Pearls on a branch: Arab stories told by women in Lebanon today (First Archipelago Books edition.)

While civil war raged in Lebanon, Najla Khoury travelled with a theatre troupe, putting on shows in marginal areas where electricity was a luxury, in air raid shelters, Palestinian refugee camps, and isolated villages.

Their plays were largely based on oral tales, and she combed the country in search of stories.

Many years later, she chose one hundred stories from among the most popular and published them in Arabic in 2014.

Out of that hundred stories published in Arabic, Inea Bushnaq and Najla Khoury chose thirty for this book.