In the Belly of the Queen

Amal shocks the whole neighbourhood by beating up her classmate Younes. Her father defends her behaviour and encourages her to assert herself. From then on everyone avoids Amal – and then her father leaves. Searching in vain for an explanation, Amal finds refuge with Younes and his mother Shahira, both outsiders like her. Years later, when the situation comes to a head and the conflict with Raffiq’s gang escalates, Amal flees to Kurdistan to look for her father.

Raffiq’s friend Younes is the reluctant centre of attention in their neighbourhood – thanks to his free-spirited mother Shahira, who breaks all the rules. Raffiq thinks about Shahira all the time, at once fascinated and repulsed by her. Unable to bear the situation any longer, Younes plans to leave. When Raffiq’s girlfriend Amal also wants to move away, Raffiq’s world begins to break apart.

In her kaleidoscopic novel, Karosh Taha expands our ideas of class, race and gender as she loops two stories around an invisible lynchpin: a woman who defies all expectations, a blank canvas for projections from all those around her. Deftly translated by Grashina Gabelmann, the book can be explored from either end, creating two very different narratives.

Author Biography

Karosh Taha, born in 1987 in Zaxo, Iraq, has lived in Germany since 1997. Her essays have appeared in various literary magazines. In the Belly of the Queen is her second novel and won her the Alfred Doeblin Prize. Karosh lives in Cologne.

Grashina Gabelmann is editor-in-chief and a founding member of Flaneur Magazine, a site-specific, interdisciplinary and award-winning publication focusing on one street per issue. She writes psychogeographic prose and works as a translator.