First published in English by the American University in Cairo Press, The Hedgehog is a short, unsettling novella by Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer, one of the most distinctive voices in modern Arabic literature.

Told through the eyes of a five-year-old boy, the story unfolds in a domestic world that is quietly surreal and deeply menacing. Djinn slip into bedrooms, animals behave with unnerving indifference, and authority is both arbitrary and absolute. What begins as childhood observation becomes something darker: a portrait of fear, obedience, and violence embedded in everyday life.

Tamer’s prose is deceptively simple — clipped, direct, almost fable-like — but the effect is corrosive. Beneath the child’s voice sits a sharp political and psychological critique, shaped by repression, masculinity, and the inheritance of cruelty. The stories that accompany the novella extend these concerns, exposing systems of power with bleak humour and moral clarity.

A key work of Arabic modernism, The Hedgehog is small in size but brutal in impact.