The beloved Palestinian short-story writer, broadcaster, and translator Samira Azzam (1927-1967) was author of several collections of short fic- tion before her untimely death in August 1967, just before her fortieth birthday. Although acclaimed in her lifetime, her short works have slipped into a strange shadowland, where she is highly respected but not quite canon- ized. As critic Faisal Darraj writes: "Azzam has not yet received the accolades she deserves." In this collection, English-lan- guage readers can, for the first time, discover thirty-one of Azzam's stories in new translations-our small contribution to the "accolades she deserves."