The Literary World of Muh _ ammad Zifz af: Three short stories MOHAMMED ALBAKRY AND ROGER ALLEN Abstract A translation is presented of three short stories selected from the complete works of the Moroccan writer Muh _ ammad Zifz af (‘State of mind’, ‘The last date’ and ‘When a man becomes a donkey’). The translation is preceded by a brief discussion of the literary style and genre of the short stories and the general characteristics of the writer’s fiction. Introduction Muh _ ammad Zifz af (1945 – 2001) is well known as a writer of fiction throughout the Middle East and particularly in the Northern African part of it. A number of Zifz af’s works have already been translated into European languages such as French and Italian, but very few have appeared thus far in English. Zifz af’s short stories are examples of the kind of literature that offers a unique window into the commonplace, domestic life of ordinary people in the Arab world of Morocco. This extraordinary window that his stories represent is sometimes dark, sometimes charming, often funny, but always fascinating. From this literary window we are able to see ordinary moments unfold from the inside out. Often nameless, the main characters of his stories are never types or stereotypes. He captures them often ruminating about life’s twists and tangles, as they try to find meaning and purpose in events that seem to flow from their own puzzling momentum. In all his stories, Zifz af is interested in realism without idealisation or romantic subjectivity, but he always exhibits sympathy for his main characters, people from different stratas of society and products of a wide variety of social, political and psychological influences. The major concern of his short stories, however, is with marginalised characters within society at large. He presents the reader with a wide array of scenes (homes, streets, shacks, cafes, prisons and hospitals) where these characters are preoccupied with love, life and death, daydream about money and wealth, shrug at the annoyingly invasive police, endure exploitation by hucksters and delight in flirtation. The three short stories translated here (‘State of mind’, ‘The last date’, and ‘When a man becomes a donkey’) come from Zifz af’s complete collections of short stories, published by Mansh ur at Wiz arat al-shu  un al-thaq afiyya (Moroccan Ministry of Cultural Mohammed Albakry, Department of English, PO Box 70, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132, USA. E-mail: Albakry@mtsu.edu Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 10, No. 2, August 2007 ISSN 1475-262X print/ISSN 1475-2638 online/07/020129-08 Ó 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14752620701437507