A Face Like the Moon

Overview

A fascinating debut collection about coming of age in contemporary Egypt

A Face Like the Moon is the debut short story collection from Coptic Canadian writer Mina Athanassious. The eight stories in this book revolve around the world of young Coptic children living in urban and rural areas of Egypt. "All Good Things Thrown Away" delves into Egypt's notorious "Garbage City" and the lives of Cairo's garbage collectors. The title story moves to a small remote village in southern Egypt where a young ten-year-old boy struggles with a family tragedy. All together, Athanassious's debut collection of short stories offers a truly remarkable and moving look at the lives of Coptic children coming of age in Egypt and marks a bold and original new voice in Canadian fiction.

Reviews

"Athanassious is quite intentionally panoramic, sharing with the reader the sights and sounds and smells of youth in a range of circumstances...[A] collection [that] neatly demonstrate[s] how the borders of the world can at times seem expansive and, at others, paralyzingly small." —Shawn Syms, Quill & Quire

Author Biography

Mina Athanassious is a Coptic Canadian writer who was born in al-Abbasiya, a Cairene neighbourhood in central Egypt, before his family emigrated to Toronto, Canada when he was a small child. Mina received his MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and currently works as an Intervention Support Worker, assisting persons with mental and physical handicaps with their academic endeavors.