Maryams Maze

Maryams Maze PDF Author: Mansoura Ez-Eldin
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617971634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
Maryam's Maze is an enigmatic novel by one of the most promising authors of a vibrant new generation of Egyptian writers. Set in the house of Yusuf el Tagi, Maryam's Maze relates the story of a woman struggling to find her way through the confusion of the world around her. Using the literary device of the 'double,' Maryam's Maze narrates a story that on one level touches on universal human emotions. At the same time the inner maze of dreams and memories in which the young Maryam finds herself stirs greater resonance in issues of modern Egyptian life. Echoing themes found in her earlier short fiction, Mansoura Ez Eldin has woven a haunting allegorical tale that reveals its real meaning to the reader only at the end of the novel. With its precision of language and distinctive personal vision, Maryam's Maze represents a unique contribution to the corpus of contemporary Egyptian fiction.

Maryams Maze

Maryams Maze PDF Author: Mansoura Ez-Eldin
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617971634
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Get Book Here

Book Description
Maryam's Maze is an enigmatic novel by one of the most promising authors of a vibrant new generation of Egyptian writers. Set in the house of Yusuf el Tagi, Maryam's Maze relates the story of a woman struggling to find her way through the confusion of the world around her. Using the literary device of the 'double,' Maryam's Maze narrates a story that on one level touches on universal human emotions. At the same time the inner maze of dreams and memories in which the young Maryam finds herself stirs greater resonance in issues of modern Egyptian life. Echoing themes found in her earlier short fiction, Mansoura Ez Eldin has woven a haunting allegorical tale that reveals its real meaning to the reader only at the end of the novel. With its precision of language and distinctive personal vision, Maryam's Maze represents a unique contribution to the corpus of contemporary Egyptian fiction.

Maryam's Maze

Maryam's Maze PDF Author: Manṣūrah ʻIzz al-Dīn
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774160561
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
Maryam's Maze is an enigmatic novel by one of the most promising authors of a vibrant new generation of Egyptian writers. Set in the house of Yusuf el Tagi, Maryam's Maze relates the story of a woman struggling to find her way through the confusion of the world around her. Using the literary device of the 'double, ' Maryam's Maze narrates a story that on one level touches on universal human emotions. At the same time the inner maze of dreams and memories in which the young Maryam finds herself stirs greater resonance in issues of modern Egyptian life. Echoing themes found in her earlier short fiction, Mansoura Ez Eldin has woven a haunting allegorical tale that reveals its real meaning to the reader only at the end of the novel. With its precision of language and distinctive personal vision, Maryam's Maze represents a unique contribution to the corpus of contemporary Egyptian fiction.

Contemporary Literature: The Basics

Contemporary Literature: The Basics PDF Author: Suman Gupta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136520740
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
‘Contemporary Literature’ is among the most popular areas of literary study but it can be a difficult one to define. This book equips readers with the necessary tools to take an analytical and systematic approach to contemporary texts. The author provides answers to some of the critical questions in the field: What makes a literary text contemporary? Is it possible to have a canon of contemporary literature? How does a reader’s location affect their understanding? How do print, electronic, and audio-visual media impact upon contemporary literature? Which key concepts and themes are most prevalent? Containing diverse illustrative examples and discussing the topics which define our current sense of the contemporary, this is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking to engage critically with contemporary literature.

Homecoming

Homecoming PDF Author:
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617972061
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"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.

The Scents of Marie-Claire

The Scents of Marie-Claire PDF Author: Habib Selmi
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617970638
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
A Tunisian novel shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the ‘Arabic Booker’) This novel from one of Tunisia’s leading writers, the first of his works to be translated into English, narrates a love story in all its stages, in all its glorious and inglorious details. Moment by moment we become acquainted with the morning rituals, the desires of the flesh, the turbulence of the spirit, and even a few unattractive personal habits. It is a journey that takes us inside the nuances of what passes between two lovers, from the first glances of attraction to the final words of anger. It is a journey filled with all the hallmarks of the complex relationship between one man and one woman--the mystery and the ambiguity, the intricacy and the confusio--which, in the end, serve to expose its fragility. This is an intimate tale that manages to tell not only the story of two individuals, but also that of the collision of two cultures.

The Zafarani Files

The Zafarani Files PDF Author: غيطاني، جمال
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774161902
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
An unknown observer is watching the residents of a small, closely-knit neighborhood in Cairo's old city, making notes. The college graduate, the street vendors, the political prisoner, the caf owner, the taxi driver, the beautiful green-eyed young wife with the troll of a husband all are subjects of surveillance. The watcher's reports flow seamlessly into a narrative about Zafarani Alley, a village tucked into a corner of the city, where intrigue is the main entertainment, and everyone has a secret. Suspicion, superstition, and a wicked humor prevail in this darkly comedic novel. Drawing upon the experience of his own childhood growing up in al-Hussein, where the fictional Zafarani Alley is located, Gamal al-Ghitani has created a world richly populated with characters and situations that possess authenticity behind their veils of satire.

As Doha Said

As Doha Said PDF Author: طاهر، بهاء،
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774162091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
In Egypt a new era has dawned, but the dawn has taken an ominous turn. President Gamal Abdel Nasser has just proclaimed the first in a series of nationalization decrees, the stock exchange has shut down, and its parking attendant, Sayyid, is staring at penury. Across the street, the office of the Ministry's Supervisory Board of Administrative Organization is engulfed in an eerie silence, and the narrator, one of the two remaining fulltime occupants of that nearly defunct government office, has fallen desperately in love with the other, Doha-forceful, erudite, and, a complete enigma. The narrator helps Sayyid find a job in the janitorial staff of the Ministry and then watches in amazement as he pursues avenues for career advancement and political participation that would never have been open to him before the Revolution, avenues that the narrator himself has lost interest in. And soon he is thrown much closer together with Doha: a ministerial study grant comes through that enables them to attend an administrative training program in Rome, and there Doha reveals to him other aspects of her mysterious nature, including a spiritual bond to the Egyptian goddess Aset, before suddenly and inexplicably cutting him adrift. As the narrator struggles with rejection, we glimpse some of the ills of the post-revolutionary order: suppression of freedoms, corruption, ideological witch hunts, a disastrous intervention in Yemen. But As Doha Said is less about a revolution's dreams turned sour than about awakening. A sophisticated, richly textured novel, it combines a realistic weft of events and deftly depicted characters that undergo subtle mutations-and, indeed, amputations-with a warp of mythical and historical iconography, a weave that allows the author to explore such themes as apathy and despair, courage and self-sacrifice, ambition and temptation, disillusionment and political faith, and, above all, commitment and betrayal, and to lift them to a universal, almost metaphysical level.

Final Night

Final Night PDF Author: Buthaina Al Nasiri
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774161155
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
A new paperback edition of this collection of powerful short stories by an Iraqi writer

Basrayatha portrait of a city

Basrayatha portrait of a city PDF Author: Muḥammad Khuḍayr
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774160646
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Basrayatha is a literary tribute by author Mohammed Khudayyir to the city of his birth, Basra, on the Shatt al-Arab waterway in southern Iraq. Just as a city's inhabitants differ from outsiders through their knowledge of its streets as well as its stories, so Khudayyir distinguishes between the real city of Basra and Basrayatha, the imagined city he has created through stories, experiences, and folklore. By turns a memoir, a travelogue, a love letter, and a meditation, Basrayatha summons up images of a city long gone. In loving detail, Khudayyir recounts his discovery of his city as a child, as well as past communal banquets, the public baths, the delights of the Muslim day of rest, the city's flea markets and those who frequent them, a country bumpkin's big day in the city, Hollywood films at the local cinema, daily life during the Iran Iraq War, and the canals and rivers around Basra. Above all, however, the book illuminates the role of the storyteller in creating the cities we inhabit. Evoking the literary modernism of authors like Calvino and Borges, and tinged with nostalgia for a city now disappeared, Basrayatha is a masterful tribute to the power of memory and imagination.

Khan Al-Khalili

Khan Al-Khalili PDF Author: Najīb Maḥfūẓ
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774161919
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
The time is 1942. Against this backdrop of international upheaval, the novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo s historic and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the German forces will never bomb such a famously religious part of the city, they seek safety among the crowded alleyways, busy cafés, and ancient mosques of the Khan, adjacent to the area where Mahfouz himself spent much of his young life. Through the eyes of Ahmad, the eldest Akif son and the novel s central character, Mahfouz presents a richly textured vision of the Khan, drawing on his own memories to assemble a lively cast of characters whose world is framed by the sights, smells, and flavors of his childhood home. A debate emerges that pits old against new, history against modernity, and faith against secularism. Addressing one of the fundamental questions of the modern era, Mahfouz asks whether, like the German bombs that threaten Khan al-Khalili daily, progress must necessarily be accompanied by the destruction of the past.