zaat

zaat PDF Author: sonallah ibrahim
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774248443
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This novel tells the story of the life of an Egyptian woman--the eponymous Zaat--during the regimes of three Egyptian presidnets: Abdel Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. It takes a humorous but often black look at the changes that have occurred in Egypt over the past few decades. Zaat's life experiences and relationships are set against economic and social upheavals in a style that is both sophisticated and bawdy, highly ironic and often extremely poignant.

zaat

zaat PDF Author: sonallah ibrahim
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774248443
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This novel tells the story of the life of an Egyptian woman--the eponymous Zaat--during the regimes of three Egyptian presidnets: Abdel Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak. It takes a humorous but often black look at the changes that have occurred in Egypt over the past few decades. Zaat's life experiences and relationships are set against economic and social upheavals in a style that is both sophisticated and bawdy, highly ironic and often extremely poignant.

The Committee

The Committee PDF Author: Sonallah Ibrahim
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
ISBN: 9780815607267
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This wry take on Kafka’s novel The Trial revolves around its narrator’s attempts to petition successfully the elusive ruling body of his country, known simply as “the Committee.” Consequences for his actions range from the absurd to the hideous. Ibrahim offers an unbroken first-person narrative rendered in brief, crisp prose framed by a conspicuous absence of vivid imagery. Furthermore, the petitioner is a man without identity. The ideal antihero, he remains, as does his country, unnamed throughout the intricate plot with a locale suggestive of 1970s Cairo. The Committee pierces the inflammatory terrain between ordinary men, unbridled displays of power, and other broader concerns of the author’s native Egypt. The novel’s corrosive, shocking conclusion catapults satiric surrealism into a new realm.

That Smell and Notes from Prison

That Smell and Notes from Prison PDF Author: Sonallah Ibrahim
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811220621
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 121

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Book Description
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.

Stealth

Stealth PDF Author: Ṣunʻ Allāh Ibrāhīm
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
ISBN: 0811223051
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Coming of age in the decaying city of Cairo during the turbulent years before Egypt's 1952 revolution, a boy struggles to free himself from his controlling father and come to terms with the absence of his mother.

Warda

Warda PDF Author: Sonallah Ibrahim
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300228651
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Sonallah Ibrahim's 2000 masterpiece offers readers a view of twentieth-century world events through the diary pages of his titular character 1950s Cairo: the intersection of conflicting dreams and political destinies. In this classic novel translated for the first time into English, idealistic reporter Rushdy encounters the enchanting Warda at a clandestine leftist meeting. Their fates would be forever linked. After Warda goes missing, Rushdy immerses himself in her diaries in a quest to uncover her whereabouts. The quest takes him to the hills of Dhofar, Oman, where he discovers Warda's guerrilla role in a regional uprising and secret involvement in revolutions with echoes around the globe. Piece by revelatory piece, Rushdy uncovers the truth about Warda--and the fiery commitment that drove her to choose the life she lived. Widely acknowledged as a masterpiece by one of Egypt's most important novelists, this is an unforgettable story of intrigue, passion, and revolution.

Ice

Ice PDF Author: Sonallah Ibrahim
Publisher: Arab List
ISBN: 9780857426505
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The year is 1973. An Egyptian historian, Dr. Shukri, pursues a year of non-degree graduate studies in Moscow, the presumed heart of the socialist utopia. Through his eyes, the reader receives a guided tour of the sordid stagnation of Brezhnev-era Soviet life: intra-Soviet ethnic tensions; Russian retirees unable to afford a tin of meat; a trio of drunks splitting a bottle of vodka on the sidewalk; a Kirgiz roommate who brings his Russian girlfriend to live in his four-person dormitory room; black-marketeering Arab embassy officials; liberated but insecure Russian women; and Arab students' debates about the geographically distant October 1973 War. Shukri records all this in the same numbly factual style familiar to fans of Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell, punctuating it with the only redeeming sources of beauty available: classical music LPs, newly acquired Russian vocabulary, achingly beautiful women, and strong Georgian tea. Based on Ibrahim's own experience studying at the All-Russian Institute of Cinematography in Moscow from 1971 to 1973, Ice offers a powerful exploration of Arab confusion, Soviet dysfunction, and the fragility of leftist revolutionary ideals.

Cairo from Edge to Edge

Cairo from Edge to Edge PDF Author: Ṣunʻ Allāh Ibrāhīm
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
The Mother of the World as seen through the lens of French photographer Jean Pierre Ribi??re and the pen of Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim. The result is a rich and highly original portrait of a city. Ribi??re's seventy powerful photographs capture fugitive moments in urban life and architecture, in which historic grandeur meets modernity in a race with time. Meanwhile, Sonallah Ibrahim's incisive exploration of Cairo's past and his own past reveals a man living on the edge of a city living on the edge of itself.

The Turban and the Hat

The Turban and the Hat PDF Author: Sonallah Ibrahim
Publisher: Arab List
ISBN: 9780857429803
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A novel of the invasion and occupation of Egypt by Napoleonic France as seen through the eyes of a young Egyptian. The Napoleonic-era French invasion and occupation of Egypt are often seen as the Arab world's first encounter with the military and technological prowess of the West--and it came as a terrible shock. The Turban and the Hat tells the story of those three tumultuous years from the perspective of a young Egyptian living in late-eighteenth-century Cairo. Knowing some French, he works as a translator for the occupiers. He meets their scientists and artists, has an affair with Bonaparte's mistress, and accompanies the disastrous campaign to take Syria, where he witnesses the ravages of the plague and the horrific barbarism of war. He is astonished by the invaders' lies and propaganda, but he finds that much of what he thought he knew about his fellow Egyptians was also an illusion. Convincing in its history but rich in themes that resonate today, The Turban and the Hat is a story of resistance, but also of collaboration, cooperation, and corruption. Sonallah Ibrahim, one of Egypt's foremost novelists, gives us a marvelous account of the Western occupation of an Arab land, one that will resonate with contemporary readers. His portrayal of this tragic--and at times comic--"clash of civilizations" is never didactic, even as it reminds us that so many lessons of history go unlearned.

Sonallah Ibrahim

Sonallah Ibrahim PDF Author: Starkey Paul Starkey
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474405800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
This volume is designed as an introduction to the contemporary Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most important Arabic novelists of the modern era, with an unrivalled reputation for independence and integrity among contemporary Egyptian writers. The first study in any language devoted exclusively to Sonallah Ibrahim, the volume discusses each of the author's novels individually, beginning with the seminal Tilka al-ra'iha [That Smell] (1966) and ending with al-Jalid [Ice] (2011). Each work is discussed individually in its literary, social, historical and political context. The volume traces the evolution of Sonallah Ibrahim's work in terms both of their themes and of their literary technique, and concludes with an attempt at an overall evaluation of the author's contribution to the contemporary Egyptian novel. Paul Starkey's account shows how innovative and stylistically rich the Arabic novel has become over a period of some fifty years, beyond the better-known work of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris. As such, the volume will serve as an introduction not only to the individual author but also to the development of Egyptian (and, more generally, Arabic) literature over the last half century.

The Queue

The Queue PDF Author: Basma Abdel Aziz
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612195172
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
“Weird and wild.” —BookRiot “An effective critique of authoritarianism.” —NPR “Equal parts dystopia, satire, and allegory. —Los Angeles Review of Books Set against the backdrop of a failed political uprising in Egypt, this chilling debut evokes Orwellian dystopia, Kafkaesque surrealism, and a very real vision of life after the Arab Spring. In a surreal, but familiar, vision of modern day Egypt, a centralized authority known as ‘the Gate’ has risen to power in the aftermath of the ‘Disgraceful Events,’ a failed popular uprising. Citizens are required to obtain permission from the Gate in order to take care of even the most basic of their daily affairs, yet the Gate never opens, and the queue in front of it grows longer. Citizens from all walks of life mix and wait in the sun: a revolutionary journalist, a sheikh, a poor woman concerned for her daughter’s health, and even the brother of a security officer killed in clashes with protestors. Among them is Yehia, a man who was shot during the Events and is waiting for permission from the Gate to remove a bullet that remains lodged in his pelvis. Yehia’s health steadily declines, yet at every turn, officials refuse to assist him, actively denying the very existence of the bullet. Ultimately it is Tarek, the principled doctor tending to Yehia’s case, who must decide whether to follow protocol as he has always done, or to disobey the law and risk his career to operate on Yehia and save his life. Written with dark, subtle humor, The Queue describes the sinister nature of authoritarianism, and illuminates the way that absolute authority manipulates information, mobilizes others in service to it, and fails to uphold the rights of even those faithful to it.