Recommended authors include Etienne van Heerden, Yehoshua Bar-Yosef and…Magdy al-Shafee, author of the somewhat ill-fated Metro. (If you know how to get a copy in Arabic, please let the rest of us know. Since it was yanked from Cairo shelves in the author and publisher fined, it hasn’t been seen anywhere. However, al-Shafee will reportedly try publishing it again within the next six months.)
Well, no, it has been seen somewhere: As WWB notes, Metro is being published in German and Italian. English-language rights remain available, and apparently a complete English translation is available as well (for interested publishers).
WWB’s promotional excerpt about Metro focuses mainly on the controversy that surrounds the book, but also notes: “Magdy El Shafee’s Metro caused a sensation when it was published by Cairo’s Dar-al-Malameh in 2008. Hailed as the first adult Egyptian graphic novel, Metro portrayed a Cairo teeming with greed and official corruption, and suggested that criminal behavior was not only understandable but justified.”
I’m not quite sure about this sort of analysis, but what do I know about book-selling:
The continued interest in the case, as well as the response to the author’s appearances at the Abu Dhabi book fair earlier this year, suggest a large potential market for publication in English.
You can read an excerpt from Metro on WWB, translated by Humphrey Davies.