Taming Poison DragonsWestern China, 1196: Yun Cai, a handsome and adored poet in his youth, is now an old man, exiled to his family estates. All that is left to him are regrets of a growing sense of futility and helplessness and the irritations of his feckless son and shrewish daughter in law. But the poison dragons of misfortune shatter his orderly existence. First, Yun Cais village is threatened with destruction by a vicious civil war. His wayward second son, a brutal

His other novels are An Absence of Ruins (1967) and Die the Long Day (1972)

in the end

She was a dancer

Bassem al-Meraiby

He set up a children's theatre group in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and

but above all she engages the reader in the psychological truths of her characters' experiences

No one’s springing to attention

Qassim Haddad

Mohammad Afif al-Hussaini and Sabri Youssef

playwright and editor who lives on the Northumberland coast

Among recent voices

Mirror images of sparkling light