"A showstopper of a collection, as symphonic as life, full of impossible longing, elusive truths, and bright sharp shards of hard-earned wisdom. I cannot say it emphatically enough: read this, please."—Junot Diaz, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
"A compelling and nuanced narrative world. Saud examines the city through multiple layers—geographical, urban, and human—giving equal attention to both the marginal and the central."—Jokha Alharthi, author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel Celestial Bodies
"A master storyteller’s melancholic soul-stirring work."—Geetanjali Shree, author of International Booker Prize winning novel Tomb of Sand
Description
In this lyrical collection, Omani author Hamoud Saud invites readers into the soul of Muscat, the capital city of Oman, a country famed for its long coastline, rugged mountains, and stark desert landscapes. This geography provides the backdrop for stories that reveal both the beauty and hardship of a country and people on the margins.
Saud’s Muscat is not a postcard-perfect city but a living, breathing place of cement forests, forgotten roundabouts, and ravens perched on bank flagpoles. In “The Raven of Ruwi,” a narrator wanders the city’s commercial district where Indian music drifts from balconies and the streets are filled with weary bank workers. In “The Sad Donkey of Muscat,” a blind man recounts the city’s history as told to him by a donkey. And in “Post Office of the Dead,” a forgotten postmaster receives letters from Dostoevsky and Kafka, triggering a surreal unraveling of time and identity.
These stories are fabulist in spirit but grounded in the textures of everyday life: the scent of karak tea, the chatter of schoolgirls, the heat rising from asphalt. At once intimate and expansive, The Raven of Ruwi and Other Stories from Oman is a powerful meditation on place, identity, and the stories that cities tell.
About the Author
Hamoud Saud is an Omani writer of short stories and literary nonfiction. His work frequently appears in Arabic newspapers and culture magazines, and some of it has been translated into Azerbaijani, English, Japanese, and Spanish.
Zia Ahmed’s translations of Arabic fiction and literary nonfiction have appeared in Asymptote, Denver Quarterly, and The Markaz Review. He lives in Virginia.
March 2026