I was paging back through Khaled al-Khamissi’s Taxi, trans. Jonathan Wright, which is crammed with observations of and insights about contemporary Egypt. The prose here is not elegant, but one reads it and regrets that Anwar Sadat wasn’t “overthrown properly.”
The Fagoumy billboards have been up for several days now; the film, based on Ahmed Fouad Negm’s autobiography, is out today.
While head of the Egyptian Board of Censors Sayed Khattab believes “we are living in the age of freedom,” he adds that “nobody can reasonably say we should just cancel the whole institution” of censorship.
Even the ululations, if they exist, that heralded you birth
Take it all with you and leave,
And let us…
treads much the same ground as his 1972 novel, Cell Block 5. The earlier book has been called the “first Iraqi prison novel,” and much of the action of The Traveler and the Innkeeper, written in the mid-1970s, also takes place among political prisoners and police. Both novels draw on the acclaimed novelist and poet’s own experience in Iraqi jails.
His response sums up as: Book World Prague was right to honour Saudi Arabia
Nominations for the 2012 Sheikh Zayed award are now open. And this year, organizers want to “reach out to an international market,” according to The National and Middle East Online.
Another smaller magazine, Laghoo, has joined the moment of cultural blossoming. The note below is from editor Ashraf Zaghal:
Yes, the furor (here, here, here, and here) over Saudi Arabia’s “guest of honor” status at the 2011 Prague book fair is justified. No country should be “guest of honor” at a book fair if they’re not prepared to bring along their…books.
