I try not to republish many calls for papers, but I found this one over at the Translation Studies Portal and thought it might also be an opportunity to honor the award-winning novelist and academic Dr. Radwa Ashour. (Note that, if you’re interested in submitting, abstracts are due Dec. 28):

More on the call for papers below. Meanwhile, from an earlier piece on Ashour:

Celebrated author Radwa Ashour, whose Granada trilogy was voted one of the top 100 literary works by the Arab Writers Union, and who has confidently and authoritatively taught hundreds of students to love literature, has not had an easy relationship with writing.

In 1969, at the age of 23, Ashour, with a well-crafted short story under her belt, traveled to a young writers’ conference in Zagazig.

“Looking around me, I saw Bahaa Taher, Yehia El-Taher Abdallah, Ibrahim Aslan, Abdel-Hakim Qasim, Amal Dunqul and others,” she previously told Al Ahram. All of these men were already accomplished. “And what had I written, apart from one short story that proved nothing? This scared me even more and I stopped writing.”

In her essay, “My Experience With Writing,” Ashour says that the question of whether or not she’s a truly talented writer continued to plague her. In the 1970s, “I renounced writing. I said that I was no good, and my resolution hit home as sharply and decisively as a guillotine.”

Between the ages of 23 and 34, Ashour focused on being a teacher and an activist. She also spent a good part of her life on airplanes. Her son Tamim was born in 1977, the same year her husband–Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti–was deported from Cairo. For a time, Ashour’s husband lived in Hungary, and she and Tamim visited as frequently as they could.

But the 1970s passed and, “all of a sudden, I found that writing reappeared with an insistent, importuning presence.”

It was 1980 when Ashour got back to writing. The impetus, she says, was the health problems that have continued to dog her throughout her life. Ashour’s first book, The Journey: Memoirs of an Egyptian Student in America, was written after she nearly died from persistent health problems. The book, finally published when she was 37, seems to have let writing’s “insistent, importuning presence” back into her life for good. Her first novel, Warm Stone, was published two years later.

Illness confined Ashour to bed several more times. But perhaps–as well as limiting her activities and causing her great pain–they also created time and space for her to write. Warm Stone was followed by several other novels, including Siraj in 1992, the celebrated Granada trilogy in 1994 and 1995, and the quasi-memoir Specters in 1998. Keep reading.

Ashour has won numerous awards, incuding The Owais award and Italy’s Fondazione Pescarabruzzo prize in 2011, the The Tarquina Cardarelli prize for literary criticism in 2009, Greece’s Constantine Cavafy Prize for literature in 2007 and others. Her Granada trilogy is on the Arab Writers Union’s list of the top 105 books of the 20th century.

Translator Barbara Romaine, who has translated Siraaj and Spectres, said she worked “very closely with Radwa as well–on both novels, but especially on Specters, which, with its dual narrative, is more complex than Siraaj.”

Romaine said, in an email exchange about translation and Ashour’s work:

 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.

Ashour, as is explored in the autobiographical aspects of her work, is married to Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti and is the mother of poet and political scientist Tamim Barghouti.

The call for papers:

The aforementioned call for papers comes from the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Ain Shams University; papers will be presented at a conference — set to be held March 22-23, 2014 — that aims to discuss “the various cultural, critical or aesthetic issues involved in works produced by Professor Radwa Ashour.”

The following key topics are suggested:

·       Renegotiating Modernity and Modernism

·       Introducing a new Arabo-Islamic Narrative

·       Radwa Ashour Translated

·       The Power of the Plume: Political Activism in the Writings of Radwa Ashour

·       The Journey: Deconstructing the Stereotypical Eurocentric Nahda Discourse in the Arab World

·       Re-reading Women Writers in Ashour’s Critical Writings

Paper abstracts can be sent to: faten.morsy@art.asu.edu.eg, mrmriad@gmail.com.

More about Ashour:

Youssef Rakha: As one long prepared

Mona Elnamoury: Radwa Ashour’s ‘Siraaj’: A Trip into the Past that Ends in the Present

Mona Elnamoury: Radwa Ashour on the Train of Images in the Egyptian Revolution

By Ashour

Essays and transcripts of talks

Mapping a nation: the legacy of Darwish

An excerpt from Siraaj, trans. Barbara Romaine

It’s been nearly a month now that Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s been in prison — beaten in his own home and dragged off — for violating a new Egyptian law that criminalizes most protests:

It was two years ago that poet Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi wrote “The Prisoners’ Laughter” in solidarity with Abd el-Fattah, who was then detained (since October) after the violence at Maspero. During those months in prison, Abd el-Fattah missed the birth of his son Khaled.

Aisha El-Awady, with assistance from Ahdaf Soueif, translated an excerpt for Egypt Independent. From the poem:

And the night, your partner in patience on this journey,

sings … and the night is inky in its darkness

its songs of suffering passed down from those who came before.

 And:

The cry is low but it shakes the universe,

the fool warns the rose: “hide your color.”

What does the ox know about garden breeze?

More in English translation. And in Arabic.

Next month — on January 22, 2014 — the Cairo International Book Fair is set to open as usual, although it will be two days longer than originally planned and without Turkey’s official involvement. General Egyptian Books Organization (GEBO) director Ahmed Megahed said at a recent news conference that organizeres are introducing a new award and expecting stability:

According to Moheet, organizers will take necessary precautions, but, “We have run the exhibition under poor conditions in the past two years, and I expect greater stability this year.”

Megahed told assembled reporters that 24 countries would participate in the fair: 17 Arab and seven non-Arab. Some 750 publishers are expected to attend, including publishers from Turkey, although the government will not officially be there. Megahed also listed Syrian publishers among those participating, although Syrians have faced difficulty in entering Egypt.

Kuwait is the 2014 guest of honor, given the spot, according to Ahram Online, “for its vital role in publishing and delivering books at low prices.” The theme is a generic “Culture and Identity,” following last year’s “Dialogue, Not Clash.”

There’s also a new award this year for unpublished manuscripts, where the award-winner set to be printed and distributed at the fair.

The fair is set to run through Feb. 4.

The fair also re-launched their website:

http://www.cairobookfair.org/

If you’re interested, they’ve also got a YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GeboChannel

AUC Press and Sampsonia Way both recently conducted interviews with one-time philosopher and now-novelist Hamdy al-Gazzar (@hamdyelgazzar) about his first novel, Black Magic (trans. Humphrey Davies), which won a Sawiris Award, and the red lines crossed by his more recent novel, Private Pleasures (trans. Davies):

AUCP interview:

“I started to publish when I was twenty, when I was a student in the section of philosophy in Cairo University … For about 15 years, I tried to achieve my first novel. … Writing itself was very hard for me, and it makes me very cross with myself. But after 20 years…writing, for me, means life.”

As a novelist, “You’re speaking to the present and the future at the same time.”

Sampsonia Way interview:

“Writing for me is to speak about love, to speak about passion. You can’t speak about love or passion or even any human being…and ignore to speak about sex. Sex here is an element to discover the human being, to discover the nature of a relationship between a man and a woman, between us and nature, between us and God, and sensation is very important, because it’s our life.”

“Every text has its own life in its original language, what the translator tries to do is to discover the spirit of the language…and try to let it live in his own language. … I think I am lucky with Humphrey Davies, indeed. … In the end, it’s his own translation, it’s not my work in English.”

More:

Excerpts from and here

Excerpts from al-Gazzar’s work on Jadaliyya

Al-Gazzar’s column on Sampsonia Way

Nawal El Saadawi continues to make the circuit of book fairs and literary festivals, having recently appeared at the Beirut International Book Fair and scheduled to be at the Umeå International Littfest in March:

The Swedes note that El Saadawi has been mentioned in connection to their big peace prize “several times,” and a Swedish paper tosses in a connection with the literary prize as well.

There was a time, as translator Marilyn Booth has noted, that Nawal El Saadawi was virtually the only Arab female novel known in English. El Saadawi is certainly still one of the most popular voices in translation — in The New Yorker  and The Guardian, as well as in news outlets of other political leanings and on the litfest circuit — although now there are other women’s narratives to complicate and thicken the reading both of El Saadawi and of other works.

Although El Saadawi’s fiction can feel not-completely-formed, a number of her memoirs, particularly her Memoirs from the Women’s Prison, are sharply worded and sketch thorough, sympathetic worlds.

At her appearance last month in Beirut, according to Lebanese novelist Jana Elhassan writing in The Daily Star, El Saadawi spoke about her love of writing:

Writing is the love of my life. It makes me oblivious to everything else. And loneliness is a grace for the artist … Doubt also leads to questions and ultimately to more creativity.

El Saadawi, who seems to get more radical with age, also said that “if could turn back time, I would not marry or have children at all,” calling motherhood — under a patriarchal system — a trap.

And yet El Saadawi also expressed pride in her writer-children, who have also faced persecution for their mother’s writings. ”The price you pay for creative writing is costly,” she said at the Beirut fair.

“I paid it all: prison, exile, dismissal from work, defamation, having my name placed on death lists, having hesah lawsuits leveled against me, being forced to divorce my husband, having my Egyptian nationality withdrawn, being accused of blasphemy.”

She added: “I feel momentary guilt when I think of the sacrifices my family made because of my rebellion and revolution…but such moments quickly fade when I see the creative production of my son and daughter.”

For Saadawi, who has written numerous works of nonfiction and fiction, writing is important not just as art, but for its healing effect. “Creative writing is the best cure for physical and psychological illnesses, including masochism.”

Last night, Egypt’s ninth annual Sawiris Cultural Awards were announced at a ceremony at the Cairo Opera House, and authors Mahmoud al-Wardani, Huda Ahmed, Yasser Abdellatif, Mahmoud Tawfik, and  Mohamed Abdelnaby were given top literary honors:

The top novelist prize was jointly won by Mahmoud El-Wardani, for his novel House of Fire, and Huda Ahmed, for her novel I’ve Seen Myself as Swan. El-Wardani also won the Sawiris short-story prize in 2011 for his A Morning Party.

Al-Wardani, who was born in Cairo in 1950, has published a half-dozen novels and four collections of short stories. His Heads Ripe for Plucking came out, in English translation, from AUC Press in 2008.

The prize for best short-story collection went to writer Yasser Abdel-Latif for his collection Jonas in the Belly of the Whale, published by Kotob Khan Books in 2011. Abdellatif’s first novel, Law of Inheritance, won the 2005 Sawiris Prize.

The anonymous QISASUKHRA has lately translated two of Abdel Latif’s stories: “Country Train” (2012) and the just-published”Sorting Shelves” (2011).

Abdel Latif’s poetry has also appeared on PEN‘s website.

Mohamed Abdel-Naby won the best novel award in the emerging writers category for his novel The Return of the Sheikh, which was also longlisted for last year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Abdelnaby, who before that was known for his short stories, won the 2010 Sawiris award for his collection Anton Chekhov’s Ghost. He is also an acclaimed translator, and brought Hisham Matar’s Anatomy of a Disappearance into Arabic.

Two authors took second place in the emerging-writer category: Amr Mostafa Ashour, for his novel Heavy Black Bag, and Ibrahim Abdel-Ghany, for his novel Museum of Forgetness.

Mahmoud Tawfik took first prize in the short-story emerging-writer category for his Blue, which also made ArabLit’s list of acclaimed authors’ favorite reads of 2013. Second place was shared by Hany Abdel-Mourid and Ahmed Said for their collections The Myths of the Ancestors and As If it Were Alive. 

If you’re among the first 15 K-12 educators to register for the group, you’ll get a free Mahfouz collection that includes Autumn Quail, The Beggar, and The Thief and the Dogs:

On January 27, from 7–8 p.m. EST, Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies will host a discussion of Autumn Quail with scholar Sami Alkyam.

Alkyam, who has been teaching at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has a particular interest in depictions of dictators and tyranny in the Arabic novel. Indeed, as organizers write, in Autumn Quail, ”Naguib Mahfouz writes about shifting experiences of authority and identity following the Egyptian revolution of 1952.  Part of a three-part novella cycle exploring the historic military coup that resulted in the overthrow of Egypt’s constitutional monarchy, this short work of fiction offers a rich historical lens through which to explore political transitions in contemporary Egypt.”

I’m always hesitant about using books as historical lenses — unless we’re talking Beer in the Snooker Club, because then you’ve also got beer goggles — but it should nonetheless be an interesting time. Plus, you have an excuse to read Autumn Quail, which is one of novelist Pauls Toutonghi’s favorite works by Mahfouz. Here’s why.

The session, which will be conducted in an Adobe Connect “virtual classroom space,” can — according to organizers — be accessed from any computer with an internet connection. Participants will need to register to get a URL for the classroom “location.”

Register here.

Sonallah Ibrahim — as Elliott Colla writes in a recent piece for Jadaliyya — has been “arguably the most politically and aesthetically autonomous writer working in Egypt” over the last several decades. So what does it mean when Ibrahim, like more than a hundred other Egyptian authors, signs on to a public statement declaring the Muslim Brotherhood an unpatriotic organization? Colla re-reads:

In particular, Colla re-reads Ibrahim’s most recent novel, Ice (2011), a novel structured around the life of an Egyptian living in Moscow in the fall and winter of 1973.

Of the novel, Colla writes: “The prose is flat, and intentionally encumbered by awkward transliterations of Russian words typographically set apart from the rest of the Arabic text. Characters do not learn, grow or become more complicated.”

This cold, alienated novel is set at the crossroads of revolutions (anti-colonial, free love) and counter-revolutions (Soviet corruption and betrayal of anti-colonial movements, the infitah, the October War). As Colla notes, Russia’s own October revolution is by the 1970s just a shadow. “Empty stores, black market blue jeans, paper underwear, cheap vodka, KGB repression, and above all, the forced ritual of comradely address (tovarich)—these, and little else, are the lasting accomplishments of revolutionary culture as it appears in the novel.”

From a re-reading of Ice, Colla goes back to January 25, 2011, when the book was (coincidentally) released, and to Ibrahim’s most recent statements. But instead of re-reading the novel for signs of “illiberalism,” Colla questions the revolutionary narrative observers have been using to understand recent events. He refers in particular to David Scott’s criticism of the romantic narrative of triumphant, progressive history.

So: If not “revolutionary,” triumphant and progressive, then what sort of history is Ibrahim’s? Colla suggests that — despite or alongside Ibrahim’s personal activism — his novels are deeply pessimistic, more tragic than tragedies. They are a form of satire, he writes, that is the opposite of redemptive, “a drama of diredemption.” As Colla notes, Zaat and Honor end “in the Sadat and Mubarak eras: vicious laissez-faire capitalism, rampant corruption, the wholesale import of Saudi culture, the ascendency of Salafist Islam, the expansion of state torture, increasing sexual repression, and the collapse of the nationalist middle class.”

Colla suggests — through a reading of most of Ibrahim’s major works — that Ibrahim could be “a novelist of lost causes,” a la Waguih Ghali.

Recently, I re-read Ibrahim’s “Across Three Beds in the Afternoon” (“بعد الظهر عبر ثلاثة أسرة”), an early work, from the collection The Smell of It and Other Stories. The story is certainly satire — and even a bit slapstick — although also painful, cramped, and bitter. When Sayyid’s father asks him if he really needs to change the universe, it’s not about the “ten minutes exchange of fire” mentioned in the story, nor about political activism. Instead, it’s about an office battle over how Arabic dates should be written. Sayyid is a man who will clearly never grow up, part of a family where the daughter is estranged, where the parents will likely never see their grandchild. It is a story where time feels circular, where the same things seem to happen endlessly. It finishes with: “What will you feed us tonight?”

This story, too, could be read as a non-redemptive satire. But whether Colla’s re-reading goes anywhere towards explaining Ibrahim’s personal actions — I haven’t any idea. In any case, his work remains a tremendously rich vein for imagining life outside the center of Empire.

Yes, he’s that Elliott Colla. And that Elliott Colla, too.

Raphael Cormack (@RaphaelCormack) reviews Ashraf al-Khamaysi’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF)-longlisted God’s Land of Exile. This timeless-feeling novel, he says, has earned its place on the longlist.

By Raphael Cormack

“I’m not afraid of dying, I’m afraid of being buried.” So declares Hijazi, the main character in Ashraf al-Khamaysi’s IPAF-longlisted God’s Land of Exile. The novel starts with a dream in which a monk informs Hajizi that he has just three days left to live, which rather rattles our protagonist. It is not the act of interment itself that frightens him but that of ceasing to be. The prospect of being left out to be eaten by dogs and vultures is just as bad and no doubt he would feel the same about any other form of corporeal disposal.

Hajizi, at the age of at least 100 years, just wants to keep on living with in his village with his family and small group of close friends. He contemplates how he can stay around even after he’s dead, perhaps just propping up his body in front of his house. “If I can’t live with them alive, I’ll just have to live with them as a dead man.”

The philosopher Lucretius tried to rid people of the fear of death by telling us that when you die your atoms merely assimilate back into the universe as your consciousness disappears. But he did not seem to understand that this is the very thing that people are afraid of. Hijazi, having heard that Christ was resurrected after death and that Christians are promised life after death, goes to visit a group of monks. But they cannot dispel his fear either. Why, he asks, if Christians rise again after death are there so many graveyards in Assiut full of Christians? Hijazi would not be the kind of man who says ‘Death is just another part of life’. The truth, for him, it is the precise opposite.

Hajizi would not be the kind of man who says ‘Death is just another part of life’. The truth, for him, it is the precise opposite.

Still, talking about death means talking about life, and al-Khamaisi’s multi-layered story allows its numerous characters ample time to expand upon their own lives. The novel is centred on the small village of al-Wa’ara, which is itself — between a drying up well and government plans to build a road which will alter their way of life entirely — a dying village. Time and narratives shift and intermingle as we hear the stories of Hijazi’s old comrades Ghanima and Sa’adun, his wife Sarira and their son and grandchildren, and the old monk Yoannis, amongst others. An ethereal atmosphere is constructed by touches of magic realism, stories repeated from several angles, and the fact that two of the main characters (Ghanima and Sa’adun) have died shortly before Hajizi’s dream.

This rarely gets confusing but the slow pace could frustrate readers more fond of strong narrative drive.

It is in this slow pace and the multiple perspectives that the greatest strength of this book lies.

It is in this slow pace and the multiple perspectives that the greatest strength of this book lies. Ample time is given to the players to say their piece: from a story about a bird trapped in a train carriage with an Englishman and his Egyptian servant, to the death of Sa’adun’s wife and child in a house-fire, via a misogynistic monk and Hajizi’s grandson carving an idol to his young lover.

Religion, love, sex, marriage, death, war, and money are all covered and the characters are allowed to expand at length. One of my particular joys of the book is listening to Ghanima’s long winded and frequently embellished anecdotes. It turns out that, despite all of Hajizi’s fear of death he is the one who has least enjoyed the pleasure of life. He is a man with so little curiosity in life that the one time he went to the sea, although he was close enough to smell it and hear the crash of the waves, he did not bother to actually see it with its own eyes. Despite the well-drawn male characters, it would have perhaps given a fuller picture if the female character were given a little more space (not that they were totally absent).

Ashraf al-Khamaysi’s book is very deserving of its place on the IPAF longlist.

Unlike many of the other IPAF nominees, this novel makes no specific references to any political situations or events. It is set in a fictional village and it is only by very peripheral references like the 60 years that have passed since al-Alamein that one can assign a date to any of the events. The frequent mystical and historical events also contribute to the sense of timelessness that pervades the narrative.

Ashraf al-Khamaysi’s book is very deserving of its place on the IPAF longlist. The novel’s delicate prose is a fine medium for both the sacred and profane stories contained within. The ending was, unfortunately, perhaps the most underwhelming part. For a novel concerned with death, though, this seems rather apt.

Raphael Cormack is a PhD student at Edinburgh University working on 19th and 20th Century Egyptian Literature. His blog is http://ergamegala.wordpress.com/

Raphael Cormack sat down with Egyptian novelist and short-story writer Ashraf al-Khamaisi, to talk about writing, life, and his International Prize for Arabic Fiction-longlisted God’s Land of Exile.

The interview in its entirety is on SoundCloud. Below, Cormack has extracted and summarized a few moments from the interview:

Photo credit: Raphael Cormack.

Raphael Cormack: We are talking today with Ashraf al-Khamaisi about his book God’s Places of Exile, which made it on to the long list for the Arabic Booker Prize.

Ashraf al-Khamaisi: Hello. Firstly, I would like to I am happy to be doing my first interview with ‘the other’, from my perspective.

RC: When did you become interested in writing and literature?

AK: I first became interested in writing in the third year of secondary school. I took a story I had written to my Arabic teacher, who was delighted. My teacher told me to read Naguib Mahfouz and read Tawfiq al-Hakim. When I was 18 years old, I entered a contest judged by Naguib Mahfouz and took first place. So Naguib Mahfouz, the international writer, shook me by the hand and liked my story! …

My first real appearance was in the first issue of the [literary] paper Akhbar al-Adab. On the right hand page was the Iraqi poet Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayati, and on the left hand page Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad was on top and Ashraf al-Khamaysi below. After this I published stories in lots of newspapers and magazines including al-Gumhorriyya, Qisa, and more. [Then, in 1994 he was one of the winners of Akhbar al-Adab’s story competition, again judged by Naguib Mahfouz. His first novel The Idol (al-Sanam) was published in 1999 and his latest novel God’s Land of Exile was published in 2013]

…

RC: The themes of this novel are more philosophical than, for instance, political. Can you talk a little bit about the ideas in it.

AK: For me, the great issue in my life is the issue of death. If we go back to my first novel, al-Sanam, was the first time I covered the question: how do we conquer death? This novel (God’s Land of Exile) goes into this subject more deeply… For Hajizi the problem is death is “forgetting,” not with death itself. He doesn’t want to be forgotten and the symbol of forgetting is the tomb, burial. He doesn’t mind dying but he wants to stay around afterwards. He wants his corpse to stay. How come we make rooms for corn, for animals like cattle, and for books? We should make a room in the middle of the house for the dead! …

RC: Are you afraid of death?

AK: No, people who are afraid of death don’t live their lives. I’m the opposite … live every moment in your life and you won’t truly die.

…

RC: One of the good things about the Arabic Booker is the possibility of translation into other languages. Could you talk a little bit about translation?

AK: I am not one of those writers who writes only for his own country. I want to talk to everyone… My book does not want to emphasise historical events or the specific details of a place … My thinking is really global in every respect. It’s not about a [specific] war or anything like that, it’s a philosophical idea. It seems to me that all the great world novels are like this. Take Gabriel Garcia Marquez or [Paolo] Coelho. Great human ideas that I care about and someone who lives far away cares about, this is what the novel is about.

RC: Your novel is, then, both global and at the same time very Egyptian, and more specifically Upper Egyptian.

AK: It’s not Upper Egyptian, it’s Bedouin. …  About 20 years ago I spent some time in the desert so I know the atmosphere in the desert… I know its colour at sunset, its colour at sunrise, its colour in the middle of the day. I know the animals there and how they live… But sadness is sadness. An American feels the same sadness as someone from Africa. Yet still everyone has their own way of expressing sadness. The Bedouins express sadness in a particular way so I talked a lot with my Bedouin friends and they helped to describe the environment there.

…

RC: Finally, do you have a message for the readers of ArabLit?

AK: To the reader of ArabLit I say you should read Ashraf al-Khamaisi [laughs]. No, that’s just a bit of bravado.  What I mean is that Arabic literature has literature that is worth reading. There are outstanding writers: Naguib Mahfouz, is a man who gives a really true picture of Egypt. Yahya Haqqi has some amazing books. Outside Egypt there are some greats as well: Tayyeb Saleh, Abd al-Rahman al-Munif in Saudi, Ibrahim al-Koni in Libya, Mohammed Shukri in Morocco. These are outstanding writers. But we hope to keep going beyond these greats.

ArabLit and 7iber are jointly covering this year’s Internation Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) – in English and Arabic — beginning with reviews of the novels and interviews with longlisted novelists. We continue with Ashraf al-Khamaisi’s God’s Land of Exile, a book reviewer Raphael Cormack says has “earned its place on the longlist”:

Photo credit: Raphael Cormack.

Ashraf al-Khamaisi was born in Luxor, Egypt, in 1967 and currently works as an editor for Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida magazine. He is both an accomplished short-story writer and a novelist, and his story “The Four Wheels of the Hand-Pushed Cart” won first prize in a short story competition organised by Akhbar al-Adab. He has published three short story collections and two novels: The Idol (1999) and God’s Land of Exile (2013).

God’s Land of Exile is “set in ‘al-Wa’ara’, an imaginary oasis in the Egyptian desert of al-Wadi al-Jadid. The main character, Hajizi, is over 100 years old and has spent most of his life working with his father Shadid, embalming the corpses of animals. Disturbed by how the speed with which the living forget the dead, he longs for immortality and fears his own death and burial. … When two of his close friends have died, he has a vision of his own, imminent death and…contrives a plan to avoid burial. It is in his last moments that the Comforter arrives and shows him what he must do.”

A review from Raphael Cormack: ‘God’s Land of Exile’: Perspectives on Death

An interview with Cormack: Al-Khamaisi on Death, Writing, and Translation

The full audio of the interview on SoundCloud: Raphael Cormack interviews Ashraf al-Khamaisi, author of IPAF-longlisted God’s Land of Exile (Arabic)

The book on GoodReads: منافى الرب

Despite grief and anger over the deaths resulting from four bombings around the city, the third day of the Cairo International Book Fair was still packed with fair-goers. The bombings have resulted in at least five deaths, dozens of injuries, and severe damage to the Islamic Art Museum, where volunteers and staff are trying to rescue important artifacts before the ceilings collapse. Meanwhile, organizers announced that while the book fair wouldn’t close, any celebratory events would be postponed:

From the Islamic Art Museum. Photo credit: Egyptian Streets: http://egyptianstreets.com

Also, according to Ahram Online, the car bomb that gutted Cairo’s central police headquarters early Friday morning caused  structural damage to Egypt’s National Library and Archives, which is across the street from the apparently targeted building.

Ahram Online reported:

Minister of Culture Saber Arab told Ahram Online that all the NLA’s lighting and ventilation systems were completely destroyed, while the decorative facade, representative of Islamic architectural styles, had collapsed. He added that all showcases and furniture inside the building had also been badly damaged.

NLA head Abdul Nasser Hassan told Ahram Online that seven unique manuscripts and three rare scientific papyri had also been damaged.

Dozens have been injured in the four blasts, the first of which — at central Cairo police headquarters — was followed by smaller explosions in Dokki, Talbiya, and Haram.

Iman R. Abdulfattah, one of the contributors to  The Illustrated Guide to the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, said on Facebook:

I want to clarify that the images circulating on social media are of the interior of the National Library and not the Museum of Islamic Art (as far as I saw, no one was allowed inside the Museum but the police and inventorying committee comprised of staff members). While the two institutions share the same building, the Museum (Ministry of Antiquities) is accessed from Port Said Street, the street of the blast, and the National Library (Ministry of Culture) from around the corner on Muhammad Ali Street. This may seem like a trivial bit of information at the moment, but is important to consider because Museum and Library are institutions that are now under the management of two different government ministries/bureaucracies. Secondly, I cannot really speak about the damage to the National Library (I didn’t bother to go around the corner), but had access to the Museum because of my previous work there. Without exaggeration, the damage is really indescribable: unfortunately, many of the glass window panes were shattered as a result of the blast, including some of those on the side facade, that facing the Museum Garden; and the adjacent annex that was built to create space for the administrative offices after the renovation was also damaged, as was the main entrance of the Museum. There are also several potmarks on the main facade (built in 1904).

Despite rumors to the contrary, Ahmed Megahed, head of the General Egyptian Book Organization, which runs the Cairo International Book Fair, went on television to say that the fair would not close. He invited all Cairenes to come down to the fair.

Security at the book fair has been much increased this year, as fair-goers have noted:

According to the Egyptian Health Ministry, a further four people have been killed in clashes nationwide.

Those interested in helping out at the Islamic Art Museum should contact @monznomad.

Egyptian writer Muhammad Aladdin is the author of five novels and three short-story collections. In 2011, Akhbar al-Adab chose him as one of the most important Egyptian writers in the new millennium, and, in the same year, The Millions called him one of the ‘’Six Egyptian writers you don’t know but you should.” He talks about his fifth novel, which is just out, A Well-trained Stray:

ArabLit: There’s lots of chatter online about your new novel, A Well-trained Stray, coming soon from Dar al-Ain. What sort of launch events will you be doing?

Muhammad Aladdin: We will have a book signing starting at 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 1, in Al A’in partition in the Cairo International Book Fair.

AL: What can you tell us about the novel beyond the online synopsis (young man writing stories online, issues with a girl, absurdity of the times)? What do you think is the most interesting aspect of the book? Character, humor, structure…?

MA: Well, I guess all of what you said, mixed with a simpler yet sarcastic language, and for the first time I use Egyptian slang in the dialogue, which I really believe fits the story and flows with it. I have to say, too, of that book, it’s the characters I personally love the most, and I think they are something you’d remember after reading.

AL: Where did the idea come from? How did it coalesce? In what way do (and don’t) contemporary events intrude on the novel? Have any of the events since Jan 2011 changed how you write?

MA: I had an idea about writing about porno, and how we interact with it as a generation. That was around 2007 I guess, about a guy who has nothing to do but write erotic stories online. In the beginning, I had it in my mind that he would do it as a hobby, then five years later, I ran into an acquaintance, and he actually writes it professionally. I was telling him the idea, and he said “I do this for living!”

I had an idea about writing about porno, and how we interact with it as a generation. That was around 2007 I guess, about a guy who has nothing to do but write erotic stories online. In the beginning, I had it in my mind that he would do it as a hobby, then five years later, I ran into an acquaintance, and he actually writes it professionally. I was telling him the idea, and he said “I do this for living!”

Another two years passed, then I contacted him again for some data about how he did it, and for sure I told him I’d use it.
About contemporary events, I wanted it to stay away from things political; there’s only one scene in a cabaret with a bellydancer dancing to Tslam El Ayady. As on the social level, for sure one good leap the drama got was from elements of street fights we can see every day.  

AL: How was A Well-trained Stray different to write from The Gospel According to Adam, The Idol, your other previous works?

MA: I guess A Well-trained Stray has more of a “realistic” kick, the way it can be somehow a part of dirty realism. It has simpler language and more obvious humour. It is like “The Season of Migration to Arkidea” (my latest long story), I guess both the story and the novel marking a new drive for me, putting in mind that I guess I use the right language level on each piece. For me, you can’t write A Well-trained Stray with The Gospel According to Adam language level, and vice versa.

AL: There’s a great tradition of writers writing about writers. What sort of sort of opportunities did it offer you — writing about a writer?

MA: I already was going to write about a writer — in such different way — in my unfinished novel The Clown Complex. I published the first chapter in my blog in 2009. But for A Well-trained Stray, it is such different way of being “a writer”; yes he dreams about writing “high literature” or “winning the Nobel,” but you never see him actually writing these, only erotic stories, and how he theorising about it, but it wasn’t the main focus for real, I was really drowned by the dramatic line of the novel.

AL: If we grant that novels don’t come out of nowhere, and instead build off the worlds of other novels, where are you building from?

Well I’d agree in theory, but I can’t really find any specific novel I build from. The most evident thing I can think of is that I have built on our lives in the 90s, and our nightmares in 2013.

MA: Well I’d agree in theory, but I can’t really find any specific novel I build from. The most evident thing I can think of is that I have built on our lives in the 90s, and our nightmares in 2013.

AL: Is there an excerpt online people can read?

MA: Yes, some was published in the Tahrir news paper, like two excerpts, and some on the Apollo site. but you can still see three chapters excerpt from my blog, here: http://alaaeldin.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post_29.html

As we wait for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) shortlist February 10, we continue to look at the 16 novels on the longlist. Nesreen Salem reviews Ibrahim Abdelmeguid’s Clouds Over Alexandria (which could also be Alexandria in a Cloud), which closes out his Alexandria trilogy:

By Nesreen Salem

Clouds Over Alexandria, Ibrahim Abdelmeguid’s fourteenth novel, explores the political turmoil that clouded Egypt during the reign of Anwar el Sadat. In this, one cannot help but hear and see the echoes of the popular January 25 2011 uprising and the parallels between the two eras, which are arguably connected in a viscous historical cycle.

Nader, a young university student, poet and socialist, leads the narrative with his sweetheart, Yara; a delicate, fragile girl who is in love with his words as much as he is in love with her vulnerability. Alongside the couple is another couple: Hassan and Cariman; the former a resident of Mansoura who studies in Alexandria, while Cariman, Yara’s best friend, fights battles of her own with her Islamist yet sexually perverted stepfather.

We are introduced to Nader’s friends and roommates: Essa; , an Italian-heritage aficionado and a mature university student who moves from one faculty to the next to spread the socialist manifesto, ; Hassan; , an aspiring playwright; Ahmed, a roommate who passes his time womanizing even after donning a beard and rose beads; and Bishr; , a seemingly regular guy whose only outlet for his frustration is the two prostitutes who live in the flat below them. At first, these young people appear to be typical Egyptian youth: ambitious yet curbed by poverty, enthusiastic yet helpless. After being targeted by the secret police, they decide to become underground socialists. Even Yara surprises Nader with her feistiness once she’s introduced to their secret group.

The characters are interesting, and though they’re not well-developed due to the volume of characters in this novel, there is a certain pull to their narratives. Perhaps Abdelmaguid Abdelmeguid meant them to be symbols or archetypes rather than characters in their own right. And though they can be vaguely recognized as such, it has made sympathizing with their lives and tribulations difficult. Through their eyes, we see how the culture of Alexandria gradually changes, first through el Sadat’s new capitalist policies, and second through the introduction of Islamic ideology. But his writing constantly pulls us back from that present moment to a time when Alexandria was a cosmopolitan capital, brimming with Europeans and Jews whose prints could still be seen in the architecture of the buildings. Alas, the only memory of them is left in their cemeteries.

Reading the plot while we are watching the Arab Spring unfold, makes the events feel quite predictable. They reach a peak when people decide to revolt, and Nader and his friends find themselves in prison for six months. When they leave, their lives are never the same and their dreams are no longer tenable.

The prose is interspersed with Nader’s poetry, as well as song lyrics from classic Egyptian music, providing a palpable sense of nostalgia that permeates the narrative. Nawal, a singer and owner of a nightclub the protagonists frequent, also provides a suitable soundtrack to the novel through her classical singing and reminiscences.

The novel concludes as tragically as is expected: Yara is lost to Nader forever, as she has been forced to marry the very officer who interrogated him. Before she disappears, we see her as a dying petal; a far cry from the blooming rose she once was. Cariman attempts to end her life by drowning in the Mediterranean, but fails. We learn she was pregnant at the time (though we are never told who impregnated her) and that she has attempted to kill her stepfather.

The novel ends with Nader’s powerful poetic eulogy to Yara which reads like an epitaph to Alexandria. The loss of Yara is the loss of his sense of home and country. Similarly, Cariman’s ordeal mirrors the Islamists’ takeover of Egyptian life and politics, which even after many attempts, could not be stopped.

Abdelmaguid’s Abdelmeguid’s nostalgia for a once-upon-a-time thriving cosmopolitan Alexandria permeates his narrative. He sees Alexandria as a beacon that was put out by 20th century ruling regimes and emerging Islamists. His plot is suffused with too many characters, all on the verge of leaving Alexandria, for there is nothing left for them there but the buildings and the sea.

I am fortunate to have been following recent events in Egypt to fill in some of the gaps; however, as an Egyptian and an Alexandrian, I am left wondering why things had to end as hopelessly as they did. The novel left me with feelings of anger and frustration, not because the characters deserved better (because I don’t feel sympathetic enough towards them to feel that way) but because the reader deserved to sink into the depth of fewer characters who potentially could have enriched the reader’s experience of the tragedy that is modern Egyptian history.

Nesreen Salem has an MA in Creative Writing. She is a doctoral student at University of Essex, a writer, & the UK representative for the Egyptian Women’s Union. 

More:

Mohga Hassib’s interview with Abdelmeguid: ‘The Hero Is the City’

Previously featured novels:

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’God’s Land of Exile’

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’366′

Mohga Hassib interviewed celebrated Egyptian novelist Ibrahim Abdelmeguid about his International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF)-longlisted novel, Clouds Over Alexandria, his philosophy on writing, and how he sees contemporary Alexandria.  

Mohga Hassib: What drove you to write a trilogy about Alexandria and how did the idea come to you? Did you know from the beginning that it was going to be a trilogy?

Photo tweeted out by the author.

Ibrahim Abdelmeguid: After I wrote No One Sleeps in Alexandria, where its events revolve around World War Two, I realized that the city underwent three major historical periods. The first period was the great historical Alexandria as a cosmopolitan world city, on which this novel has a window despite the horrors of the Second World War. Alexandria was the city of religious and ethnic tolerance. Being born and raised in Alexandria, I witnessed the transformation of the city into an Egyptian one after the 1956 Suez Crisis, when all the expatriates left because of the Gamal Abdel Nasser’s policy slogan of political and economic liberalization.

No one disagrees about this motto, but what accompanied it from the migration of expatriates and abandonment of its global spirit was just wrong. Alexandria became a true Egyptian city, but gradually lost its status as a global city. However, the city’s history was still present and its people still aware of the great Mediterranean city’s stature, overlooking Egypt and the Mediterranean nations. This sea was its vital source, even though its rulers didn’t know that.

The novel Birds of Amber characterizes this second period. Then the third period was in the seventies of the last century, where President Sadat formed a coalition with the backward Islamist movement, and bigoted Wahhabi and Salafi thought infiltrated the city. This made it lose its global and Egyptian spirit together and become exposed to the desert culture. The three novels are about the city in three different major transitions, and each novel could be read separately. The hero is the city. Therefore, the idea of a trilogy came to me after I wrote No One Sleeps in Alexandria.

MH: You won several awards before, all of which are local ones. What do you think of the IPAF, which has been controversial with some Egyptian authors, who have refused to allow their work to be nominated. Do you think the IPAF is a force for good in Arabic literature, or more mixed?

IA: Essentially, it is the publishers who apply for the Booker Prize. The biggest criticism was directed to it years ago when the judging committee was previously known while it was supposed to be confidential until the shortlist was announced. After that, this never recurred.

In the end, any prize is an advantage for Arabic literature. The important thing is for the selection criteria to be of the highest possible rank. And I say “possible” because people don’t always agree on creativity. Art is not like science. Recently, prizes became a contributor to the increase of book sales, which is a good thing.

MH: What got you interested in revisiting this specific historical period of Alexandria, does it have a particular resonance?

The city has lost its broadmindedness and plurality which was its most prominent feature throughout history. And because it is my city, and I have witnessed this change along with my generation, we have contributed in resisting this intended retardation and we still are.

IA: Simply because the city lost its Egyptian and global spirit together. Now, after the Jan. 25 Revolution, the city may awaken in the face of the intentional retardation that was inflicted by the previous regimes in its horrific coalition with the backward movements under the slogan of religion. The city has lost its broadmindedness and plurality which was its most prominent feature throughout history. And because it is my city, and I have witnessed this change along with my generation, we have contributed in resisting this intended retardation and we still are.

MH: You mention a lot of Russian writers and novelists, why Russians? Is there some particular shared ground between how you see Egypt and the works of Russian writers?

IA: I have read a lot of global literature in my youth and still do. I absolutely fell in love with Russian novelists as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov and poets like Mayakovski, Yesenin, and Alexander Blok. I read Mayakovski’s “A Cloud in Trousers” in English when I was sixteen, and I almost memorized it. I discovered that it was originally titled “The Thirteenth Apostle;” however, that title was rejected by the Russian censor, given there are twelve apostles. So the poet changed its title to “A Cloud in Trousers,” intending himself to be the cloud embodying a fading persona.

My novel’s protagonist is a poet who is in love with Mayakovski and borrows from him the cloud over the city, which he considers is fading, too. The cloud, not the city. I was struck by the predictive dialogue of one if the novel’s heroes, and the novel was handed over for publishing in 2012: “The people behind this trend which they call Islamic rule will reach power, but the people will oust them after a very short period of time. A year at the most and society will return to its authentic Egyptianness, unfamiliar to extremism nor to the denial of other religions and the Other.” I was surprised by the readers and the fans of this excerpt, which was written nine months before the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood.

MH: As a philosophy major, how do you see philosophical questions appearing in your work? Have your studies in some way shaped your novel-writing? Are you an existentialist?

IA: Philosophy was an important tributary to my writing along with my life experiences, studies, and literary readings. I intentionally chose to major in philosophy to understand the major issues which occupied the human mind. I could have majored in Arabic or the English language, but I chose philosophy for that reason. Also because I knew that Naguib Mahfouz studied philosophy, and this was patent in his texts and its characters. Marxism occupied a certain period of my life, since I was part of the opposition to Sadat’s social and economic policy, which sank the country and handed it over to thieves, as well as his alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.

However, existentialism was the nearest to my soul. Particularly the theme of alienation. Added to that, there is my life amongst the marginalized who cannot create their own life — everything around them is bigger and stronger than them, determining the way they live.

Also, I have lived my life in vast infinite places yet not close to these places. 

Also, I have lived my life in vast infinite places yet not close to these places. We lived in Karmouz district which is close to Mahmudiya Canal, which used to be a route for river transport, where strangers arrived in ships and disappeared in a world that I realized was larger than what we see around us. I also lived close to Lake Maryout, where we went fishing in our youth and saw the vastness of the place where people disappeared like they were never present. In addition, my father worked on the railroads and he used to take me with him on his trips during the school holidays to the western desert where I saw a span and no one was around me. This always made me sense the diminutiveness of man in this universe.

Marxism also helped me write — I saw through it how man is like a cog in a magnificent machine, which profits the Capitalists. Yes, existentialism to me was the shore I leaned on despite my political opposition to my surroundings.

MH: In the novel Clouds Over Alexandria, you describe the Nasserist rule as communist, whilst many others describe it as socialist, why do you choose to call it communist? How do you see the difference?

IA: I do not recall labeling the Nasserist regime as communist. Perhaps I described it as dictatorial and totalitarian which is a communist feature. But of course I know it was not a communist in the comprehensive sense. The novel depicts the way this regime opposed the communists and detained them. The novel’s heroes are adolescents, not complete communists, and they are detained from time to time by the regime.

One of the heroines is Nawal, previously accused of communism, and one of its heroes is Issa Salmawy, a former communist who suffered during his detainment by Gamal Abdel Nasser. However, in the novel, he opposes the Sadat regime, which opened its door to the backward Wahhabi religious movement.

MH: In writing this novel, did you rely more on memory or historical references?

IA: I relied on memory to a large extent because I lived it and my soul was divided amongst its characters. However, I relied on the newspapers for documentation of events, and relied on books in providing accurate information on certain places. These sources are all cited in the novel. I did this before in my two previous novels, No One Sleeps in Alexandria and Birds of Amber.

MH: Where you ever detained for political reasons during Sadat’s regime?

 This was funny. Mubarak did not differ from Sadat in concocting charges against the leftist opposition or the intelligentsia in general. I remember laughing when state security forces stormed my house and told the official “you are very late.”

IA: I was never detained during Sadat’s rule; however, this is ironically funny, I was detained during Mubarak’s rule in 1985 and accused of belonging to the Trotsky Organization. This was funny. Mubarak did not differ from Sadat in concocting charges against the leftist opposition or the intelligentsia in general. I remember laughing when state security forces stormed my house and told the official “you are very late.”

MH: Do you see political detainment as having influenced the writers of the seventies? 

IA: I am sure that the political detainment has left its mark on writers and some of their works in the novel and the short story; however, this did not impede our innovation in literary form. Meaning, politics did not make us write direct literature. This is one of the major features of writing, even though our life is full of struggle and opposition, yet we are aware that at the end literature is a spiritual more than it is a mental activity. Writing does not have to be journalistic nor direct. Art is not politics.

MH: The last poem by Nader in the novel says: “My story of lost love intertwines with the society that was once happy.” Does Yara stand in for a larger part of society? Is she also Egypt’s “lost love”?

IA: I am leaning towards Yara being Egypt’s lost love, but it is up to the reader at the end. Some readers considered her symbolic of Egypt and Alexandria, others considered Kariman, and not Yara, to be an embodiment Alexandria and Egypt, especially since she suffered from her lying Salafi stepfather. Yara has suffered from the police and state security and Kariman suffered from the other side of the ugly system.

MH: How did you put together these characters? How did you get to know them? 

Characters about whom the writer has never thought before come and go during the writing process. At the end, my soul, culture and knowledge was divided amongst all of them, though the character of Nader is a poet, and he has taken the biggest share. 

IA: Surely I met some of these characters in real life and some of them were colleagues during university. But also I met some of the characters as mere acquaintances away from my personal life and from the literary work itself during writing. Characters about whom the writer has never thought before come and go during the writing process. At the end, my soul, culture and knowledge was divided amongst all of them, though the character of Nader is a poet, and he has taken the biggest share. This share is from my soul.

MH: The novel goes back to the beginning of the religious movement in Egypt. As a writer and a witness to several political uprisings, how does your novel resonate with contemporary Egypt? Are there similarities between then and now?

IA: Like I mentioned earlier, the novel has an unintentional prophecy of what occurred in Egypt during the seventies until now. As I mentioned, the readers guided me to that prophecy.

MH: The novel focuses on the fading identity of cosmopolitan Alexandria. How is it different from Alexandria now?

IA: There is a huge difference. Cosmopolitan Alexandria is a city of the world, with Egyptians, foreigners, Muslims, Christians and all the ethnicities and religions. Since the seventies, Alexandria became a Wahhabi city that does not even acknowledge the Christian Egyptians, although the Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the Orthodox church of the whole world before Islam. Alexandria was a piece from Europe in food, clothes, architecture and more that were mentioned in the novel.

It was all lost and the city became fanatic and uptight in everything. Alexandria was the first city to have a cinematic film screened in 1895: After it was screened in France, it was for the Lumiere Brothers. Later, the city’s movie theatres were demolished to be replaced by buildings, malls and workshops. The dancing clubs were destroyed and music became forbidden in public gardens like the olden days. Women’s fashionable clothes were banned and substituted by veils and niqab, which is all mentioned in the novel. Alexandria was transformed from a city that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to a city that overlooks the Arabian Desert.

MH: Would you like to share any sneak peeks from your upcoming project?

IA: My next project is a novel that will be released this week [on Saturday, February 1], about Cairo, titled This is Cairo. It is an overview of Cairo in the seventies and the way the strange hero sees it for the first time and how he lived there.

Currently, I am on a recess for 10 months to focus on my weekly articles about our present state, but I have not thought about my next novel. Finishing a novel makes me wait for months to return to my beautiful fictional world.

Mohga Hassib is an English and Comparative Literature graduate student at American University in Cairo and teaches academic writing at Misr International University. She has also been president and vice president of the AUC’s literature club.

More:

Nesreen Salem’s review of Clouds Over Alexandria: An Overpopulated Requiem for a City

Previously featured novels:

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’God’s Land of Exile’

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’366′

ArabLit and 7iber are jointly covering this year’s International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) – in English and Arabic — beginning with reviews of the novels and interviews with longlisted novelists. We continue with Ibrahim Abdelmeguid’s Clouds Over Alexandria, a book that Abdelmeguids says follows the time when “President Sadat formed a coalition with the backward Islamist movement, and bigoted Wahhabi and Salafi thought infiltrated the city.”

Ibrahim Abdelmeguid was born in 1946, just after WWII, in Alexandria, Egypt. He got his BA in philosophy from Alexandria University and left to live in Cairo in 1975. He is the author of 14 novels and five short story collections. A number of his novels have been translated into English, including: Distant Train, The Other Place, and the first two novels in his Alexandria trilogy: No One Sleeps in Alexandria and Birds of Amber. 

Abdelmeguid has received both the Egyptian State Prize for Literature and the Sawiris Prize for his novel In Every Week there is a Friday (2009).

Clouds Over Alexandria takes place in the 1970s, when “the cosmopolitan spirit which has characterised the city throughout history has disappeared. In place of the melting pot of ethnicities, religions and cultures comes intolerance and hatred, destroying Alexandria’s secular traditions.”

Mohga Hassib’s interview with Abdelmeguid: ‘The Hero Is the City’

Nesreen Salem’s review of Clouds Over Alexandria: An Overpopulated Requiem for a City

For those in Cairo, Abdelmeguid is signing his new novel, This is Cairo, at the Cairo Book Fair at 4 p.m. this Saturday at the Dar al-Mirsiyya al-Libnaniyya booth.

Previously featured novels:

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’God’s Land of Exile’

International Prize for Arabic Fiction Shortlist Countdown: Reading ’366′

In a public facebook post, Banipal-prize-winning translator Jonathan Wright announced that he had settled his dispute with Random House over work done on Alaa al-Aswany’s Automobile Club:

Wright, who was suing the publisher in English courts, noted that the publisher offered to settle just a few days after the lawsuit “landed on their desks.”

In an open letter posted on his blog last year, Wright went into painstaking detail about his previous relationship with al-Aswany, how Wright was engaged to translate al-Aswany’s most recent novel, and how that translational relationship went sour. Wright noted that, although he had completed a fair piece of work, he was not compensated for it when al-Aswany decided to switch translators midstream.

On al-Aswany’s Automobile Club:

From Ahram Online: Al-Aswany weaves threads through Egypt’s revolutions

This month, Words Without Borders launched its International Graphic Novels: Volume VIIII, which features an excerpt from Donia Maher, Ganzeer, and Ahmed Nady’s “The Apartment in Bab El Louk,” trans. brilliantly by Elisabeth Jaquette.

The collaborative project is a gorgeous look at life in Bab El-Louk. You can see it here. Ganzeer answered a few questions about how it came about, and what he plans to do next.

AL: How did this collaboration come about? How did it “work”? Did you talk it out, or just each do your part?

G: Pretty simple. Donia sent me her text, which I read and enjoyed. She did know that she wanted the visual to very much aid in the storytelling and not just be a meaningless add-on, but she did give me full control over the style and direction. I also had full control over what text would be on which page, how much text there would be, the whole thing. The very last part of her text was written in entirely in dialogue, no prose, to which she thought would be great if illustrated comic book style by the great Ahmed Nady. Upon reading it, I totally agreed that Nady would be great for that last bit, which to get him to do I had to bring him over to my place and pull a couple of all-nighters that were very much powered by delivered pizzas.

AL: What’s inspired your ideas about what’s possible in a “graphic novel”? Indeed, it neither follows the rules of telling a story (with rising & falling action / character development) nor of an ordinary graphic novel (with panels, sparse text, progressive action). It’s much more like a fabulous noir poem, or a video installation… Are there particular art forms that give you inspiration?

G: I would never attempt to pass “The Apartment in Bab El-Louk” as a graphic novel or anything remotely close to it. Just because there are drawings, doesn’t make it a comic book or graphic novel. The sequentiality that would exist on a singular page of your typical graphic novel is nowhere to be seen in this particular book, save for the very last nine pages illustrated by Ahmad Nady. An entire story told in full-page splashes just isn’t a graphic novel. The narration is a little bit more designy, making the book more of a visual album of sorts. Or as you eloquently put it: “a fabulous noir poem.”

The reason for this approach is very much due to Donia’s text, which had it been published without the visuals could not be categorized as a novella, because you don’t have that kind of narration that is typical of stories. It reads more like a reflective prose of some sort. Which I feel required a similar visual language to match it, and one in which the text would very much be a part of the image. This kind of marriage of reflective text and image requires a better understanding of design more so than illustration. Luckily, I get my inspiration from all kinds of mediums. I just love visual communication in all its forms.

AL: Where are you going next? Will you respond to the clamorous fans demanding you publish a graphic novel, trans. into many world languages?

G: I’m still struggling to free up the time and peace of mind to work on graphic novel. Or two. It’s sad because there’s already interest from a number of local publishers. Creating a graphic novel, however, is a very timely process, and publishers here don’t pay any advances, and I find it especially difficult to work on more than one thing at once, so the only way I’d be able to put out a graphic novel was if I didn’t have to worry about rent money or food for a good year. Maybe 2015? Maybe never?

Yemeni journalist Fras Shamsan and Bahraini journalist Firas Mohamed Abdel Hamid Mohamed were both apparently arrested at this year’s Cairo International Book Fair for filming and possessing cameras:

Journalist Mohamed Abdelfattah and others shared photos of Shamsan today on twitter. Abdelfattah said that the Yemeni journalist is being detained after “reportedly filming at Cairo book fair.”

Earlier this week, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) announced that Nasr City prosecution had jailed Bahraini journalist Firas Mohamed for “four days pending investigation over charges of possessing recordings, videos and camera.”

According to ANHRI, “Security forces arrested the journalist at Cairo International Book Fair, on the 1st of February, while he was doing a press report about the book fair for a cultural website.”

Elsewhere at the fair, business went on as usual, and there seemed to be an uptick in visitors — with the exception of January 25 — over the previous two years. There were several big events, including the launch of Kotobi.Com, a new Vodafone webstore where Arabic e-books can be purchased and downloaded all over the world.

A number of new books were released — including Muhammad Aladdin’s A Well-trained Stray, Essam Youssef’s Two Officers, and Ibrahim Abdelmeguid’s This is Cairo, among many others. Mohga Hassib, who interviewed Ibrahim Abdelmeguid about his International Prize for Arabic Fiction-longlisted novel Clouds Over Alexandria, stopped by the signing of his new book. 

Photo credit: Mohga Hassib.

Essam Youssef was also there, signing a copy of his old book — 1/4 Gram — for a fan:

Photo credit: Mohga Hassib.

The book blogger Michelle Lancaster (@txbooklover) — seen below poking through the book stalls and getting a book signed — also took her first visit to the Cairo fair, and she said she was “most impressed by the egalitarian atmosphere of the book fair. It seems the government has done a good job of keeping it accessible for all socio-economic levels. It cost one Egyptian pound to get in. Book fairs here in the US tend to take themselves very seriously, dry and rather academic or entirely ‘too cool.’ The book fair in Cairo reminded me of the state fair here in Texas: music and food and entire families having a great time together.”

Lancaster also note that a young woman in security “searched my bag and found the camera then took me over to security and they examined the camera.” 

Photo credit: Michelle Lancaster.

At the central pavilion:

Photo credit: Michelle Lancaster.

There was also a much higher security and army presence at this year’s fair:

Other moments from the fair:

Syrian publishers told Ahram Online‘s Mohammed Saad that they came to the Cairo Book fair “because we are still alive.” 

Ganzeer’s “priceless finds” at the Cairo International Book Fair. 

At the book fair, Kuwait — this year’s guest of honor — announced a plan to sponsor Egyptians. 

Kuwait also organized a history of Egyptian caricatures, among other things

In Al-Ahram Weekly, Noha Moustafa writes about the fair and how “the economic slowdown over the past three years has brought major changes to the publishing industry.”

As in previous years, the giant Saudi pavilion saw heavy turnout, according to the Saudi publication Arab News.

Abdul-Rahman al-Abnudi, born in the southern city of Qena in 1938, is one of the most important contemporary Egyptian colloquial poets. His work often returns to the joys and sorrows of the marginalized, and he has also written poetry for those struggling for positive change, including for imprisoned Alaa Abdelfattah (“The Prisoners’ Laughter”):

Although a number of al-Abnudi’s poems have been translated, mostly they have been translated in a rough and ready way by fans. “The Usual Sorrows,” which Cairokee adapted into the song “We are the People,” has also been so translated. Here, journalist Ahmed Aboul Enein gives the lyrics’ translation a go:

The Usual Sorrows

By Abdul Rahman al-Abnudi

trans. Ahmed Aboul Enein

From all corners of silent cities
Thousands of youth, crawling,
calling for the death of dawn.
Waiting dawn after dawn,
For the killing to stop,
Or at least for the grip to loosen.
And so they marched to demand
The grip be gripped,
And the palm extended.

Blood

Turned the square upside down,
As though it were molten copper.

I know of cities despised by light
And the grave that slumbers solemnly,
I know of shame and the birth of fire
And the prison in my heart has no walls.

I told him “No sir, I’m sorry,”
My country is worth the spring and morning.
The hum of spring still in my heart
The light of a lantern still in my voice.
The world still lives, it comes and goes,
Differentiating between dark and light.
No matter how much my country loses it’s never lost
Only a vast square is lost

We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips
We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips

I can only mourn my friends at night,
For I am intimate with the moon
And in it many months I’ve confided.
He who killed me is still at large,
And on the night of the funeral,
The moon was oblivious, it didn’t come
The star was ecstatic, however
It did not stop dancing in or shaking.
And when I passed away,
The door crowded, I was surrounded by loved ones
This one washes, this one shrouds, that one readies earth
I had asked that only the shoulders of brothers carry me
Brothers who ate together,
No treason or traitor among them.
Else my coffin mustn’t go through the door,
Oh how wonderful, to slumber on the shoulders of your friends,
To know who is true to you and who lies,
To look for the noblest of faces
In the time of treachery

We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips
We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips

[ABNOUDY VOICE OVER]

I looked around, thinking I’m amongst friends
Come see the world with my eyes,
The distractions of life prevented us from looking
And despite the nobility of pain and patience
We learned things, not least of which was caution
And we slept for amazing years
Passing the nights of our awaited dream
And the markets filled with convoys
Selling the pus of illusions, and boats
Offering the nation up for sale on the curb
Alongside thinking, the hungry, spiders, the humiliation of hunger

[END ABNOUDY]

You’re stagnation, we’re progress
You steal food,
We build homes.
We are sound when you demand silence
Yes, sound when you demand silence
We are two peoples, two peoples, two peoples
Look at where one is and where the other is
The line between both is drawn here
You sold the land, its tools, and people
In the market of the world,
Stipped her clothes off.
She became bare
Face, back, stomach, chest
She rotted even before she died

We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips
We are the people
Who love beauty and are destined for the relentless path
We are the people
Who get stomped with boot and heel tips

[ABNOUDY VOICE OVER]

Even if I am alone now
Soon with time
Generations will visit this cell
And definitely there will be a generation
Unlike the others
One that understands when it sees
And does not fear when it understands
You are the traitors even if I get it wrong
Take your prison keys with you and leave me my country
My country is not your country
And so he left
And I told myself
No one serves you as much as your jailer

[END ABNOUDY]

Watch the video from Cairokee:

More from al-Abnudi:

“Yamna,” trans. Randa Aboubakr

“Al Midan,” trans. students in Dr. Samia Mehrez’s “Translating the Revolution”