Download or read book The Essential Yusuf Idris written by Yūsuf Idrīs and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The only fiction collection available in English translation by the Arab world's greatest short-story writer of the twentieth century Yusuf Idris (1927-91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated as the father of the Arabic short story. He studied and practiced medicine, but his interests were in politics and the support of the nationalist struggle, and in writing--and his writing, whether in his regular newspaper columns or in his fiction, often reflected his political convictions. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature more than once, and when the prize went to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, Idris felt that he had been passed over because of his outspoken views on Israel. In all, Yusuf Idris wrote some twelve collections of superbly crafted short stories, mainly about ordinary, poor people, many of which have been translated into English and are included, along with an extract from one of his novels, in this collection of the best of his work.
Download or read book The Cheapest Nights and Other Stories written by Yūsuf Idrīs and published by Three Continents. This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Egypt's foremost writers, the acknowledged genius of the modern Arabic short story. Encompassing works from every stage of his career, this is the first collection of his stories to appear in English.
Download or read book The Sinners written by Yūsuf Idrīs and published by Three Continents. This book was released on 1984 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Essential Naguib Mahfouz written by Najīb Maḥfūẓ and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A carefully curated selection of the most important works of Egypt's Nobel literature laureate in a single volume Naguib Mahfouz, the first and only writer of Arabic to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature, wrote prolifically from the 1930s until shortly before his death in 2006, in a variety of genres: novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, a regular weekly newspaper column, and in later life his intensely brief and evocative Dreams. His Cairo Trilogy achieved the status of a world classic, and the Swedish Academy of Letters in awarding him the 1988 Nobel prize for literature noted that Mahfouz "through works rich in nuance--now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous--has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind." Here Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time," makes an essential selection of short stories and extracts from novels and other writings, to present a cross-section through time of the very best of the work of Egypt's Nobel literature laureate.
Download or read book Modern Arabic Fiction written by Salma Khadra Jayyusi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 1096 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jayyusi provides biographical information on the writers as well as a substantial introduction to the development of modern Arabic fictional genres that considers the central thematic and aesthetic concerns of Arab short story writers and novelists."--Jacket.
Download or read book Memories in Translation written by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the life and works of Denys Johnson-Davies, who was described by the late Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time." With more than twenty-five volumes of translated Arabic works to his name, and a career spanning some sixty years, he has brought the Arabic writing to an ever widening English readership.
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 Collected Novels of Jos Saramago written by José Saramago and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 3869 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential anthology presents thirteen acclaimed works by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Blindness—with anintroduction by Ursula Le Guin. This collection, available exclusively in e-book form, brings together twelve novels (and one novella) of the great Portuguese writer José Saramago. From Saramago’s early work, like the enchanting Baltasar & Blimunda and the controversial Gospel According to Jesus Christ, through his masterpiece Blindness and its sequel Seeing, to his later fables of politics, chance, history, and love, like All the Names and Death with Interruptions, this volume showcases the range and depth of Saramago’s career, his inimitable narrative voice, and his vast reserves of invention, humor, and understanding.
Download or read book Homecoming written by and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Johnson-Davies, a distinguished translator from Arabic, has produced a collection of nearly 60 Egyptian short stories that usefully adds to the growing corpus of Arab literature available in English."—Choice Short story writing in Egypt was still in its infancy when Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as “the leading Arabic–English translator of our time,” arrived in Cairo as a young man in the 1940s. Nevertheless, he was immediately impressed by such writing talents of the time as Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Gohar, and the future Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and he set about translating their works for local English-language periodicals of the time. He continued to translate over the decades, and sixty years later he brings together this remarkable overview of the work of several generations of Egypt’s leading short story writers. This selection of some fifty stories represents not only a cross-section through time but also a spectrum of styles, and includes works by Teymour, Hakki, Gohar, and Mahfouz and later writers such as Mohamed El-Bisatie, Said el-Kafrawi, Bahaa Taher, and Radwa Ashour, as well as new young writers of today like Hamdy El-Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin, and Youssef Rakha.
Download or read book The Short Stories of Y suf Idr s written by P. M. Kurpershoek and published by BRILL. This book was released on 1981 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rings of Burnished Brass written by Yūsuf Idrīs and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Santa Claus in Baghdad and Other Stories about Teens in the Arab World written by Elsa Marston and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be a young person in the Arab world today? This lively collection of eight short stories about Arab teenagers living in Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and a Palestinian refugee camp engagingly depicts young people's experiences growing up in the Middle East. The characters, drawn from urban and rural settings and from different classes as well as a mix of countries, confront situations involving friends, family, teachers, and society at large. Along with some specifically Middle Eastern issues, such as strife in Iraq, the hardships of life in a Palestinian refugee camp, and honor crimes, the young people deal with more familiar concerns such as loyalty to friends, overcoming personal insecurities, dreams of a future career, and coping with divorcing parents. Coming of age in a complicated world, they meet life with courage, determination, and, not least of all, humor. With accompanying notes that provide contextual information, Santa Claus in Baghdad brings a fresh perspective to youth literature about the Arab world.
Download or read book Final Night written by Buthaina al Nasiri and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love and death and the passage between entry into the world and exit from it are the focus of this collection of short stories. Buthaina Al Nasiri is an Iraqi author who has lived in Cairo since 1979. Despite this physical and temporal distance from her homeland, much of her material derives from it and many of the stories in this collection reflect her deeply felt nostalgia for Iraq. In contrast to many contemporary female writers, she confesses to being less interested in the position of women in society than in that of people in general and the sufferings they experience between birth and the end of life. None the less, some of her best stories depict the many-colored relationships that exist between the sexes. Buthaina Al Nasiri's work has been widely translated into European languages, but this is the first volume of her stories to appear in English, for which renowned translator Denys Johnson-Davies has selected work from a career of short-story writing spanning some thirty years.
Download or read book The Polymath written by Bensalem Himmich and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This award-winning historical novel deals with the stormy life of the outstanding Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, using historical sources, and particularly material from the writer's works, to construct the personal and intellectual universe of a fourteenth-century genius. The dominant concern of the novel the uneasy relationship between intellectuals and political power, between scholars and authority addresses our times through the transparent veil of history. In the first part of the novel, we are introduced to the mind of Ibn Khaldun as he dictates his work to his scribe and interlocutor. The second part delves into the heart of the man and his retrieval of a measure of happiness and affection in a remarriage, after the drowning of his first wife and their children at sea. Finally we see Ibn Khaldun as a man of action, trying to minimize the imminent horrors of invading armies and averting the sack of Damascus by Tamerlane, only to spend his last years lonely and destitute, having been fired from his post as qadi, his wife having gone to Morocco, and his attempts at saving the political situation having come to nil. "The elusive simplicity and fluency of style manage to entertain and instruct at once. We learn as we read about Ibn Khaldun: his insights into history and historiography, his views of the rise and fall of civilizations, the principles of his sociological thinking, along with intimate aspects of his life, including his tragic losses and his attitude toward women. We also learn of his response to the major crisis of his time, the Tatar invasion of the Mashriq. In short, Ibn Khaldun, the distant and formidable figure, is humanized thanks to this novel." Naguib Mahfouz Medal Award Committee
Download or read book Temporary written by Hilary Leichter and published by Coffee House Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.
Download or read book The Mirage written by محفوظ، نجيب، and published by American Univ in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A psychological study of the first order with a subtly Freudian flavor, The Mirage is the autobiographical account of Kamil Ru'ba, a tortured soul who finds himself struggling unduly to cope with life's challenges. The internal torment and angst that dog him throughout his life and the tragic, ironic turns of events that overtake him as a young man are, to a great extent, the outworkings of his faulty upbringing. At the same time, they work together to drive home the novel's underlying theme: the illusory, undependable nature of the world in which we live and the call to seek, beyond the outward and the ephemeral, that which is inward and enduring. The narrative, full of pathos, draws the reader unwittingly into a vicarious experience of Kamil's agonies and ecstasies. As such, it is a specimen of Mahfouz's prose at its finest.
Download or read book The Theocrat written by Bensalem Himmich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Theocrat takes as its subject one of Arab and Islamic history's most perplexing figures, al-Hakim bi-Amr Illah ("the ruler by order of God"), the Fatimid caliph who ruled Egypt during the tenth century and whose career was a direct reflection of both the tensions within the Islamic dominions as a whole and of the conflicts within his own mind. In this remarkable novel Bensalem Himmich explores these tensions and conflicts and their disastrous consequences on an individual ruler and on his people. Himmich does not spare his readers the full horror and tragedy of al-Hakim's reign, but in employing a variety of textual styles--including quotations from some of the best known medieval Arab historians; vivid historical narratives; a series of extraordinary decrees issued by the caliph; and, most remarkably, the inspirational utterances of al-Hakim during his ecstatic visions, recorded by his devotees and subsequently a basis for the foundation of the Druze community--he succeeds brilliantly in painting a portrait of a character whose sheer unpredictability throws into relief the qualities of those who find themselves forced to cajole, confront, or oppose him.
