The works were copyrighted 1984 and published by Dâr al-Tanwîr (Arabic: دار التنوير‎). The short stories are "Al-Mahdi" (Arabic: المهدى‎) and "Good News from the Afterlife" (Arabic: طرف من خبر الآخرة‎ Turaf min khabar al-âkhira).[3] The settings of both novellas are small Nile Delta villages.[4]