It's on hiatus right now, but I run a short story club called Lite Reads through my blog The Feminist Bibliothecary. A few years ago we read a Malika It's on hiatus right now, but I run a short story club called Lite Reads through my blog The Feminist Bibliothecary. A few years ago we read a Malika Moustadraf short story (translated by Alice Guthrie), "Just Different." That was my first experience with Malika Moustadraf, and one of two occasions in which we read a translation done by Guthrie for Lite Reads, and I knew I wanted to read more from both author and translator. Just Different's sympathetic portrayal of a trans and/or intersex sex worker is compelling and made me curious about Moustadraf's broader works. Thanks to Blood Feast I can finally explore her complete collection of short stories.
I read Blood Feast in the audiobook format (it was on scribd!) narrated by Amin El Gamal and Lameece Issaq. Both narrators did a great job with the stories they read, and I'm glad I listened to the audiobook first because it was great to hear the Arabic words pronounced correctly (which I most certainly would not have managed).
There are fourteen stories total in this collection, and I enjoyed all of them, maybe even more than I expected to. Well, "enjoy" may not be the correct word here. The stories are often quite bleak, taking a look into the lives of some of the most marginalised communities in Morocco. But the writing (and translation) is beautiful, brutal, and provocative, and the stories are compelling. My absolute favourite stories in the collection were "The Ruse" and "Blood Feast". The translator's notes and glossary at the end gave a lot of insight into the stories and into Moustadraf's life and was intensely interesting to read.
Blood Feast is a fantastic collection, and I honestly want to get myself a physical copy to keep and refer back to (especially for my favourite stories and the notes at the end). Definitely recommended (with the caveat that the stories are bleak and often upsetting and to be prepared for that)....more
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