"Among the things I love about Radwa’s writing is her courage in confronting the unthinkable – like those atrocities I referred to a moment ago. There is room for sentiment in her writing (in some of her depictions of family relations, for instance), but ultimately she does not shy away from harsh truths, and accordingly she doesn’t spare the reader, either."
Friday Finds: Excerpt of ‘The Magnificent Conman of Cairo’
His friend just stood there with a mocking smile on his face. When Malim was a stone’s throw away, his friend called out after him: “We’ll see.”
Lock-in Limited Release: Naguib Mahfouz’s ‘The Man in the Picture’
Sheikhun Muharram disappeared.
‘Naguib Mahfouz Awards’ to Reem Bassiouney, Mohamed Abdellatif
Each category comes with a prize of 75,000 Egyptian pounds.
On The Zoom Launch of Noor Naga’s ‘Washes, Prays,’ With ‘All the Weirdness’ Left In
Naga said that, if she could have simply called it a novel, she would have. But once you start calling something fiction, “editors tend to get very restrictive and edit all the weirdness out.”
Princes, Pandemics, and Politics: Yasmine Motawy talks to Bestselling Author of ‘The Mamluk Trilogy’
"As I was in the early stages of writing the novel, I told my late father, who was always my first reader, that I would have to take my readers to the fifteen places the book was set in because of the prominence of place in the text. This has been extremely rewarding for me, as I learn something new every time I go on one of these visits."
Lock-in Literature: ‘Eyes Shut’ by Rami Tawil
He walked the streets of the city every single day, living an entire life beneath his eyelids.
‘Genius’ Egyptian Poet and Lyricist Mido Zoheir, 46
"On the surface, you might think it’s about the dire reality and all, but somehow his texts don’t bring you down. I don’t know how he does that."
Friday Finds: ‘Through Sightless Eyes’ by Tareq Imam
"You often spoke to me of a blind writer, who was fascinated by mazes and who smiled at even the most dreadful nightmares, while you walked, leaning on my arm—as if I would believe your talk about things that were receding before your eyes day by day."
Archive Launch: Politics, Popular Culture and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution
"Politics, Popular Culture and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution," according to the University of Warwick's Nicola Pratt, "is an open access digital archive exploring the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath through the prism of popular culture."
New Fiction in Translation: Belal Fadl’s ‘Into the Tunnel’
"Yet all they could see was the hollow emptiness of the tunnel, which looked as if it had never seen traffic in its life."
Egyptian Novelist Gamil Attia Ibrahim, 1937-2020
Egyptian journalist and novelist Gamil Attia Ibrahim died today in Switzerland, where he lived.
