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Magdy El-Shafee’s /Metro/ Not Available in Arabic, or English, But You Will Find It in…Italian

Thanks to translator Barbara Benini for this tip. (Benini is the Italian translator of Ahmed Nagi’s Rogers.)

Metro, a graphic novel penned by blogger/artist Magdy al-Shafee, is not available here in Cairo after having been yanked from shelves in 2009. The Qasr el Nil Court of Misdemeanors upheld the book’s ban in November of last year and fined the publisher and creator each a not insubstantial 5,000LE.

An excerpt was translated into English by Humphrey Davies and published on Words Without Borders, but last I spoke to Davies about it, he hadn’t intended to translate more.

So, I thought, ends the story of Metro. But apparently not! It has been translated by Ernesto Pagano (who also translated Khaled al-Khamissi’s charming Taxi into Italian) and is set to come out in Italian!

I can’t read a word of this page (oh, except the word “Cairo”), but it looks nice.

I hope Al-Shafee at least makes enough to cover that accursed fine.

If you know of a place to find Metro in Arabic, please share. This GoodReads users don’t seem to know.