Muscat,(ONA) The “Masha..Keek” collection by Omani storyteller Dr. Saeed bin Muhammad Al-Siyabi contains a large number of stories that were classified as very short stories, a modern literary art, based on the intensification and symbol, and contains revelations generated from within the text generating a state of displacement and aesthetic surprise. The collection was published by Now Publishers and Distributors in Amman and it came in one hundred and twenty four pages of medium size.

The collection was introduced by Dr. Mahmoud Said, a member of the Egyptian Writers Union and editor-in-chief of the “Cultural Fountains” magazine. In his introduction, he said, “The writer Saeed Muhammad Al-Siyabi in his anecdotal collection “Masha...Keek” practiced writing techniques with what can be said with all competence, including the deposits of oral and visual existence, and the reading awareness. From that, intuition is an emotional context in the subconscious and apparent. The imagination plays the role of designer in the space of rhetoric formation, and the representation of creative relationships. Sense contributes to analysing the codes of the universe, the human being within it, and mixing the experience of manifestation within the act of writing.

In his collection of stories, Al-Siyabi touched the boundaries of magic realism, and some of his stories came loaded with fantasy, but he did not get involved in much of the “exoticism” of the narration. In other stories, he described the reality as it is, preserving the flow of narration and making sure that the elements of inspiration and paradox are not lost. Perhaps the reason for that is due to the writer's desire to keep the reader the child of his reality, and to fill himself with many narrative spaces with multiple suggestions.

Therefore, his smart pickups stemmed from simple, humorous reality at times, as in “her blond hair” or “library fire”, or “as garlic heads” and from fantasy images at other times, as in “clothesline” or “laughing donkey”, and others. He used sarcasm in other cases, enriching the text with overtones that exceeded the limits of the regular narration. In all cases, the phrases intensified, and dwelt from the details of the ordinary daily life, in order to extract from it what is hidden, except for a writer with a critical eye, and a graceful pen.

It is worth noting that this edition is the second of the collection “Masha...Keek” after the first edition issued in 2019. Before it, the author published: “Sharpener and Pen” (2017), “Jabreen and Shaa Al Hawa” (2016), and “Signal Dreams” (2015), in addition to various literary researches he wrote alone or in association with other writers.

(ONA)