Temporary People
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Average rating3
15
Ratings2
Average rating3
"Guest workers of the United Arab Emirates embody multiple worlds and identities and long for home in a fantastical debut work of fiction, winner of the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing... The author's crisp, imaginative prose packs a punch, and his whimsical depiction of characters who oscillate between two lands on either side of the Arabian Sea unspools the kind of immigrant narratives that are rarely told. An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation" -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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This is a book of short stories about guest workers from India in the United Arab Emirates. I'm not usually a fan of short stories–I like LONG books. I've never read short stories like these, though. Maybe I need to read more?
The stories range from lists of the jobs that guest workers in the UAE do, to a several chapter long story about a scientist who figures out how to grow guest workers as a crop, and what happens as a result. Some of the stories feel disturbingly detached, like the one about an American woman who tapes workers back together after they've been injured on the job. Other stories fairly pulsate with emotion, like the one about the young man who gets a job dressing as a clown to sell detergent. My favorite is a story about some cockroaches who teach themselves to speak and walk on two legs, wearing clothing, as the young boy in the apartment they inhabit attempts to kill them off. I couldn't help but think of the cockroach Archie from the Archie & Mehitabel poems.
The stories in this collection are unique and sometimes grotesque. I didn't expect to like them as much as I did.
