What’s a gender expert doing writing a book of short stories?!  It’s a reasonable question, since people often think of nonfiction and fiction as separate endeavors.  And they are. But if you’re curious to read one answer and one blending of two genres, The Blind Woman and Other Stories will, I hope, touch your heart.  I initially wrote these stories between 1987 and 2000; I’ve revised them on airplanes and out in nature and at my desk over the last two decades.

These stories take place all over the world, including in the U.S.; but their first inspiration grew from incidents and experiences during the gender research-years that Gail and I spent in Turkey, Israel, and Egypt.  In those years, I compared the development of boys and girls in urban and rural settings in the Middle East with children in urban and rural settings in the United States. Some of my nature-based gender theory grew from seeing how the X/Y chromosomes set up sex-specific patterns for learning, play, and growth throughout the world.

While doing that research and throughout the subsequent years, I’ve written fiction and poetry along with my nonfiction.  Gender research has crept into the stories. At the same time, my stories are not nonfiction—they are fiction. I truly cherish the craft of writing them–each form has its unique challenges and epiphanies.  I hope you will enjoy and be moved by the stories as much as I have enjoyed—and at times been shattered and reborn—by the process of writing them.

–Michael Gurian

“(Gurian’s) skillful characterizations, convincing dialogue and rich details make this a worthwhile, entertaining collection.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“Timely … a fascinating look into a world that remains impossibly foreign and opaque to most Americans.”

— Kirkus Reviews

Book Jacket Description (Published by Latah Books, 2018)

In this dramatic and profound collection of stories, New York Times bestselling author Michael Gurian explores the cultural and spiritual gulf between Muslims and Westerners.  From Ankara to Seattle, the West Bank to Manhattan, these provocative stories continually surprise with scenes of shocking brutality and improbable enlightenment.

In “A Desperate Pride,” a Palestinian woman falls in love with Raf Horowitz, an American Jew who arrives in Israel with reckless idealism.  In “The Reincarnation of Donaldo Fuertes,” an elderly Spanish-American writer recruits a young African-American Muslim to accompany him on a pilgrimage to his homeland.  And in the title story, a young hospice nurse in Seattle finds her life course completely changed as she fulfills her duties to a American-Somali woman scarred by her upbringing.

Written with the grace and craftsmanship of a veteran storyteller, Gurian’s collection is an emotional powerhouse filled with animosity and love, heartache and understanding, disillusionment and hope.  Lyrical and absorbing, these stories reveal the humanity of a culture so often in conflict with our own.

The Stories

In “The Blind Woman,” a young hospice nurse finds her life course completely changed as she fulfills her duties to an African Muslim family.

In “Necati Bey,” an American businessman in Turkey is mentored, then strangely rejected, by an elderly Turkish artisan.

In “A Desperate Pride,” a Palestinian woman falls in love with Raf Horowitz, an American Jew who left behind his life in America to make a perilous pilgrimage to Israel.

In “The Kapici’s Wife,” a Turkish diplomat, returning to Ankara after years in America, meets again a woman from his adolescence and realizes how removed he has become from his native culture.

In “Irina’s Lullaby,” a young Frenchwoman married to an Algerian tries to reconcile her passion for the future with her feelings for her past.

In “The Reincarnation of Donaldo Fuertes,” an elderly Spanish immigrant recruits a young African-American Muslim to accompany him on a pilgrimage to his homeland.

In “Civilizations are Islands,” a young girl, half-American, half-Egyptian, struggles with her sense of identity and self when she moves with her mother from India back to Egypt.

More Praise for the Book

“Translucent stories! Courageous! While the rest of the world is (at war) with the Muslims, Michael Gurian is calling for something higher, better, the kind of peace that only a first-rate storyteller can imagine. Buy these stories! Read them! Read them again! Give them to your grandchildren, if you have them. If not, hold onto them until you do.”

— Jim Connor, Ph.D., author of Silent Fire

“We could not ask for a more important, true or better book about the ‘politics’ of our world and, far more important, about the truths hidden in the human soul than we find in The Blind Woman and Other Stories.”

— Terry Trueman, Prinz Honor Award Winner for Stuck in Neutral

“These stories immerse us in the mysteries that attract us to, and repel us from, foreign cultures. These are very important narratives for our time. In them, individuals of various ages, genders and faiths reveal how culture can save us or fail us, at times simultaneously. I saw these stories as a narrative bracelet which, once put on, cannot be turned away from. Their beauty and unsentimental power are stunning.”

— Michael B. Herzog, Ph.D., author of Troilus and Criseyde

Get the book on www.amazon.com or other outlets online and in bookstores.