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 How is food portrayed in Arabic novels? In literature, food is more than mere sustenance—it carries layered meanings. This multilingual collection brings together experts in Arabic literature to examine the complex representations of food and eating. Through themes such as dining rituals, foodstuffs, animal consumption, memory, food habits, and hunger, the content of each chapter intersects with literary criticism on food but is uniquely shaped by the Arab world’s local settings and customs. Offering perspectives that reach beyond literature, this book provides a nuanced view of Arab culture and society, inviting readers to explore the multiple significations of food.

Ibrāhīm al-Miṣrī (1900–79) was an Egyptian short-story writer, essayist, journalist, and dramaturge. His family, of Levantine origin, emigrated to Egypt before his birth. Al-Miṣrī was born in Cairo and grew up in modest circumstances. Obliged to abandon his studies and start working at an early age, he was a self-taught person who acquired wide knowledge from long hours of reading in libraries. He earned his living as a journalist until his death.

This article is dedicated to the Iraqi novel al-Mašṭūr : Sitt ṭarāʾiq ġayr šarʿiyya li-iǧtiyāzal-ḥudūd naḥwa Baġdād (2017) by Ḍiyāʾ Ǧbaylī. Through an illegal journey of twocharacters in Iraq, this book presents a new literary approach of the sectarian conflictthat tears apart the country. Intertextuality with the Italian novel The Cloven Viscount(1952), by Italo Calvino, works as a connecting thread in the story. The complex Iraqiidentity and the conflicts that are related to it are depicted as the result of both thecountry’s geographical position and its history. The first part of the article focuses onthe spatial configuration in the story and the way the concept of borders is used todefine the Iraqi identity. The latter is also the object of the second part that attempts todiscuss the close relationship that the novel suggests between the body of the martyrand the homeland.