Omar Sabbagh, "Y Knots"

 

Omar Sabbagh is a very widely published poet, writer and critic. Over the last two decades, his poetry has appeared in many prestigious venues, such as: Poetry Review, PN Review, Agenda, Acumen, New Humanist, (T&F) New Writing, The Reader Magazine, Stand, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Banipal, The Warwick Review, The Wolf, among many others. For Echo was his sixth poetry collection with Cinnamon Press, Spring 2024. His first collection and his third were, respectively: My Only Ever Oedipal Complaint and To The Middle of Love (Cinnamon Press, 2010/17). His fourth, But It Was an Important Failure, was published in early 2020. And Morning Lit: Portals After Alia, his fifth collection with Cinnamon Press, was published in early 2022. His Beirut novella, Via Negativa: A Parable of Exile, was published with Liquorice Fish Books in March 2016; and his Dubai novella, Minutes from the Miracle City, was published with Fairlight Books in July 2019. He has published much short fiction, too, some of it prize-winning. A study of the oeuvre of Professor Fiona Sampson, Reading Fiona Sampson: A Study in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, was published with Anthem Press in 2020, and was released in revised, paperback edition at the end of 2021. His book of Lebanese verse narratives, Cedar: Scenes from Lebanese Life, was published with Northside House in summer of 2023; and a collection of his published short fictions, Y Knots, was published with Liquorice Fish Books in autumn of 2023. RIP: Poems after Gaza & Words after Waddah is his latest work, a pamphlet published with Cinnamon Press, March 2024.  He holds a BA in PPE from Oxford, three MAs in English Literature, Creative and Life Writing, and Philosophy, all from the University of London, and a PhD in English Literature from KCL. From 2011-2013 he was Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the American University of Beirut (AUB), and he taught at the American University in Dubai (AUD), where he was Associate Professor of English from 2014 to 2024. He has just begun a new role in Creative Writing and Literature at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut.

About Y Knots: Short Fictions 
Y Knots is a collection of short fictions, some prize-winning, collating in one volume most of Sabbagh’s best short imaginative prose published between 2004 and 2022. Of the twenty-one entries collected in this book, the fictions vary from the serious-minded to the highly playful and satiric, from realistic narratives to surrealistic ones, as well as from fully-formed stories to extracts from putatively longer narratives. Characters leap off the page and stories rivet, whether the tensions that spur the narratives are resolved or merely explored. Linguistically dexterous and scintillating with intelligence and wit, this book combines deep and compassionate observation with humour and drama, making use of a variegated array of forms and styles, rendering this collection a flaring exhibition of highly engaging and insightful prose.  

You can read more about Y Knots on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read a short excerpt from the book

From Y Knots, by Omar Sabbagh

Dye

‘Should I dye my hair this weekend?’

The woman who asked this, whisper-thin in body, had hair the colour of cinnamon, though closer to sparkling raven at times.

‘Well … hmmm … it’s not as bright or juicy as I’ve seen it …’  The woman who responded was no such wraith; she was voluble in body, and bone-deep with goodness because her father had been a baker, and she had grown up, nay, she had leavened with the smell of bready genesis and flour in her nostrils from the early hours.

Twirling her black-pecked white skirt as though to skitter the scent of one who was solicitous, the first woman said, ‘Xavier started on my good side this morning. He told me my hair was nice in brown and if I was German because German women have brown hair.’

The bigger woman chuckled.

‘So should I? Should I dye my hair? I can, this weekend, I mean, I have enough.’

‘Dye your hair or don’t dye your hair,’ the second said. ‘Either way, you’ll still look fabulous.’ Given what we know of this second woman, one might have expected her to have formed some sort of metaphor or simile from the repertoire or the arsenal of bread. And so in fact she did.

‘You’ll always be like a sweet bun, honey, the kind my old father used to make. Oooo … But they were good! The first bite of your mouthed morsel would be a nomad, in some land over the tongue, melting and chewed and unchartered …’

The first woman put a finger to her lips, playfully, grinning from ear to ear, as though she were a child being coddled by a favourite aunt; a tad odd, for these two women, colleagues and friends were very close in age. Indeed, the far more carrot-haired lady, a sliver of coquetry, and the more bounteous woman, whose chocolate skin resonated with a vital periwinkle sheen, were named Mathilda and Marie-Rose, respectively; the one from San Francisco, the other form Trinidad.