Download or read book Karnak Cafe written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-05-04 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping and suspenseful novella from the Egyptian Nobel Prize-winner, three young friends survive interrogation by the secret police, only to find their lives poisoned by suspicion, fear, and betrayal. At a Cairo café in the 1960s, a legendary former belly dancer lovingly presides over a boisterous family of regulars, including a group of idealistic university students. One day, amid reports of a wave of arrests, three of the students disappear: the excitable Hilmi, his friend Ismail, and Ismail's beautiful girlfriend Zaynab. When they return months later, they are apparently unharmed and yet subtly and profoundly changed. It is only years later, after their lives have been further shattered, that the narrator pieces together the young people's horrific stories and learns how the government used them against one another. In a riveting final chapter, their torturer himself enters the Café and sits among his former victims, claiming a right to join their society of the disillusioned. Now translated into English for the first time, Naguib Mahfouz's tale of the insidious effects of government-sanctioned torture and the suspension of rights and freedoms in a time of crisis is shockingly contemporary.
Download or read book Sacred Language Ordinary People written by N. Haeri and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-01-03 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultures and politics of nations around the world may be understood (or misunderstood) in any number of ways. For the Arab world, language is the crucial link for a better understanding of both. Classical Arabic is the official language of all Arab states although it is not spoken as a mother tongue by any group of Arabs. As the language of the Qur'an, it is also considered to be sacred. For more than a century and a half, writers and institutions have been engaged in struggles to modernize Classical Arabic in order to render it into a language of contemporary life. What have been the achievements and failures of such attempts? Can Classical Arabic be sacred and contemporary at one and the same time? This book attempts to answer such questions through an interpretation of the role that language plays in shaping the relations between culture, politics, and religion in Egypt.
Download or read book The Day the Leader Was Killed written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2008-11-26 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Nobel Prize laureate and author of the acclaimed Cairo Trilogy, a beguiling and artfully compact novel set in Sadat's Egypt. The time is 1981, Anwar al-Sadat is president, and Egypt is lurching into the modern world. Set against this backdrop, The Day the Leader Was Killed relates the tale of a middle-class Cairene family. Rich with irony and infused with political undertones, the story is narrated alternately by the pious and mischievous family patriarch Muhtashimi Zayed, his hapless grandson Elwan, and Elwan's headstrong and beautiful fiancee Randa. The novel reaches its climax with the assassination of Sadat on October 6, 1981, an event around which the fictional plot is skillfully woven. The Day the Leader Was Killed brings us the essence of Mahfouz's genius and is further proof that he has, in the words of the Nobel citation, "formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind."
Download or read book The Final Hour written by محفوظ، نجيب، and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hamid Burhan, a retired government employee, and his loyal wife Saniya have built themselves a home in the quiet southern suburb of Helwan, where they raise their son and two daughters, expecting life to remain as blessed as it was in the photograph of the happy family at a picnic in a Nileside park in the early 1930s. Events in the wider world impinge wars, revolution, peace with Israel while Saniya and the old house in Helwan remain the bedrock of the family's values. But everyone else is buffeted in one way or another by the tumultuous processes of change in Egyptian politics and society. In this compact novel written in 1982, Naguib Mahfouz again uses a family saga, as he did in his Cairo Trilogy, to reflect on the processes of enormous social transformation that Egypt underwent in the space of a few generations in the twentieth century.
Download or read book The Quarter written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Saqi Books. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meet the people of Cairo's Gamaliya quarter. There is Nabqa, son of Adam the waterseller who can only speak truths; the beautiful and talented Tawhida who does not age with time; Ali Zaidan, the gambler, late to love; and Boss Saqr who stashes his money above the bath. A neighbourhood of demons, dancing and sweet halva, the quarter keeps quiet vigil over the secrets of all who live there. This collection by pre-eminent Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz was recently discovered among his old papers. Found with a slip of paper titled 'for publishing 1994', they are published here for the first time. Resplendent with Mahfouz's delicate and poignant observations of everyday happenings, these lively stories take the reader deep into the beating heart of Cairo.
Download or read book The Egyptian Coffeehouse written by Dalia Mostafa and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coffeehouse is a microcosm of the larger Egyptian society with its history of multiculturalism and great diversity. It is not only a social space which was created and shaped by the people over decades in their streets, neighbourhoods and cities, but it also occupies a sphere in the popular imagination full of stories, memories and social networks. Despite the coffeehouse's cultural centrality and socio-political importance in Egypt, academic research and publications on its significance remain sparse. This volume aims to fill this gap by presenting, for the first time in English, a full study analysing the importance of the coffeehouse as an urban phenomenon, with its cultural, historical, economic and political significance in contemporary Egyptian society. The volume shows how historically the coffeehouse has always played a key role as a commercial enterprise; and culturally, as a place for rich literary and artistic production which has multi-layered representations in Egyptian novels, cinema and popular music, amongst other genres. Economically, the coffeehouse has been vital for accessing job opportunities, especially for informal workers; in addition to having played a crucial role in political mobilisation during decisive historical events, as well as in recent years during the 2011 revolution and its aftermath. Through extended interviews with six residents in Cairo, the authors further examine the role and influence of the coffeehouse as a significant feature of contemporary Egyptian life and urban landscape.
Download or read book Otared written by Muḥammad Rabīʻ (Novelist) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arabic fiction.
Download or read book Stop Time written by Frank Conroy and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1977-02-24 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy's passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy's wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father's early death and a son's exhilarating escape into manhood.
Download or read book Working Days written by John Steinbeck and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1990-12-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during an astonishing burst of activity between June and October of 1938. Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion. The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions—of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American masterpiece.
Download or read book In the Time of Love written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2010-08-01 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love who can count its varieties, measure its force, uncover the masks it wears, or predict how it binds and divides? In this spare novel, master storyteller Naguib Mahfouz gives us some of his most memorable characters, widely familiar to Egyptians from the film version of the book: Sitt Ain, with her large house, her garden, her cats, and her familiar umbrella, strong and active, mother of the neighborhood; her son Izzat, so different from her, emotional and unsure of his way; and the friends of his childhood, Sayyida, Hamdoun, and Badriya, all their lives entangled and shaped over many years by the encounter of commitment, ambition, treachery, and above all love. This is a story in and of twentieth-century Egypt, which can be read on more than one level. The neighborhood and the motifs may be familiar, but they combine to tell a new and intriguing tale, with an unexpected outcome.
Download or read book The Killing of Osama Bin Laden written by Seymour M Hersh and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Electrifying investigation of White House lies about the assassination of Osama bin Laden In 2011, an elite group of US Navy SEALS stormed an enclosure in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad and killed Osama bin Laden, the man the United States had begun chasing before the devastating attacks of 9/11. The news did much to boost President Obama’s first term and played a major part in his reelection victory of the following year. But much of the story of that night, as presented to the world, was incomplete, or a lie. The evidence of what actually went on remains hidden. At the same time, the full story of the United States’ involvement in the Syrian civil war has been kept behind a diplomatic curtain, concealed by doublespeak. It is a policy of obfuscation that has compelled the White House to turn a blind eye to Turkey’s involvement in supporting ISIS and its predecessors in Syria. This investigation, which began as a series of essays in the London Review of Books, has ignited a firestorm of controversy in the world media. In his introduction, Hersh asks what will be the legacy of Obama’s time in office. Was it an era of “change we can believe in” or a season of lies and compromises that continued George W. Bush’s misconceived War on Terror? How did he lose the confidence of the general in charge of America’s forces who acted in direct contradiction to the White House? What else do we not know?.
Download or read book Before the Throne written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly sixty of Egypt’s past leaders—from the time of the Pharoahs to the twentieth century—are summoned to judgment in the Court of Osiris in the Afterlife, in this extraordinary novel by Nobel Prize–winning author Naguib Mahfouz. Before the Throne calls forth a parade of those who have shaped the modern nation of Egypt—from the ruler who first unified Egypt in 3000 BC to Anwar Sadat, the president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981, and including figures as various as the famous pharaoh Ramesses II and the medieval vizier Qaraqush. As they defend their decisions under questioning by Osiris, Isis, and Horus, those who acted for the nation’s good are honored with immortality in paradise while those who failed to protect it are condemned either to the inferno or to “the place of insignificance.” Full of Mahfouz’s unique insight into his country’s timeless qualities, this provocative work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt’s past as it flows into the turbulent present. Translated from the Arabic by Raymond Stock
Download or read book The Last Nahdawi written by Hussam R. Ahmed and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taha Hussein (1889–1973) is one of Egypt's most iconic figures. A graduate of al-Azhar, Egypt's oldest university, a civil servant and public intellectual, and ultimately Egyptian Minister of Public Instruction, Hussein was central to key social and political developments in Egypt during the parliamentary period between 1922 and 1952. Influential in the introduction of a new secular university and a burgeoning press in Egypt—and prominent in public debates over nationalism and the roles of religion, women, and education in making a modern independent nation—Hussein remains a subject of continued admiration and controversy to this day. The Last Nahdawi offers the first biography of Hussein in which his intellectual outlook and public career are taken equally seriously. Examining Hussein's actions against the backdrop of his complex relationship with the Egyptian state, the religious establishment, and the French government, Hussam R. Ahmed reveals modern Egypt's cultural influence in the Arab and Islamic world within the various structural changes and political processes of the parliamentary period. Ahmed offers both a history of modern state formation, revealing how the Egyptian state came to hold such a strong grip over culture and education—and a compelling examination of the life of the country's most renowned intellectual.
Download or read book The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt written by William Nothdurft and published by Random House. This book was released on 2002-09-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The date is January 11, 1911. A young German paleontologist, accompanied only by a guide, a cook, four camels, and a couple of camel drivers, reaches the lip of the vast Bahariya Depression after a long trek across the bleak plateau of the western desert of Egypt. The scientist, Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach, hopes to find fossil evidence of early mammals. In this, he will be disappointed, for the rocks here will prove to be much older than he thinks. They are nearly a hundred million years old. Stromer is about to learn that he has walked into the age of the dinosaurs. At the bottom of the Bahariya Depression, Stromer will find the remains of four immense and entirely new dinosaurs, along with dozens of other unique specimens. But there will be reversals—shipments delayed for years by war, fossils shattered in transit, stunning personal and professional setbacks. Then, in a single cataclysmic night, all of his work will be destroyed and Ernst Stromer will slip into history and be forgotten. The date is January 11, 2000—eighty-nine years to the day after Stromer descended into Bahariya. Another young paleontologist, Ameri-can graduate student Josh Smith, has brought a team of fellow scientists to Egypt to find Stromer’s dinosaur graveyard and resurrect the German pioneer’s legacy. After weeks of digging, often under appalling conditions, they fail utterly at rediscovering any of Stromer’s dinosaur species. Then, just when they are about to declare defeat, Smith’s team discovers a dinosaur of such staggering immensity that it will stun the world of paleontology and make headlines around the globe. Masterfully weaving together history, science, and human drama, The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt is the gripping account of not one but two of the twentieth century’s great expeditions of discovery.
Download or read book The Journey of Ibn Fattouma written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2016-06-15 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative and dreamy parable, a young man disillusioned by the corruption of his homeland sets out on a quest to find Gebel, the land of perfection, from which no one has ever returned. On his way, Ibn Fattouma passes through a series of very different lands--realms where the moon is worshipped, where marriage does not exist, where kings are treated like gods, and where freedom, toleration, and justice are alternately held as the highest goods. All of these places, however, are inevitably marred by the specter of war, and Ibn Fattouma finds himself continually driven onward, ever seeking. Like the protagonists of A Pilgrim's Progress and Gulliver's Travels, Naguib Mahfouz's hero travels not through any recognizable historical landscape, but through timeless aspects of human possibility.
Download or read book Nightshade written by Annalena McAfee and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lean, taut novel about an artist—a painter—at the height of her career, about the art world, about love, fidelity, fame, betrayal, and the large choices and prices paid in the quest for art for art's sake. By the much-admired author of The Spoiler ("cutting wit and razor-sharp writing"—NYTBR; "a dark, sparkly gem of a book"—Christopher Buckley) and Hame ("I couldn't put it down"—Patrick McGrath). Eve Laing, celebrated artist, once the muse of legendary painter and "monstre sacré" Florian Kiš, is a photorealist painter of flowers at the peak of her career, with her work in international galleries and museums. Now Eve is embarking on her most ambitious work to date—seven enormous, elaborate panels of the world's deadliest plants. In psychic preparation, she has taken a wrecking ball to her opulent high-wire life, jettisoning her marriage for a beautiful young lover, a drifter half her age, who seems to share her single-minded artistic vision. As the novel opens out, Eve is on a late-night walk through London, setting out from her former family home in the well-heeled west of the city, back to her studio, a converted factory in the grittier east, where her recently completed masterpiece hangs and where a fatal reckoning may await. . . . Eve makes her way through the city and reflects on her life today and as it was years ago, and considers the large choices she has made and their repercussions. As she walks, she summons up her wild art college days in London; her New York years as a tyro artist; her vicious rivalry with her college roommate, now a celebrated figure on the international conceptual art scene whose full-blown success and recognition still infuriates and rankles Eve's sense of rightness with the world. And as she weighs what's been gained and what's been lost in pursuit of her art, a sense of dread settles over her, one she cannot shake, and as Nightshade moves to its dark, shocking end, it explores large questions--about ambition . . . artistic truth . . . betrayal . . . about bad people making good art . . . about the consequences of fame . . . and the devastating price of love.
Download or read book Love in the Rain written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant novel of memorable characters who search for happiness and true love, cope with the bitterness that results from love's betrayal, and embrace new beginnings. Set in Cairo in the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967, Love in the Rain introduces us to an assortment of characters who, each in his or her own way, experience the effects of this calamitous event. The war and its casualties, as well as people's foibles and the tragedies they create for themselves, raise existential questions that cannot easily be answered. In a frank, sensitive treatment of everything from patriotism to prostitution, homosexuality and lesbianism, Love in the Rain presents a struggle between "old" and "new" in the realm of moral values that leaves the future in doubt. Through the dilemmas and heartbreaks faced by his protagonists, Mahfouz exposes the hypocrisy of those who condemn any breach of sexual morality while turning a blind eye to violence, corruption, and oppression, double standards as applied to men's and women's sexuality, and the folly of an exclusive focus on sexual morals without reference to other aspects of human character.
