With poetic vividness, Yahya Taher Abdullah's The Mountain of Green Tea tells of the harsh life of the peasants of Upper Egypt, or of Cairo seen through the eyes of peasants who have migrated there in search of work. Few writers delve so subtly into a society that is strictly bounded by religious and social mores and rigid codes of behavior. It is a society whose members concern themselves with such basic matters as money and personal honor, and where death is ever-present to put an end to their futile endeavors.

Yahya Taher Abdullah (1938-1981) born in the Upper Egyptian village of Karnak, was a prominent figure in the circle of writers known as the Generation of the Sixties. He was the author of four novellas and five collections of short stories. A collection of his stories, The Mountain of Green Tea, translated by Denys Johnson-Davies, was published by the AUC Press in 1999.