A Sunny Day on the Bench

Mazen Maarouf

A single book where the memory of war converges with its present and future. The protagonists of the stories are children, yet they think like adults. Each story in the collection can be read independently, or the collection can be read as a single, continuous narrative. It makes no difference, as events unfold rapidly and transition smoothly between chapters, with imagination remaining its core foundation. Thus, we will read about children named after the streets they grew up in, reviewing their daily lives after the end of the civil war in Beirut, discovering boxing, bicycles, bullets, and the junk room. Their daily lives express a unique blend of dreams, fear, and the anticipation of something happening. A Palestinian short story writer, poet, and translator. Born in Beirut in 1978, he holds a degree in Chemistry from the Lebanese University. He wrote for Lebanese and Arab newspapers on cultural matters. He has three poetry collections: “As If Our Sadness Was Bread,” “The Camera Does Not Capture Birds,” and “Angel on a Clothesline,” and two short story collections: “Jokes for the Armed,” which won the Al Multaqa Prize for Short Story in 2016, and “The Rats That Licked My Karate Champion’s Ear,” and a short novel published in English titled “The Curse of the Clay Ball Boy.” In 2004, he won the “Lana Literatura” Poetry Prize, and his collection “Jokes for the Armed” in its English edition was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019.