Egyptian Literature

[Stewart]

If pressed to name some Egyptian writers and all you can name are Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany, then you are probably in the same boat as me.

There's been quite a rise in interest in Arabic fiction this last year, helping to supplement the contribution of the American University in Cairo Press. At the London Book Fair this year, there was a focus on Arabic fiction, Arabia Books recently launched, and an Egyptian novelist, Baha Taher, won the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction, or Arabic Booker, for short.

So, with the rise in interest and because Egypt seems to be at the heart of this Arabic renaissance, this thread is dedicated to Egyptian literature.

 

[Bjorn]

I actually read an article about Al-Aswany today which more or less credits him with single-handedly resuscitating Egyptian literature. Supposedly, he had to shop The Yacoubian Building around for years before anyone would touch a modern-day Arabic novel in which people have sex and use religion as an excuse to make themselves rich. After it sold at least half a million copies (he claims to have no idea how many he's actually sold, since he's sure that a lot of publishers only report a fraction of their actual sales) the publishers had a slight change of heart about modern literature... According to the article, he's the first Egyptian novelist ever (including Mahfouz) to be able to make a living off his craft.

Of course, I'm in no position to say how true that is. I'll try and find the article.

 

[Heteronym]

There's also Albert Cossery: he was born in Egypt to a French family. He lived there all his youth, then moved to France where he became a writer; most of his novels explore his memories of Egypt. Looking now, he strikes me as a Rudyard Kipling, growing up happy in India, moving to London and spending the rest of his life writing about his beloved India.

 

[anoush]

I've read Bahaa Taher's Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery
It was a great read and I really recommend it. I feel it makes a great contrast to the Yacobian Building, as it's set in a village in upper Egypt in the 1960's. It tell of a boy's childhood in this village where the tranquillity is destroyed by revenge involving everyone dear to the boy. I don't like to say too much as it might ruin the plot. It is a book that shows the destructiveness of hatred and revenge on the individual and entire community as well as the beauty of forgiveness.
The book is not complex in structure and is subtle. A light read that involves you. I just glided through it, immersed in tenderly created characters.
My favourite aspect was that it shows everyday people as heroes, people who are not hunting for glory or are dramatic, but have strong principles that they follow.
Also I've read quite a few of Nawal el Saadawi's work and Alifa Rifaat which I enjoy. I think Egyptian literature can be overlooked to easily I'm glad it's getting attention.
anoush

P.S I warned you I rambled

 

[Eric]

I will admit that I know the names of very few Egyptian writers indeed. Naguib Mahfouz and, erm...

I hope that the Swedes here will read some of the 29 short-stories in the 2009 anthology of Egyptian stories published by the Tranan press - and tell the rest of us about them. I would do the same, but by the time I go to Stockholm again, the copies will have sold out.

Anyway, now that several countries in North Afraica are in what is almost a revolutionary situation, maybe people could become acquainted with what Egyptians write.

Where in the UK, apart from the magazine "Banipal" can people find Egyptian short-stories as in the Tranan anthology?

 

[hdw]

Maybe, years from now, or maybe sooner, some Egyptian writer will make a great novel about the popular Egyptian
uprising that unseated the tyrant Mubarak.

Which reminds me, speaking from a position of total ignorance, is there much Iranian literature about the fall of the Shah and the rule of the ayatollahs that followed? I suppose anything written on that subject would have to be in tune with the régime.

Harry

 

[Stevie B]

Andre Aciman is an Egyptian author I admire, but I don't think he's lived in Egypt since his teen years. Another Egyptian writer who comes to mind is Waguih Ghali. His novel Beer in the Snooker Club was published by Knopf in 1964. It's one of the many books in my to-read pile. After browsing some biographical information on Ghali just now, I may move his book to the front of the queue. Here are a few interesting tidbits from goodreads:

"Ghali was born and raised in Cairo. His exact birth date is not known, but it is guessed he was born in the 1930’s to a upper class Coptic family in Egypt. Ghali’s family spoke English and French more than Arabic something he mirrors in his character Ram. When he was young, Ghali’s father passed away leaving Waguih behind as the poor relation to his mother’s rich family. Once he grew up he funneled his outrage at the poverty in Egypt towards the Communist party. As an adult Ghali left Egypt to study and work in Britain, France, Sweden and Germany. “Beer in the Snooker Club” was his only novel which now appears to be an exaggerated dictation of his life. Waguih Ghali committed suicide in 1969. Much of his life in London and up until his death is described in "After a Funeral" by Diana Athill"

 

[Eric]

I wonder what the subject matter of Egyptian stories in ten years' time will be:

- Why did our revolution fail?

- Victorious Socialist Realist stories about the Glorious Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

- Why are the Yanks still persecuting us?

- Thank-you Yanks for the billion dollars a year in military aid.

- Are we allowed to have a literature, or do we writers have to work 18 hours a day to make ends meet?

- Why is Europe sinking into debt while we are a success story?

- Even Egyptians have sex lives (40 pages of soft porn).

- The transquil countryside - a study in Egyptian reality, anno 2021.

 

[hdw]

Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet highlights the difficulties experienced by Coptic Christians in an overwhelmingly Muslim Egypt in the characters of Nessim and his brother Narouz.

Harry

 

[Eric]

I saw in the paper just now that Mubarak (in Custer mode) has appointed one Gaber Asfour as Minister of Culture, reputed to be a respected literary person. Well, let's see if he calms the crowds by reading aloud from the Alexandria Quartet on tatty Tahrir Square. The square is one of ther ugliest I've ever seen, judging by photos. How much earthquakes, and how much town planning, are to blame I cannot tell.

 

[hdw]

I don't know much Arabic, but I believe that one of the differences between Egyptian Arabic and other dialects is that the j- [dzh-] becomes a hard g-, e.g. Gamal for Jamal (as in President Gamal Nasser), Gaber for Jafer, etc.

Harry

 

[Amoxcalli]

How much earthquakes, and how much town planning, are to blame I cannot tell.

Town planning? What town planning?

I don't know much Arabic, but I believe that one of the differences between Egyptian Arabic and other dialects is that the j- [dzh-] becomes a hard g-, e.g. Gamal for Jamal (as in President Gamal Nasser), Gaber for Jafer, etc.

Harry

Exactly. Egyptians also pronounce an "a" for an "i" in MSA (compare Masr "Egypt" and Misr "Egypt").

Wikipedia even has an article on Egyptian Arabic.

 

[Stevie B]

I don't know much Arabic, but I believe that one of the differences between Egyptian Arabic and other dialects is that the j- [dzh-] becomes a hard g-, e.g. Gamal for Jamal (as in President Gamal Nasser), Gaber for Jafer, etc.

Harry

The same g/j difference in pronunciation also exists in Yemen. When I was studying Arabic in Sana'a in the late '80s, our instructors were from the northern part of North Yemen and taught us to use the J sound. Then I was assigned to a village close to the South Yemen border where everyone uses the G sound. I made the linguistic switch. Later on, I took a job in Kuwait and when my students heard me speaking Arabic, they asked if I had studied in Egypt. Unfortunately, the language has been lying dormant in my brain for so many years, that if I were to try to speak it again, I'd likely be pegged as a typical American tourist.

 

[hdw]

I think I've mentioned before that in 1972 I and another teacher in a language school in the south of England were given responsibility for teaching English to a bunch of pure science lecturers from the Lebanese University of Beirut, who had previously taught their classes in French but had been told to switch to English. I got interested in the language and culture of Lebanon and bought an Arabic language course which I still have. My then girlfriend, now my wife, helped me take them out on visits and social occasions, etc., and we seriously contemplated going out to Lebanon to work, but one thing after another intervened, then came the civil war that blew the country apart, so it never happened.

However, just over a year ago we fulfilled our ambition to visit the Middle East by having a holiday in Jordan. But it must be said that Amman is no Beirut.

Harry

 

[Eric]

Yes, my dad, who was in the Middle East during WWII, managed to pick up "wahad" for "one", while what I hear here in Uppsala is mainly "wähäd".

But. comrades, if we're groping around for the pronunciation of single words, won't it take a while longer before we are able to cope with the revolution now taking place in the "won't resign just yet" republic of presidential dynasties? And the literature of Egypt - none of us knows anything about it. Let's admit it. A few of our number can name a couple of Egyptian writers who either won the Nobel or wrote in French. But the rest is one huge gaping blank.

 

[hdw]

The Coptic Orthodox Church, which is one of the oldest Christian denominations in the world, still uses the old Egyptian language in its liturgy. Copt actually means Egyptian. Unlike in Israel, however, where Hebrew has been revived as a literary language as well as a spoken vernacular, there doesn't appear to be any modern writing in Coptic.

Christians are under attack all over the Middle East from Islamic fundamentalists. It's ironic, because although these people may have a Western outlook to some extent, in countries like Egypt and Lebanon they are the descendants of the indigenous people who lived there before the Arab invasions of the 7th century.

Harry

 

[Eric]

One of the small tragedies of the Middle East is that they have indeed forgotten the chronology of events. First came the Jews who did lot of writing in Hebrew and Greek. Then came Christ, whom the Christians think doubles up as God the Father and God the Holy Ghost, then the Prophet Mohammed came alone and started a third monotheistic religion. That's the order of events.

And the ethnicity isn't that clear either. I read somewhere that most Jordanians aren't technically Arabs. I cannot remember where I read it, and it can be true or untrue. But it's interesting to know that not everything is black and white, in the same way that the whole of Northern Europe is not Aryan or Germanic, as there has always been quite an ethnic mix. The Finno-Ugrians and Slavs rather spoil the neat picture of ethnic homogeneity. As do the centuries of Jewish immigration, integration, and assimilation. Even the Brits, or especially the Brits, are a right old mix, even though we call the Royal Family "the Germans". And it was Irish monks, not the Normans who originally Christianised the British Isles.

Svenska Dagbladet has found one of the few Egyptian writers that Europe knows about, now that Egypt is in the news. And a woman too! I hope that Egypt will now start writing lots of serious European-style fiction describing what it like to live there. But there are plenty of people in that country who don't want secular and decadent literature, especially if it's written by women. So let all those European armchair feminists emigrate to Egypt right now and convert the macho boys.

 

[Ben Jackson]

Egyptian writers to read:

More of Mahfouz
Taha Hussein
Tawfiq Al Hakim
Bahaa Taher
Yusuf Idris
Andre Aicman

Books like
Distant View of Minaret
Memory of Love
Yacobian Building

 

[MichaelHW]

When I search for arabic literature, I get the odd impression that they all lived in Lebanon? Is that so?