London parks administration commissions Kuwaiti love story

As part of the Park Stories project administered by the Royal Parks agency in London, which supervises the eight official parks in the city, a story by Lebanese author Hanan Al-Shaykh about Kensington Gardens has been published in a bilingual edition with an English translation by Christina Phillips alongside the original Arabic.

Entitled Saaloon Tajmeel Lil-Baja ("A Beauty Parlor for Swans"), the story follows the secret marriage between a young Kuwaiti girl and her Lebanese lover, both of them now living in London.

Of the eight fictional stories in the series (each set in a different park), "A Beauty Parlor for Swans" is the only story written by a non-native. The daughter of a strict Shi'a Muslim family, Al-Shaykh left Beirut at the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, lived in Saudi Arabia for a time, and now resides in London with her husband. She writes frequently of Arab women's issues, and six of her novels have been translated into English since 1992.

From the Saudi Gazette:

Al-Shaykh is one of the few Arab fiction writers to portray the lives of Arab émigrés in London. Her novel “Only in London” focuses on Arabs in London and much of the action takes place in the Kensington Gardens-Hyde Park-Edgware Road area. The English translation was published in 2002 by London publisher Bloomsbury, and shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Al-Shaykh’s novels and stories have been translated into some 16 languages. Her works in English translation include the novels “The Story of Zahra”, “Women of Sand and Myrrh” and “Beirut Blues”, and the short story collection “I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops”. “A Beauty Parlour for Swans” gives voice to the interior life of an Arab woman, and is written with the author’s characteristic perceptiveness, delicacy and unique humor.