This volume includes Ghassan Kanafani's complete and incomplete short story collections: Death of Bed No. 12; Of Men and Guns; Land of the Sad Oranges; The Stolen Shirt; and A World Not Ours.
These important collections reveal a precocious talent that captures profound ideas and authentic human models. The writer, in his early twenties, embodies the brilliance of art, the depth of his vision, and its originality. We even see that the idea in some of these stories was the central focus of Ghassan's novels, as we observe in his masterpiece (Men in the Sun) and his superior novel (M. Saad). These collections dealt with national, pan-Arab, and humanitarian issues, as well as existential concerns, far from the hustle and bustle and directness. They depicted the dilemma of human existence, the crisis of destiny, and the tragedy of man in an engaging narrative style that sometimes blends with hints of humor, sarcasm, and irony. He addresses the most prominent existential issues, such as love, death, struggle, resistance, injustice, justice, and freedom. His immersion in the tragedy of his homeland and its displaced sons in exile did not prevent him from understanding the short story as an art form above all else, in whose fabric all issues and ideas are dissolved.