Traveling through Arabia a while ago for several weeks on end, I was struck by the frequency with which my Arab companions funny bone was tickled by just those things which tickled mine. Back at beit Arnander in Jeddah, I remarked on this to my hostess, Primrose. She responded by opening up a drawer of her desk to reveal the Arabic proverbs and adages she and Ashkhain Skipwith had been carefully researching to illustrate how precisely the wisdom and wit of one culture reflected the others. There before us was the draft of The Son of a Duck is a Floater So enthusiastically did Arabic and English speakers alike take to that little book that Apricots Tomorrow swiftly followed -to the same welcome. Now the authors offer a third garnering of traditional Arabic saws to delight the aficionados of cross-cultural unity, where horse sense provokes a horse laugh in two languages.

To understand a people, acquaint yourself with their proverbs' runs an Arab adage, and here are the books that help you do just that. The popular Apricots Tomorrow, a selection of sayings from the Gulf region, is joined by sister titles The Son of a Duck is a Floater and the newest book in the series, Unload your own Donkey, which draws on sayings from the Maghreb and Levant. Paralleling age-old Arabic sayings with English equivalents, the proverbs highlight the uncanny similarity of inherited wisdom in both East and West.