New Poetry in Translation: ‘Love’ by Ahmed Yamani
“Love / was the axe that strikes // Love / was the hand holding the axe”
Egypt
An Excerpt from Ahmed El Fakharany’s ‘The Quail King: An Alexandrian Odyssey’
“I was nineteen years old, working in Mu`allim Idris’s workshop, when I asked him about the age of the Universe.”
New Fiction: ‘The Echo of Silence’ by Hany Ali Said
“He stares at the reflection of the furniture in the mirror but everything is perfectly still. When he speaks to his own reflection, he hears a muffled hiss like the one made by the hands of a clock.”
Lit & Found: Muhammad Aladdin’s ‘Season of Migration to Arkadia’
Egyptian writer Muhammad Aladdin’s short story “Season of Migration to Arkadia” (tr. Humphrey Davies) is available as a free e-book from publisher mikrotext.
Critic, Scholar Gaber Asfour Dies at 77
Egyptian literary critic, scholar, and two-time Minister of Culture Gaber Asfour died on Friday at the age of 77.
From the FOLK Issue: ‘Death in Three Portraits’
Bakhit Al-Bashari lay in his sickbed, the same bed he once made with his bare hands from the stalks of palm fronds.
Egyptian Novelist Shady Lewis on Coptic Identity, Church-State Relations, and Citizenship
“In Ways of the Lord, Christians are mistaken for being Jews and are accused of spying for Israel, which demonstrates the lack of recognition of Copts and their conflation with other minorities.”
13 Books in Translation: A Literary History of Egypt After 2011
These thirteen books (six novels, three works of literary nonfiction, a graphic novel, a poetry collection, a short-story collection, and a collection of playtexts) provide a not-insubstantial literary landscape of contrasting visions and emotions:
An Excerpt of Amr Ezzat’s ‘The Deer’s Visit’
“Almost 15 years ago, my ex-wife’s father told me that he used his connections in the security services to find out how dangerous my political activity was, and they told him that my political classification in their files was: sympathetic to communists.”