By Quentin Perissinotto for Le Regard Libre, 11 April 2023
The Orchards of Basra is an illusory attempt to resuscitate images and bring them to life. Hishâm, an antique book dealer in Cairo, is inhabited and haunted by a dream: he sees angels picking all the jasmine in Basra. Determined to decipher the meaning of this dream, he flips through the pages of an 8th century manuscript , The Great Book of the Interpretation of Dreams , which lists this vision. He discovers there that the author predicts this vision as the slow and disastrous disappearance of all the intellectuals of …

Literary Hub made a list of their favorite crime titles of the early fall, and Douaihy’s exceptional “King of India” is in there! Here is what they say.