When I visited the library years after last seeing Edwar, years after he passed away, it was thanks to Mohamed Shoair – a friend, author, and literary journalist at the weekly Akhbar al-Adab. Shoair was entrusted by Edwar’s son, Dr Ihab al-Kharrat, to safeguard and organize the manuscripts, papers, and books left in the library.
The Arabic Novel’s Contribution to Global Storytelling Styles: ‘Rama and the Dragon’
"What is important in the novel is not succession, but crystallization."
Edwar al-Kharrat: On Books and Writing
"After immigrating to Canada in 1998, and after the release of my second novel Heliopolis in 2000, the writer Hadya Said contacts me from London to offer that I write a joint novel with Edwar al-Kharrat."
Edwar al-Kharrat’s Library: A Hall of Magic and Wonders
"You could not ask al-Kharrat about an Egyptian writer, dead or alive, without him going to a small room – perhaps the balcony that he closed to carve out more space for his library one day – and take out some of his or her works with care and sensitivity, or works that even its author may have completely forgotten."
Edwar al-Kharrat: Without Maps
From our special section, edited and translated by Chihab El Khachab, on Edwar al-Kharrat and his library: By Montasser al-Kaffash My first encounter with Edwar al-Kharrat was in 1986, the year I graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University. I, along with a group of short story writers, contributed to publishing a stapled … Continue reading Edwar al-Kharrat: Without Maps
Edwar al-Kharrat… the Storytelling Eye
This viewpoint was that the stability of life lay in its capacity to change, in stitching the spread of weakness and strength together, not with the intention of achieving hegemony, but with a desire to look out for what is better, because things are not eternal and they erode to leave traces as the sole witnesses to them.
Launch Event Tomorrow: Read an Excerpt of Donia Kamal’s ‘Random Arrangements’
"I hate that nobody is ever accountable for anything, even if you complain repeatedly and send emails that nobody answers, and I hate emails in the first place, and I also hate the fact that most of my colleagues here are surrendering to the editorial agenda which they actually see as valid and balanced while it makes me cry every day in the bathroom."
On Taha Hussein Day: 5 in Translation
Although Hussein's works continue to be read and loved forty-odd years after his death, only a small corner of his broad oeuvre has been translated to English.
Mohammed Abdelnabi Wins 2019 Prix de la Littérature Arabe
Egyptian novelist Mohammed Abdelnabi has won the 2019 Prix de la Littérature Arabe for his International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted novel La Chambre de l’araignée, as translated from Arabic by Gilles Gauthier.
Halloween Horror & Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi’s ‘Hour of the Wolf’
"Scholar-translator Richard Jacquemond, after a visit to the 2016 Cairo International Book Fair, noted that three genres dominated shelves and tables: horror, satire, and romance."
Cover Reveal: Haytham al-Wardani’s ‘The Book of Sleep’
"People were coming out onto the streets and at the same time there was this sense of imminent disaster. What happened on June 30 happened, the defeat came to pass, and it was then that I started to take the subject seriously."
A Look Back: Naguib Mahfouz on October 14, 1994
"On this day, October 14, 1994, Dr. Fathi Hashim waited outside to drive [Naguib Mahfouz] there. Yet Hashim wasn’t alone. Another young man was waiting outside with a concealed switchblade."
