Saaq al-Bambuu (The Bamboo Stalk) by Kuwaiti novelist Saud al-Sanousi provides students at the intermediate-advanced Arabic language level the opportunity to engage with an award-winning work of contemporary fiction. This abridged version has been approved by the author, authenticating the richness of a text that offers students the means to develop vocabulary and reading fluency while sensitizing them to the stylistics of the language. The novel is a coming-of-age story of a half-Filippino, half-Kuwaiti teen who returns to his father's Kuwait. There, he explores his own identity as a poor Filipino in a culture he does not know well and receives a mixed welcome from his own wealthy relatives. Universal concepts of identity, faith, belonging, poverty/wealth, and otherness are explored through a poetic narrative and engaging plot that will keep students captivated from the first line to the very last page. Included within the book are chapter exercises that develop linguistic and cultural competencies, a short biography of the author, and glossaries of literary terms and devices. As with Laila Familiar's Sayyidi wa Habibi, this authorized version of the abridged text by a contemporary Arabic author will be warmly embraced by college and university students of Arabic as well as by independent learners.

Like Familiar's earlier work with Hoda Barakat, this abridgement is a wonder: faithful, yet precisely calibrated to meet and stretch the vocabulary of advanced undergraduate Arabic learners. Al-Sanousi's half-Kuwaiti Filipino narrator broaches topics most contemporary Arabic fiction will not touch. Familiar & Assaf's exercises give students 80 pages of context, tools, and confidence for an intelligent discussion. Good for classrooms in the Arab world, too. -- Margaret Litvin, Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature and Director of Middle East and North Africa Studies, Boston University

Laila Familiar teaches Arabic at NYU-Abu Dhabi and is the author of Hoda Barakat's Sayyidi wa Habibi. Tanit Assaf teaches Arabic at the Official Language School of Barcelona. Saud al-Sanousi is a Kuwaiti novelist and journalist. His work has won several awards, including the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (2013) for Saaq al-Bambuu.