Published: 03/01/2019
ISBN: 9781846276699
Granta Books
176 pages

Jokes for the Gunmen

Translated by Jonathan Wright

LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2019

A brilliant collection of fictions in the vein of Roald Dahl, Etgar Keret and Amy Hempel. These are stories of what the world looks like from a child’s pure but sometimes vengeful or muddled perspective. These are stories of life in a war zone, life peppered by surreal mistakes, tragic accidents and painful encounters. These are stories of fantasist matadors, lost limbs and perplexed voyeurs. This is a collection about sex, death and the all-important skill of making life into a joke. These are unexpected stories by a very fresh voice. These stories are unforgettable.

Full of visionary strangeness... deeply peculiar, occasionally touching and often very funny... Beautifully translated by Jonathan Wright, who renders Maarouf's language in sprightly, elegant prose

Alex Preston, Observer

A debut collection that returns over and over again to the subject of humour as its characters try to make sense of life in a Lebanese war zone...the twelve stories offer a surreal look at the impact of war on the civilian population... An unsettling collection that seeks to showcase loss in all its varied forms

Sarah Gilmartin, Irish Times

Unsettlingly good

Sunday Times

The Author

Mazen Maarouf is a writer, poet, translator and journalist. His story collection Jokes for the Gunmen was translated into English by Jonathan Wright, and longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. Since then, he has published (in Arabic) a second collection called Rats That Licked the Karate Champion’s Ear and recently the interlinked stories Sunshine on the Substitute Beach. He is working on a novel.

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The Translator

Jonathan Wright is a British literary translator who has translated more than a dozen Arabic novels and short-story collections into English since 2008, including three winners of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He has won the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation twice.

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