The Cinderellas of Muscat

Huda Hamed is an Omani writer and journalist, born in Rustaq, Oman, in 1981. She has a degree in Arabic literature from Aleppo University, Syria, and has published five collections of short stories and four novels. Her debut novel was Al-Ashia’ Laysat fi Amakiniha (2009, Things are Not in Their Place), which received the award of best novel in Oman for 2009, and was excerpted in Banipal 44, 2012. Her next, Allati Ta’udu al-Salalim (2014, Who Counts the Stairs), was published, in English translation by Nadine Sinno and William Taggart, as I Saw Her in My Dreams (Emerging Voices from the Middle East, Texas University Press) in 2023. Then came this book Sanderillat Masqat (2016, The Cinderellas of Muscat), and Assamina (2019, Our Names). The short story collections include Namima Maliha (2006, Salty Gossip), Laysa bil-dhabt kama Ureed (2009, Not exactly as I want), and Al-Isharah Bourtuqaliya al-Ann (2013, The Traffic Lights are Amber Now). Huda Hamed is currently editor-in-chief of Oman’s quarterly cultural magazine Niswa, based in Muscat. Chip Rossetti has translated several works of contemporary Arabic fiction, including the story collections Animals in Our Days by Mohamed Makhzangi and No Windmills in Basra, by Diaa Jubaili, as well as the novels Beirut, Beirut by Sonallah Ibrahim, Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik, and the graphic novel Metro by Magdy Elshafee. His latest published translation is the novel Rose’s Diaries, by the Emirati novelist Reem al-Kamali, whose Arabic original was shortlisted for the 2022 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. He works as the Editorial Director for the Library of Arabic Literature bilingual book series at NYU Press and has a PhD on the Iraqi writer Muhammad Khudayyir from the University of Pennsylvania. His short translations have appeared in the White Review, Asymptote, Banipal and Words Without Borders.