{"id":285816,"date":"2011-06-28T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T15:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/06\/28\/egyptian-writers\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:17:06","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:17:06","slug":"egyptian-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/06\/28\/egyptian-writers\/","title":{"rendered":"Egyptian Writers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, The Millions posted a very interesting piece by Pauls Toutonghi entitled Six Egyptian Writers You Don\u2019t Know But You Should.<\/a> Toutonghi opens by describing a very common problem:<\/p>\n

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In Cairo, in March, the city had a surplus of intellectual energy. Literature, it seemed, might just be at the vanguard of Egypt\u2019s social change. [. . .]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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I spent an afternoon at the Cairo\u2019s Diwan Bookstore, talking to writers about their hopes \u2014 and anxieties \u2014 about the future. Just across the 6th of October Bridge in the Zemalek neighborhood, Diwan had an extensive collection of contemporary Egyptian novels, essays, and short stories. I bought a half-dozen books.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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When I returned to to Portland, Oregon \u2014 I noticed the conspicuous absence of these books on the shelves of my city. Even at Powell\u2019s, arguably the greatest (and largest) independent bookstore in the country, I couldn\u2019t find Mansoura Ez Eldin\u2019s first novel, the critically acclaimed, widely read Maryam\u2019s Maze.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

He then goes on to name 6 Egyptian authors—none of whom are named Naguib Mahfouz—including these two, which sound interesting to me:<\/p>\n

\n

2. Mansoura Ez Eldin. A journalist, activist, and writer, Ez Eldin has published two novels. One, the slender volume, Maryam\u2019s Maze, is a masterpiece of imagination and literary form. Her story, \u201dD\u00e9j\u00e0 Vu,\u201d was also featured in Emerging Arab Voices \u2014 the bilingual reader published by Saqi Books in April of this year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Ez Eldin\u2019s account of the first days of the revolution appeared in The New York Times, in late January of this year \u2014 weeks before Mubarak\u2019s resignation. \u201cSilence is a crime,\u201d she wrote. \u201cEven if the regime continues to bombard us with bullets and tear gas, continues to block Internet access and cut off our mobile phones, we will find ways to get our voices across to the world, to demand freedom and justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Maryam\u2019s Maze<\/em> tackles the issues so central to the experience of modernity in a metropolis like Cairo: Isolation, pollution, bureaucracy, madness. Awakening \u2014 like Kafka\u2019s Gregor Samsa \u2014 in a world that she no longer recognizes, Maryam struggles to regain any semblance of her former life. It is a haunting book.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

\n

4. Muhammad Aladdin. A young lion of the Cairo literary scene, Aladdin began his career as a graphic novelist \u2014 publishing the youth-oriented, serial zine, Maganin (Mad People). Possessed of a mordant sense of humor \u2014 as well as an occasional passionate earnestness \u2014 Aladdin has begun publishing his work in American magazines.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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His story, \u201cNew Lover, Young Lover,\u201d appeared in The Cairo Portfolio in Issue 9 of A Public Space.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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During the height of the revolution, Aladdin kept his friends apprised of his situation with his trademark wit: \u201cHello, am fine, just five rubber bullets in my leg but nothing serious.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Only 31 years old, Aladdin has published five novels and over a dozen short stories.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

You’ll have to check out the whole article<\/a> for write-ups on the other four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, The Millions posted a very interesting piece by Pauls Toutonghi entitled Six Egyptian Writers You Don\u2019t Know But You Should. Toutonghi opens by describing a very common problem: In Cairo, in March, the city had a surplus of intellectual energy. Literature, it seemed, might just be at the vanguard of Egypt\u2019s social change. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[336,41316,41326,3536],"class_list":["post-285816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-arabic-literature","tag-egyptian-authors","tag-pauls-toutonghi","tag-the-millions"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":343576,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285816\/revisions\/343576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}