Text in Arabic. Tense and tightly woven, Thiqah is a dramatic novel set in Paris during World War II about a woman whose lover is accused of working for the Resistance. The novel follows nine hours of phone conversations between a woman and a mysterious stranger who seems to know everything about her and the reasons she fled her homeland. As the dialogue progresses, the man tells her many disturbing things about her and her lover (who may be in great danger), the political situations in which they are enmeshed, and his fantasies about her. Powerful and menacing, Thiqah draws the reader into a post-modern mystery where nothing -- including the text itself  -- is what it seems.