A young woman is instructed by her boss to write a letter to an older man. His reply begins an enigmatic but passionate love affair conducted entirely in letters. Until, that is, his letters stop coming...but did the letters ever reach their intended recipient? Only the teenage Afaf, who works at the local post office, would know. Her duty is to open the mail and inform her collaborator father of the contents - until she finds a mysterious set of love letters, for which she selects another destiny. Afaf has lived in shame ever since her mother left her father for another man. And in this novel, her story is followed in turn by another: the story of a woman who leaves her husband for someone else, to whom she declares her love in a letter - The chain of stories that make up this singular novel form a wrenching examination of relationships and their limits - relationships tenuous, oblique, and momentous. In prose at once fierce and subtle, We Are All Equally Far from Love is a haunting portrait of alienation and desire. Adania Shibli, born in Palestine in 1974, is the author of Touch, also available from Clockroot Books.
Paul Starkey is the author of Modern Arabic Literature and a prolific translator. "Shibli is widely recognized as an innovative writer who is breaking literary tradition in her native Arabic - Touch is both remarkable and difficult, beautifully lucid and yet also mysterious - This is not a book to be shelved once finished." - Patricia Sarrafian Ward, the Electronic Intifada
Industry Reviews
"Adania Shibli's second book We Are All Equally Far From Love confirms her as a rare, challenging talent. It is neither an easy nor always a pleasant read, but it is an extraordinary piece of writing which weaves together melancholia, beauty, violence and brutish physicality in an extended meditation on love and loneliness"with its deft handling of beauty and humor alongside pain and isolation, its multi-colored tones and shifting moods, it becomes a dark, difficult, exhausting but ultimately cathartic exploration of the depths of the human psyche."
"This novella is a challenging read; not because of Ms. Shibli's sparing style of writing, which is strikingly different from the traditional Arabic style and quite riveting, but because of the intensely difficult insight it gives on the minutiae of the lives' of others... We Are All Equally Far from Love is not a book to be picked up and put down... [it] demands to be read"
Shibli's newest book is less cryptic and decidedly more insistent, consisting of eight short stories whose plots initially seem linked but soon disconnect one from another- just as Shibli's lovelorn characters break up or fail to connecteach story is a variation on a theme, the burden of which is the difficulty of finding and sustaining love"[Shibli] has done well to remind us that sometimes when love falters, we need look no further for the reason why than the nearest mirror."
We Are All Equally Far From Lovewill confirm [Shibli's] reputation as a formally brilliant literary artist, whose stylistic innovations and bold feel for language affirm contemporary fiction's capacity to be reinvented anew... Sharply individualized and movingly convincing in their raw tenderness and candor, these varying perspectives are finely wrought to the level of poetry, yet retain the sense of issuing directly from the characters' anguished subjectivity."
Palestinian author Shibli's poetic yet precise language and nimble characterizations... in this series of interrelated vignettes set in her native land... Shibli (Touch) writes beautifully.
