Includes glossary of terms.

Secrets / Ibrahim Abdel Meguid -- Grandad Hasan / Yahya Taher Abdullah -- Homecoming / Yusuf Abu Rayya -- In the place for prayers / Mohammed Afifi -- At the level crossing / Abbas Ahmed -- Sylvia / Ahmed Alaidy -- The report of Mrs. R. concerning the last day of the week / Radwa Ashour -- Drops of lemon juice / Ibrahim Aslan -- The palm tree my aunt loved / Hana Atia -- Sundown / Shukri Ayyad -- A small white mouse / Salwa Bakr -- The days of the black cat / Rehab Bassam -- The room next door / Mohamed El-Bisatie -- A house for my children / Mahmoud Diab -- Hashish steals the night / Shehata al-Erian -- Eyes staring into space / Mansoura Ez Eldin -- The dancer / Shawqi Faheem -- A place under the dome / Abdul Rahman Fahmy -- The story of black knight / Hosam Fakhr -- Red and white / Ibrahim Farghali -- The accusation / Suleiman Fayyad -- A dog / Hamdy el-Gazzar -- The old clothes man / Fathy Ghanem -- A visit / Gamal al-Ghitani -- Put out those lights / Yousef Gohar -- Cairo is a small city / Nabil Gorgy -- The girls and the rooster / Abdou Gubeir -- Mother of the destitute / Yahya Hakki -- The old man / Gamil Atia Ibrahim -- Across three beds in the afternoon / Sonallah Ibrahim -- The chair carrier / Yusuf Idris -- Undoing the spell / Said al-Kafrawi -- Birds' footsteps in the sand / Edwar al-Kharrat -- The man who saw the sole of his left foot in a cracked mirror / Lutfi al-Khouli -- A murder long ago / Naguib Mahfouz -- The arrival / Mohamed Makhzangi -- The guard's chair / Mohamed Makhzangi -- A lover / Mohamed Makhzangi -- The man with the mustache and the bow tie / Mohamed Makhzangi -- The son, the father, and the donkey / Sabri Moussa -- Naked he went off / Mohamed Mustagab -- The whistle / Abd al-Hakim Qasim -- The dental crown / Youssef Rakha -- Another evening at the club / Alifa Rifaat -- Paradise itself / Mahmoud al-Saadani -- For the love of God / Abdul Hamid Gouda al-Sahhar -- The snooper / Mekkawi Said -- The lost suitcase / Abdel-Moneim Selim -- The clock / Khairy Shalaby -- The man and the farm / Yusuf Sharouni -- The mother / Ibrahim Shukrallah -- The country boy / Yusuf al-Sibai -- Useless cats / Bahaa Taher -- The house of the spinster / Sahar Tawfiq -- Abu Arab / Mahmoud Teymour -- Thirst / Mahmoud Al-Wardani -- The picture / Latifa al-Zayyat.

Short story writing in Egypt was still in its infancy when Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time" arrived in Cairo as a young man in the 1940s. Nevertheless, he was immediately impressed by such writing talents of the time as Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Gohar, and the future Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and he set about translating their works for local English-language periodicals of the time. He continued to translate over the decades, and sixty years later he brings together this remarkable overview of the work of several generations of Egypt's leading short story writers. This selection of some fifty stories represents not only a cross-section through time but also a spectrum of styles, and includes works by Teymour, Hakki, Gohar, and Mahfouz and later writers such as Mohamed El-Bisatie, Said el-Kafrawi, Bahaa Taher, and Radwa Ashour, as well as new young writers of today like Hamdy El-Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin, and Youssef Rakha.