Books like The Lamp of Umm Hashim by Yahya Hakki

The Kite Runner follows an unlikely friendship between a privileged boy and the son of his father’s servant amid Afghanistan’s turbulent history, exploring betrayal, redemption, and the father‑son bond.

Labyrinths is Jorge Luis Borges’ celebrated volume of short stories and essays, containing classics such as “TLON, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS,” “The Library of Babel,” and philosophical parables that explore language, reality, and fiction.

A collection of short stories by George Saunders, featuring unforgettable characters and Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

A woman's rise from poverty to political influence, inspired by stories told by a storyteller's daughter.

A provocative portrait of modern Cairo, the Yacoubian Building illustrates the intertwined lives of its residents—politicians, clerics, artists and lovers—against a backdrop of corruption, social change, and religious tension.

A story of a close-knit community and the bond between two women in a picturesque Maine town.

In 1916 a 25-year-old, newly qualified doctor named Mikhail Bulgakov was posted to the remote Russian countryside. He brought to his position a diploma and a complete lack of field experience. And the challenges he faced didn't end there: he was assigned to cover a vast and sprawling territory that was as yet unvisited by modern conveniences such as the motor car, the telephone, and electric lights.

Together with such figures as the scholar Taha Hussein, the playwright Tawfik al-Hakim, the short story writer Mahmoud Teymour and―of course―Naguib Mahfouz, Yahya Hakki belongs to that distinguished band of early writers who, midway through the last century, under the influence of Western literature, began to practice genres of creative writing that were new to the traditions of classical Arabic. The story deals with the people of Upper Egypt, for whom the writer had a special understanding and affection. It is, however, for the title story (in fact, more of a novella) of this collection that the writer is best known. Recounting the difficulties faced by a young man who is sent to England to study medicine and who then returns to Egypt to pit his new ideals against tradition, ‘‘The Lamp of Umm Hashim’’ was the first of several works in Arabic to deal with the way in which an individual tries to come to terms with two divergent cultures.