Hisham Bustani: Flow is very important in my writing, and Arabic flows as a language – The National

Hisham Bustani: Flow is very important in my writing, and Arabic flows as a language – The National

Hisham Bustani’s short story collection The Monotonous Chaos of Existence strikes the senses like a series of fever dreams.

Historical events, including the Nakba and the alleged 1957 attempted military coup in Jordan, are examined with blistering, tempestuous prose. Contemporary urban transformations in Arab cities are presented as glitzy dystopic landscapes, hallucinatory conversations lay bare complex interpersonal dynamics and there are surreal takes on social dilemmas.

And all while taking its literary cues from poet Mourid Barghouti, The Matrix and the Quran.