Is This How You Eat a Watermelon?
Zein El-Amine
(Author)
Description
Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? by Zein El-Amine has been longlisted for the 2023 PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut short fiction. A dozen boarding school students find themselves stranded at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War. A young man, a young woman, and a mistreated monkey unite in a bid to survive. Even Israel's war on Lebanon cannot stop an old woman from getting her fix of nicotine. A young Lebanese student on a visit to Bahrain is wrongly implicated as a terrorist and placed in a prison with other political prisoners where light and hope is absconding. Fresh snow compels a sacrilegious undertaking from a father much to the shock of his children. Shared trauma takes the shape of spectral phantoms. And in the titular story, a hedonistic man eats himself to an early death with the desecration of the city of Beirut forming the backdrop.
Product Details
Price
$19.95
$18.55
Publisher
Radix Media
Publish Date
November 08, 2022
Pages
200
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.0 X 0.4 inches | 0.38 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781737718420
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Zein El-Amine is a Lebanese-born poet and writer. He has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Maryland. His poems have appeared in Wild River Review, Folio, Beltway Quarterly, Foreign Policy In Focus, CityLit, Graylit, Split This Rock, Penumbra, DC Poets Against The War: An Anthology, Ghostfishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. His latest poetry manuscript A Travel Guide for the Exiled was recently shortlisted for the Bergman Prize, judged by Louise Glück. His short stories have appeared in the Uno Mas, Jadaliyya, Middle East Report, Wild River Review, About Place Journal, and in Bound Off.
Reviews
"Brimming with both tenderness and boldness, Is This How You Eat a Watermelon? is a powerful, concise collection that had me enthralled from the first story to the last. These richly crafted stories are sometimes humorous, always compelling, meditations on love and passion, cruelty and beauty, and fear and loss during times of war, including the wars raging quietly inside of us."
--Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
"This may technically be a debut collection, but author Zein El-Amine has the sweet, gravelly voice of a veteran storyteller.
In each short story, we encounter ordinary people living under extraordinary circumstances: under aerial bombardment, in detention, in an abandoned school surrounded by militias. In each situation, El-Amine shows how a single object--a voluptuous snow woman, a slice of watermelon, a daisy, a pair of baby blue OP shorts, a pack of cigarettes--reveals everything about the fragility and beauty of everyday life."
Elliott Colla, Baghdad Central
--Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.
"This may technically be a debut collection, but author Zein El-Amine has the sweet, gravelly voice of a veteran storyteller.
In each short story, we encounter ordinary people living under extraordinary circumstances: under aerial bombardment, in detention, in an abandoned school surrounded by militias. In each situation, El-Amine shows how a single object--a voluptuous snow woman, a slice of watermelon, a daisy, a pair of baby blue OP shorts, a pack of cigarettes--reveals everything about the fragility and beauty of everyday life."
Elliott Colla, Baghdad Central
