27 ليلة وليلة

27 Nights and a Night (27 Layla wa Layla) is the debut book by Tunisian writer Hatem El-Louati, a collection of short, sharply satirical stories drawn from everyday Tunisian life. Though it presents itself as a set of separate tales, the pieces are threaded together so closely that the book reads almost like a novel, pulling the reader from the very first "night" into the tangled thoughts of its characters and the textures of Tunisian society.

By turns funny and painful, El-Louati transforms the absurd and the bitter details of ordinary reality into literature, using biting satire to lay bare the contradictions of the Tunisian character and the flaws of the society around it.

A confident, entertaining first work, 27 Nights and a Night marks the arrival of a satirical voice that finds both comedy and hard truth in the everyday.