Gold Dust: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Review

“A magnificent novelist”—Marilyn Booth, translator of the Man Booker International Prize Winner, Celestial Bodies

“One of the Arab world’s most innovative novelists”—Roger Allen, University of Pennsylvania

“Imagine Cormac McCarthy’s savage lyricism in a Paul Bowles desert landscape and you begin to enter the bleakly beautiful world of this mesmerizing, fable-like novel.”—The Independent

“Al-Koni's story, simply and elegantly told, has all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy—or, better, all the tribulations of Job.”—Kirkus Reviews

"A true journey into the human psyche."—Cairo Magazine

"The desert setting is al-Koni's strength: its expanse, desolation, and mystery are powerfully evoked." —Margaret Obank, Banipal

"Al-Koni's novels are aesthetic renderings of the passions of the desert and of the rich legends and cosmology of his people. An encyclopedic writer who has digested mythologies of the ancient world and literature of the modern world, al-Koni has both a poetic bent and a mystical inclination." —Ferial Ghazoul, Al Ahram Weekly

"A story rich with Libyan history of tribal wars, foreign invasions, Tuareg mysticism and excursions across the Libyan Sahara, the novel’s third main character. Tragic but thought-provoking, this work is worthy of its critical praise and awards."—AramcoWorld


Product Description

About the Author

Ibrahim al-Koni was born in the northwest of the Sahara Desert in Libya in 1948 and learned to read and write Arabic at the age of twelve. He has been hailed a magical realist, a Sufi fabulist, and a poetic novelist, and his books contain mythological elements, spiritual quests, and existential questions. He has been awarded the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature and the Mohamed Zefzaf Prize for the Arabic Novel and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize. His books have been translated into 35 languages. He currently lives in Salou, Spain.

Elliott Colla is the translator of a number of works of fiction, including Ibrahim Aslan’s The Heron , Idris Ali’s Poor, and Rabai al-Madhoun’s The Lady from Tel Aviv. His translation of Gold Dust was a runner-up for the Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and his novel, Baghdad Central, was adapted as a television series by Channel 4 (UK). He teaches modern Arabic literature at Georgetown University.