• "An impressive success that spans vast regions of time and territory, this is that rare anthology: cohesive, affecting, and informing."
    Publisheršs Weekly (Starred Review)
  • "This unique and splendid gathering of poems, memoirs, fiction, and essays, many translated into English for the first time from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, covers the past century of frenetic disruption and change in works of beauty, dissent, irony, and romance. Many truths are brought to light in this remarkably energetic and gloriously multicultural volume from a crucial part of the world."
    Booklist
  • "This is the triumph of "Tablet & Pen," to connect us at the level of our humanity, no matter where we may be from."
    Los Angeles Times
  • "There is a wealth of wonders here. I know hardly anything of any of the authors whose work can be found in the pages of this rich and beautiful book: and therešs nothing so exciting to me as a sense of literary discovery."
    The Times of London
  • "[A] physically beautiful book which is also compulsively readable... this is a treasure house; a worthwhile attempt at canonising 20th-century central-Islamicate writing."
    Financial Times
  • "Aslan has brought forth an admirably comprehensive collection of poems, short stories, novel excerpts, essays, and memoirs from countries stretching from Morocco to Iran, translated from Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, and Persian... a literary treasure of which most readers in the West are scarcely aware."
    Barnes and Nobel Review



A volume that celebrates the magnificent achievement of twentieth-century Middle Eastern literature that has been neglected in the English-speaking world.

A landmark literary event, this groundbreaking work spans a century of literature by the region's best writers--from the famed Arab poet Khalil Gibran to the Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk--all of them bound together not by borders and nationalities but by a common experience of colonial domination and western imperialism. As best-selling author Reza Aslan writes, the mesmerizing prose of the Middle East-Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu-has been virtually excluded from the canon available to English readers. Under the umbrella of Words Without Borders, Aslan has assembled this extraordinary collection of short stories, memoirs, essays, and poems, featuring both contemporary and historical works, with many of the selections newly appearing in English. Featuring literature from countries as diverse as Morocco and Iran, Turkey and Pakistan, Tablet & Pen is a long-awaited work that is to be devoured as a single sustained narrative from the first page to the last.