'The Sudanese author Buthaina Khidir Mekki, presents in this distinguished collection of short stories, the Smell of Autumn, some of the common features of contemporary life in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Somalia and Sudan. One of the features of Arabic narrative is showing how in the vicious bane of a disintegrating reality and quest for peace fall back into inner fighting. Mounts of worries from knowing her identity and opening the bolts of cultural and social identity to the streams of blood running through the homeland fall on the back of the woman-Arab writer. Buthaina Mekki writes along the line of tangled identities and wars.' Fathi Umbabi, Egyptian writer and novelist
