Longlisted for the Arts and Criticism category of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2023
Fables are not merely moral lessons or hollow sermons. Rather, in their simplest definition, they are a literary genre in which animals speak and humans listen. In fables, then, those who have been deprived of speech speak, and this deprivation is not unique to animals. Fables are the art of history's defeated, appearing at moments when speech is paralyzed, suddenly speaking to those who have been banished from the world of speech.

This book is a literary attempt to rethink the myths of Arabic literature, approaching them artistically and research-wise, in order to understand the unique way of speaking of non-Arabic speakers. This can be described as speaking through borrowing one voice and lending another, and through telling a story within another, thus breaking the dominance of a single voice.
The book returns to foundational texts in the art of fable, specifically "Kalila and Dimna," as well as books such as "The Tiger and the Fox" and "The Lion and the Diver," in order to pick up the thread from what are called "heritage books," attempting to outline their relationship to the moment in which they were written, in order to inherit the hope inherent in fables and place them in dialogue with our present moment, in which speech has been suspended.