Contemporary Fiction / Linked Short Stories / Humor

Publisher: Cune Press

Date of Publication: February 20, 2024

Number of Pages: 198 pages

Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo—magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough’s Confessions of a Knight Errant, before their escapades in that story.

Shahrazad’s Gift is a short story format with multiple characters in Cairo. Some are struggling to start fresh and others just struggling. I was drawn to read this book due to it’s short stories and tie to A Thousand and One Nights. When I was a girl, my mother would take out a tattered book filled with short stories of fables. She read about the different magical and strange myths from all around the world. With a missing cover, I never knew what that book was called but the mystery of it intrigued me and it became my favorite. Ultimately, because they highlighted something in common. Some say the human condition. While true, I find it’s the symmetry I gravitate towards. What makes us human and more connected but our flaws? The oddities we encounter and how we face them? I found this highlighted in this book very well.

The book starts right off with plenty of strange events and humor. I do advise readers that this book has mature themes and language. Though, it does play into quite a bit of the humor itself.

I’ve been reading more books with mixed perspectives and this one does a great job of immediately diving into their lives. I love characters that speak their mind like Batilda and found myself laughing to Keiko’s perspective. Especially the absurdity of situations and ‘inside thoughts’ that were sometimes completely out of the box.

Shahrazad’s Gift has a bit of mystery, sly humor, and ultimately the complicated and perplexing struggle of real life. It’s the intricacies of everyone’s day to day, the culture that shaped them, and the struggles they endure. All shaped in a colorful narrative that centers on human connection.

Overall, Shahrazad’s Gift was well-written and is robust in imagery. The characters are diverse and complicated in different ways. Though, I found them most to be likeable. I had a bit of trouble starting out but once I had a sense of all the characters, it flew by!

Gretchen McCullough was raised in Harlingen Texas. After graduating from Brown University in 1984, she taught in Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997-1999. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, National Public Radio, Story South, Guernica, The Common, The Millions, and the LA Review of Books. Translations in English and Arabic have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today and Washington Square Review with Mohamed Metwalli. Her bi-lingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories From Cairo, translated with Mohamed Metwalli, was published in July 2011 by AFAQ Publishing House, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was also published by AFAQ in 2013. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo.

THREE WINNERS: Two winners receive paperbacks. One winner receives the eBook of Shahrazad’s Gift. (US only; ends midnight, CDT, 4/12/24)