“Is this authority really that clever and strong, or is it the people’s imagination that makes it terrifying?”
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Egypt
Mustafa Çorbacı Escapes Youssef Rakha Novel ‘Sultan’ Seal,’ Resolves to Write Column
In addition to being printed in Al-Ahram Weekly, “Postmuslim“ will appear at http://thesultan.blot.im every Friday starting on July 7.
Launching Sahar Elmougy’s Long-awaited ‘The Hill’s Musk,’ A Rewriting of Mahfouz’s Amina
“She’d drowned herself in anti-depressants that left her a breathing corpse until, one day of July, Mariam found herself walking coldly into the kitchen and turning the knob on the cooker on so the gas would flow freely into the house. Minutes later, she turned it off quietly and opened the kitchen window as if to clear the house off the smell of potato frying.”
After You’ve Read Omar Robert Hamilton’s ‘The City Always Wins,’ 5 More
Once you’ve read ‘The City Always Wins,’ five more Egypt books about feminism, revolution, and history.
Translating ‘Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge’: ‘Evil, Banal, and Kind of Understandable’
“The great thing about the book is that you can one minute want to shake almost any of the characters by the shoulders and then at the next sympathize. Even the central character in Goliath’s Eye chapter, is simultaneously evil, banal, and kind of understandable, in an appalling way.”
‘Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge’ and Crafting 9/11 Supporters That Aren’t Caricatures
“But irony and sarcasm are dangerous devices. And I have a fleeting sense that my fondness of irony will one day cause my demise.”
5 By Radwa Ashour to Read on Her Birthday
The blocking of 21 news websites and the trial of Khaled Ali are not very good birthday presents for Egyptian novelist, scholar, translator, teacher, and activist Radwa Ashour (May 25, 1946-2014). So we remember her, instead, with a fond tribute… Read More ›
Bookmaking for Children in Egypt: Prizes, Initiatives, and Challenges
As the name of the competition indicates, it celebrates: “the Earth, eco-living, environmental awareness, agriculture and love of greenery.”
Egyptian Court Vacates Novelist Ahmed Naji’s Sentence, Orders New Trial
Khaled Ali, a lawyer in Naji’s defense team, told Al Masry Al Youm that the verdict demonstrates Naji spent long months in jail despite his innocence, and that “he did nothing but offer excellent work.”
Friday Finds: Ahmed Shafie, ‘I Did Not Find Poetry Where I Left It’
“It thought: that which wished to be a white butterfly was a fool and that which wished to be a cherry blossom was a fool.”
Half a Century Later, Why Read the Diaries of Waguih Ghali?
A more accurate subtitle might be: ″A Study in Depression, Drinking and Failed Love Affairs in Post-Nazi Germany″ or simply ″Self Destruction″.
A New Translation from Amal Dunqul’s ‘Book of Genesis’
When asked back in 2009 what Arabic works should be translated into English, poet-translator Fady Joudah told the Quarterly Conversation he’d like to see Ghassan Zaqtan’s Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me in English. Joudah has since translated that collection — and won… Read More ›
