IMPOSTURES by AL-HARIRI, as Englished by Michael Cooperson, is a loopy, looping funhouse ride of a read

IMPOSTURES
AL-HARIRI (tr. Michael Cooperson
NYU Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$18.00 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, Translation Category

Shortlist, 2021 National Translation Award
Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award, Literature Category

Fifty rogue's tales translated fifty ways

An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature.

Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English.

Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm dazzled, and a bit frazzled, by this high-intensity read. Unlike most times I read vignettes, I was compelled to read the book in two sittings, instead of a more normal-for-me five or six. It is fun, often enough funny, and always about a fun-loving merry prankster and bon vivant living for the next encounter.

It's also a sarcastic snook-cocking at the pious liars who talk a godly game while fleecing or planning to fleece you. The Englishing of these cultural treasures of the Arabic language...wonderful word, better concept, "Englishing" for something like this that can not possibly be a translation...is the source of most of the fun. Many's the time I used the glossary, and thank goodness it was there.

What makes the read so much more than it sounds like it is from my maunderings is that indefinable *something* that clicks a switch in the reader, that makes words into stories, stories into memories.

That's what happened to me. I can only hope that is what will happen to you.