Beirut39 in Cairo (Well, Not All 39)

There are five Egyptians on the “Beirut39” list, the celebrated 39 up-and-coming Arab writers under 40. They are: Hamdy el Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin , Mohamed Salah Al Azab, Nagat Ali, and Youssef Rakha.

They’ll all be at Al Kotob Khan on Jan. 26 from 7-10:30.

The event is organized by Kotob and Literature Across Frontiers in concert with the Cairo Book Fair, which is set to start (in all its crazy glory) Jan. 28.

Other book-fair related events include a night of central European literature at Al-Balad Bookstore and a “meet the AUC Press Authors” at the fairgrounds on Saturday, Jan. 30. Alaa el-Aswany and Amina Zedan are expected to be there.

A piece from Egypt Today about the book fair still asserts that Cairo is the region’s biggest book fair. (All right, we may have it on biggest. But Abu Dhabi certainly has the region’s most significant, trade-wise.)

We could also win in the “most chaotic” category. Is there a prize for “most chaotic”?