book, which has neverbeen translated into English before...

-Sal Robinson,MobyLives

The heroic achievement of award-winningtranslator Humphrey Davies marks the first ever English translation of thispivotal work... An accessible, informative, and highly entertaining read.

-Banipal Magazine
Humphrey Davies's masterful translation makes accessible this unique and fascinating work, deserving of wider recognition and study [...] The translation adroitly and sympathetically captures the linguistic exuberance and literary inventiveness of the original. -Banipal Magazine

It is not too early to state that the publication of this work, in this edition, is a game-changer. This is a foundational work of modern Arabic literature and its publication in English is long overdue - but given how it is presented here, it was perhaps worth the wait. This edition, with helpful endnotes, the original Arabic text, and in a translation that both reads well and appears to closely mirror the original, seems, in almost every way, ideal... I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this is the most important literary publication of a translation into English, in terms of literary history and our understanding of it, in years.

-The Complete Review
Humphrey Davies' translation, published in four dual-language volumes, is a triumph. He skillfully renders punning, rhyming prose without breaking the spell... Leg Over Leg stands out for both its stylistic brazenness and the excellence of the translation. With this bilingual edition, the Library of Arabic Literature helps fill a large cultural gap and alters our view of Arabic literature and the formal trajectory of the novel outside the West. Any reader for whom the term `world literature' is more than an empty platitude must read Humphrey Davies's translation. -John Yargo,Los Angeles Review of Books

Author Bio

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1805 or 1806-1887) was a foundational figure in modern Arabic literature. Born to a prominent Maronite family in Lebanon, al-Shidyaq was a pioneering publisher, poet, essayist, lexicographer and translator. Known as the father of Arabic journalism, al-Shidyaq played a major role in reviving and modernizing the Arabic language. Humphrey Davies is an award-winning translator of some twenty works of modern Arabic literature, among them Alaa Al-Aswany's The Yacoubian Building, four novels by Elias Khoury, including Gate of the Sun, and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq's Leg over Leg. He has also made a critical edition, translation, and lexicon of the Ottoman-period Hazz al-quhuf bi-sharh qasid Abi Shaduf (Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abu Shaduf Expounded) by Yusuf al-Shirbini and compiled with a colleague an anthology entitled Al-`ammiyyah al-misriyyah al-maktubah: mukhtarat min 1400 ila 2009 (Egyptian Colloquial Writing: selections from 1400 to 2009). He read Arabic at the University of Cambridge, received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, and, previous to undertaking his first translation in 2003, worked for social development and research organizations in Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine, and Sudan. He is affiliated with the American University in Cairo, where he lives.