Description
By (author) Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq; By (author) al-Shidyāq, Aḥmad Fāris; Translated by Davies Humphrey
The life, birth, and early years of ”the Fariyaq”—the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq
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, all the while celebrating the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language.
Volumes Three and Four see the peripatetic Fariyaq fall in love and convert to Catholicism for twenty-four hours in order to marry. Although the narrative revolves around a series of debates over the nature of male-female relationships, opportunities also arise for disquisitions on the physical and moral significance of such diverse topics as the buttocks, the unreliability of virginity tests, and the human capacity for self-delusion. Lengthy stays in England and France allow for animadversions on the table manners and sexual aberrations of their citizens, but the discussion, whether it involve dance-halls, pleasure gardens, or poetry, almost always ends up returning to gender relations.
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 complete English translation of this groundbreaking work.
Table of contents
Table of ContentsLeg Over Leg, Volume Three 1Contents of the Book 4Firing Up a Furnace 8Love and Marriage 52Contagion 108Analepsis 126Travel, and the Correction of a Common Misconception 134A Banquet and Various Kinds of Hot Sauce 158That Stinging Sensation You Feel When You Get Hot Sauce up YourNose 174Dreams 176The Second Dream 184The Third Dream 190Physicking the Foul of Breath 200A Voyage and a Conversation 214A Maqamah to Make One Stand 250Raveningly Ravenously Famished 272The Journey from the Monastery 280Ecstasy 288An Incitement to Nudity 290A Drain 300Assorted Wonders 326A Metropolitan Theft 344Book FourChapter 1: Unleashing a Sea 10Chapter 2: A Farewell 28Chapter 3: Assorted Pleas for Mercy 50Chapter 4: The Rules for Retelling 62Chapter 5: The Superiority of Women 72Chapter 6: A Discussion 84Chapter 7: Compare and Contrast 96Chapter 8: A Voyage Festinate and Language Incomprehensibly and Inscrutably Intricate 112
Review quote
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 dont think Im exaggerating when I say that this is the most important literary publication of a translation into English, in terms of literary history and our unde
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