Syracuse University Press

On the streets of Tehran, Nuri Hushiar knows his blond hair and blue eyes attract attention. While he relishes the attention he cannot avoid the uneasy feeling of being out of place. This sense of being exceptional and estranged is the hallmark of his character and the focus of his struggle in Taghi Modarressi’s last stunning novel. Set around the time of the revolution, The Virgin of Solitude follows the parallel lives of a transplanted Austrian woman, who has made Iran her home, and her grandson, Nuri, who desperately misses his mother but hides his longing behind a veneer of teenage bravado. As the turmoil of the revolution envelops the country, grandmother and grandson witness the dissolution of social, class, and political order while searching for a sense of belonging. Nasrin Rahimieh’s translation captures the tone and mood of the original, rendering both Modarressi’s subtle humor and assured prose with effortless precision.

Wisdom of the Marsh takes an in-depth look at the Montezuma Wetlands Complex through the overlapping lens of environmental and social justice. Exploring the history of the land and its relationship with the people who inhabited it, writer Clare Howard and photographer David Zalaznik present a complete portrait of the marsh’s exploitation and restoration, providing a hopeful perspective through which to view our future. Through the ceaseless work of professionals and volunteers, the Montezuma wetlands are slowly healing. Bird species are returning to the area, plant life is beginning to thrive once more, and educational programs continue the work and care that had formed the heart of Indigenous communities’ stewardship of this land. By providing a new understanding of wetlands and promoting renewed ways to interact with them, Wisdom of the Marsh offers an optimistic vision of how we can continue to rehabilitate our environment.

This wry take on Kafka’s novel The Trial revolves around its narrator’s attempts to petition successfully the elusive ruling body of his country, known simply as "the Committee." Consequences for his actions range from the absurd to the hideous. Ibrahim offers an unbroken first-person narrative rendered in brief, crisp prose framed by a conspicuous absence of vivid imagery. Furthermore, the petitioner is a man without identity. The ideal antihero, he remains, as does his country, unnamed throughout the intricate plot with a locale suggestive of 1970s Cairo. The Committee pierces the inflammatory terrain between ordinary men, unbridled displays of power, and other broader concerns of the author’s native Egypt. The novel’s corrosive, shocking conclusion catapults satiric surrealism into a new realm.

"On the way to Marrakesh, a superb sunrise, the sun high in the sky." With this simple yet luminous opening, Abdelwahab Meddeb invites the reader to wander the vibrant streets and sacred sites of this lively city in the heart of Morocco. Returns to Marrakesh chronicles Meddeb’s return visits to the Red City from 1968 through the 1990s, documenting both his personal journey and the city’s transformation across three pivotal decades. Through his distinctive blend of poetic prose and keen observation, Meddeb reveals Marrakesh as a historical crossroads where diverse populations—Jewish and Muslim communities, different social classes, Sufi mystics, and merchants—have created a uniquely multilayered urban space. Capturing Marrakesh’s sounds, scents, and sights, these vivid travel notes portrays a city teeming with life and infused with an intense array of colors. The bilingual edition includes both Meddeb’s original French and its English translation, making accessible the work of one of North Africa’s most important voices.

To curb the influence of minority populations and "outside enemies," the Ottoman government implemented new and experimental Tanzimat reforms within the empire’s center and provincial regions. By the 1860s, the city of Rusçuk in present-day Bulgaria and capital of the Ottoman Danube province became a test case for this expansive reform movement within an urbanizing and contested peripheral landscape. In Empire and Nation in the City, Mehmet Çelik traces how the Danube province and Rusçuk, in particular, experienced a series of swift political transitions from a "modernized" Ottoman administration, to a Russian provisional government, and finally to a Bulgarian nation-state. Çelik examines the transformative effects of each political system, arguing that Bulgarian nationalism was not a uniform ideology, but a flexible and mutable one that engaged multiple loyalties—Bulgarian and Ottoman among them. To understand these competing loyalties, he explores the diverse religious and multiethnic makeup of Rusçuk and the multifaceted responses to imperial control, nationalist sympathies, and political movements. Rather than assess Ottoman rule and Bulgarian nationhood as separate periods, Çelik bridges these moments to understand the continuity of Ottoman reforms within a burgeoning Bulgarian nation.

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.

In the fictional Adirondack towns of Silver Lake and Lost River, a colorful cast of residents coexist, sometimes unharmoniously, with seasonal visitors, travelers, and vacationers. Their stories are told in The Loon Counters, which sees the residents and visitors of the community encounter Olympic torchbearers, a mysteriously unseen-but-often-heard violinist, pushy hikers, brooding art museum security guards. The characters recur across stories, seasons, and locations, finely illustrating the subtle shifts in the life of a rural, isolated Adirondack enclave. Across sixteen interconnected stories, Roger Sheffer explores the lives and world of this community of outsiders who call this unique region home. Sheffer crafts stories that speak to the complex charm of the region, the isolation and the community, the nostalgia, and the conservation, all the while finding the small places people carve for themselves in nature.

During the postwar period of 1948–56, over 400,000 Jews from the Middle East and Asia immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. By the end of the 1950s, Mizrahim, also known as "Oriental Jewry," represented the ethnic majority of the Israeli Jewish population. Despite their large numbers, Mizrahim were considered outsiders because of their non-European origins. Viewed as foreigners who came from culturally backward and distant lands, they suffered decades of socioeconomic, political, and educational injustices. In this pioneering work, Roby traces the Mizrahi population’s struggle for equality and civil rights in Israel. Although the daily "bread and work" demonstrations are considered the first political expression of the Mizrahim, Roby explores the myriad ways in which they agitated for change. Drawing upon a wealth of archival sources, many then recently declassified, Roby details the activities of the highly ideological and politicized young Israel. Police reports, court transcripts, and protester accounts document a diverse range of resistance tactics, including sit-ins, tent protests, and hunger strikes. Roby shows how the Mizrahi intellectuals and activists in the 1960s began to take note of the American civil rights movement, gaining inspiration from its development and drawing parallels between their experience and that of other marginalized ethnic groups. The Mizrahi Era of Rebellion shines a light on a largely forgotten part of Israeli social history, one that profoundly shaped the way Jews from African and Asian countries engaged with the newly founded state of Israel.

Evelyn Shakir paints tales that are rich in history and background. She sets her stories in different eras, from the 1960s to the present, peopled with Lebanese women of different ages, sometimes writing letters, often reminiscing, looking back as far as the turn of the century. In different ways, these first- and second-generation women struggle with feminist issues overshadowed by the demands of dual cultures. In "Young Ali," a teenager tries to listen to her beloved father’s time-honored tales of men in friendship and marriage. Aggie of "House Calls" is a deceased matriarch who returns to haunt her family with reminders of the customs she fought to uphold while alive. Shakir’s other heroines include a thrice-divorced thirty-year-old woman quibbling with a modern matchmaker, an elderly non-Lebanese woman who spies on Muslim neighbors in the wake of 9/11, and a traditional wife and mother who thinks she has found a route out of old-world womanly duties. Many of the author’s women grapple with reclaiming or abandoning ancestral demands, and finessing age-old male-female relationships. In "Oh, Lebanon," a war-haunted Lebanese-born woman willfully departs from the mores of her upbringing with surprising results. With agile humor and emotional truth, Shakir offers multiple perspectives on Lebanese women trying to change roles in a new landscape without surrendering cultural identity.

For amateur mycologists and foragers alike, the difference between a beautiful fungal find and a potentially toxic mushroom can be difficult to distinguish. Updated and expanded nearly twenty years after its original publication, Common Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms of New York, Second Edition is ideally suited to helping foragers of any experience quickly and accurately identify the potentially poisonous and unpalatable mushrooms of the region. Filled with photos and useful descriptions, this book provides key identifying features for the most common wild mushrooms foragers encounter in the region. The updated edition adds more than thirty species not included in the previous version, as well as updated terminology and photos to better prepare foragers. With recipes and additional advice, this is an essential resource for first-time and experienced mushroom hunters alike.

What if our society’s deepest prejudices weren’t about race, gender, or sexuality—but height? In his groundbreaking allegorical novel, acclaimed Jordanian author and activist Fadi Zaghmout imagines just such a world, crafting a powerful meditation on discrimination and desire that speaks directly to our contemporary debates about identity and inclusion. The Man of Middling Height follows a short dressmaker whose life is upended when she meets Tallan, a man whose middle height places him outside the rigid tall/short binary that governs their society. As their forbidden romance blossoms, they must navigate a world where height determines everything from social status to romantic possibilities. Through their story and those of surrounding characters—including a short person in a polyamorous relationship with two tall partners, and a tall activist who scandalously loves another tall person—Zaghmout deftly reframes contemporary discussions about gender identity and sexuality through the lens of height discrimination.