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 The Dreams written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-07-14 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his final years, Egyptian Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz distilled his storyteller's art to its most essential level. Written with the compression and power of dreams, these poetic vignettes, originally collected in two books, The Dreams and Dreams of Departure, here combined in one volume for the first time. These stories telescope epic tales into tersely haunting miniatures. A man finds his neighborhood has turned into a circus, but his joy turns to anger when he cannot escape it. An obscure writer finally achieves fame-through the epitaph on his grave. A group of friends telling jokes in an alley face the murderous revenge of an ancient Egyptian queen. Figures from Mahfouz's past-women he loved, men who inspired him, even fictional characters from his own novels-float through tales dreamed by a mind too fertile ever to rest, even in sleep. Translated by Raymond Stock
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 Najīb Maḥfūẓ 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 Line of the Sun written by Judith Ortiz Cofer and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2011-03-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A colorful, revealing portrait of Puerto Rican culture and domestic relationship” from the award-winning poet and author of An Island Like You (Publishers Weekly). Set in the 1950s and 1960s, The Line of the Sun moves from a rural Puerto Rican village to a tough immigrant housing project in New Jersey, telling the story of a Hispanic family’s struggle to become part of a new culture without relinquishing the old. At the story’s center is Guzmán, an almost mythic figure whose adventures and exile, salvation and return leave him a broken man but preserve his place in the heart and imagination of his niece, who is his secret biographer. “Cofer . . . reveals herself to be a prose writer of evocatively lyrical authority, a novelist of historical compass and sensitivity . . . One recognizes in the rich weave and vigorous elegance of the language of The Line of the Sun a writer of authentic gifts, with a genuine and important story to tell.”—The New York Times Book Review “There is great strength in the way Cofer evokes the fierce, loving, and brave Latin spirit that is the novel’s real theme.”—Joyce Johnson, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author “The Line of the Sun reads like a dream, from the beautifully realized description of the deceptive Paradise Lost, to the utterly different but equally vivid world of the urban North . . . This is a splendid first novel.”—The State (Columbia, South Carolina) “The writing in this superb novel stuns and surprises at every turn. Its sensuality and imagery . . . are riveting.”—The San Juan Star
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 192 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 Nemesis written by Philip Roth and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Set in a close-knit Newark neighborhood during a terrifying polio outbreak in 1944, a “book [that] has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama” (The New Yorker)—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral. Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky’s playground, Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts Cantor’s passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.
Download or read book In the Time of Love written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the Nobel laureates most intriguing novels, translated for the first time into English.
Download or read book The Coffeehouse written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mahfouz's last novel, an evocative depiction of life in Egypt in the twentieth century as told through the lives of a group of friends, is now available in paperback for the first time On a school playground in the stylish Cairo suburb of Abbasiya, five young boys become friends for life, making a nearby café, Qushtumur, their favorite gathering spot forever. One is the narrator, who, looking back in his old age on their seven decades together, makes the other four the heroes of his tale, a Proustian, and classically Mahfouzian, quest in search of lost time and the memory of a much-changed place. In a seamless stream of personal triumphs and tragedies, their lives play out against the backdrop of two world wars, the 1952 Free Officers coup, the defeat of 1967 and the redemption of 1973, the assassination of a president, and the simmering uncertainties of the transitional 1980s. But as their nation grows and their neighborhood turns from the green, villa-studded paradise of their youth to a dense urban desert of looming towers, they still find refuge in the one enduring landmark in their ever-fading world: the humble coffeehouse called Qushtumur. The Coffeehouse is a powerful and timeless novel of loss and memory from one of Egypt's most celebrated literary masters.
Download or read book Committed to Disillusion written by David Fred DiMeo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present. David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power. Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.
Download or read book Caf Karnak written by Naguib Mahfuz and published by Planeta Publishing. This book was released on 2000-12-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: «Me gustó aquel sitio por su excelente café, el agua pura, las tazas y los vasos limpios, la dulzura de Qaránfula, la grave dignidad de los ancianos, la vitalidad de los jóvenes y la belleza de la chica.»Así describe el narrador (acaso el mismo autor) el ambiente y los personajes que frecuentan el Café Karnak, cálido punto de unión entre el pasado y el presente. Cuandno sin previo aviso tres jóvenes dejan de acudir al café, Qaránfula, su dueña, una bella mujer madura que fue bailarina, empieza a investigar. Descubrirá sus historias entrelazadas y la cara más dura de la revolución. Esta novela, situada en el Egipto de los años 70, nos traslada con sensibilidad al corazón de un cambio histórico y sus dolorosas contradicciones.
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: 2025: fourteen years after the failed revolution, Egypt is invaded once more. As traumatized Egyptians eke out a feral existence in Cairo's dusty downtown, former cop Ahmed Otared joins a group of fellow officers seeking Egypt's liberation through the barrel of a gun. As Cairo becomes a foul cauldron of drugs, sex, and senseless violence, Otared finally understands his country's fate. In this unflinching and grisly novel, Mohammad Rabie envisages a grim future for Egypt, where death is the only certainty.
Download or read book Khufu s Wisdom written by Naguib Mahfouz and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of Khufu’s Wisdom, Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s majestic first novel, is the legendary Fourth Dynasty monarch Khufu (Cheops), for whom the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. When a seer prophesies the end of Khufu’s dynasty and the ascension to the throne of Djedefra, son of the High Priest of Ra, the pharaoh must battle to preserve his legacy against the will of the Fates. But in the face of the inexorable attraction between Djedefra and Princess Meresankh, Khufu’s beautiful daughter, Khufu must consider not only his personal ambition and the opposing decree of the heavens, but also how the wisdom he prides himself on as a ruler will guide him in determining the fate of his daughter’s heart. Translated by Raymond Stock
Download or read book That Smell and Notes from Prison written by Sonallah Ibrahim and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: That Smell is Sonallah Ibrahim’s modernist masterpiece and one of the most influential Arabic novels. Composed in the wake of a five-year prison sentence, the semi-autobiographical story follows a recently released political prisoner as he wanders through Cairo, adrift in his native city. That Smell is Sonallah Ibrahim’s modernist masterpiece and one of the most influential novels written in Arabic since WWII. Composed after a five-year term in prison, the semi-autobiographical story follows a recently released political prisoner as he wanders through Cairo, adrift in his native city. Living under house arrest, he tries to write of his tortuous experience, but instead smokes, spies on the neighbors, visits old lovers, and marvels at Egypt’s new consumer culture. Published in 1966, That Smell was immediately banned and the print-run confiscated. The original, uncensored version did not appear in Egypt for another twenty years. For this edition, translator Robyn Creswell has also included an annotated selection of the author’s Notes from Prison, Ibrahim’s prison diaries—a personal archive comprising hundreds of handwritten notes copied onto Bafra-brand cigarette papers and smuggled out of jail. These stark, intense writings shed unexpected light on the sources and motives of Ibrahim’s groundbreaking novel. Also included in this edition is Ibrahim’s celebrated essay about the writing and reception of That Smell.
Download or read book Life on the Run written by Bill Bradley and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2014-01-09 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic memoir about life in the pros by the NBA hall of famer and former US senator was named a top 100 Sports Books by Sports Illustrated. Before Bill Bradley became known as a US senator and presidential candidate, he was famous for being a part of the world championship–winning New York Knicks. Now, long after his athletic and political careers have come to a close, his account of twenty days in a pro basketball season remains a classic of sports literature, unparalleled in its honesty and intelligence. Told with incredible candor, Bradley shows life on the road as a pro-athlete for what it is: a sometimes glamourous, often lonely journey. He takes readers from the court to the locker room; from the seamless teamwork of a winning game to the melancholy of a motel in a strange city. Bradley shows us the abuse of the press alongside the smothering adoration of the fans. We watch in horror as Earl Monroe is beaten outside Madison Square Garden barely an hour after twenty thousand people cheered him. And we come to understand the euphoria and exhaustion, the icy concentration and intense pressure, that are felt only by those who play basketball for keeps. “A remarkable, searching, smart book.” —Newsweek
Download or read book Committed to Disillusion written by David DiMeo and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present. David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power. Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.
