In the seventeen short stories that comprise I Sweep the Sun Off Rooftops, al-Shaykh limns in evocative prose the shifting and ambiguous power relationships that shape the landscape of the modern Arab world.

Al-Shaykh's characters find themselves at the intersection of tradition and encroaching modernity, of East and West, of the innocence of childhood and the realities of adult life, of the everyday and the fantastical.

In these stories, a woman feigns insanity to escape from an empty marriage, only to have her plans backfire; a young Danish missionary finds herself slowly and inexorably drawn into the world of the Yemeni village where she has been sent to work; a woman's lighthearted attempt to contact the world of the dead turns serious when she encounters the spirit of her late husband.