Cairo Swan Song Book in PDF, ePub and Kindle version is available to download in english. Read online anytime anywhere directly from your device. Click on the download button below to get a free pdf file of Cairo Swan Song book. This book definitely worth reading, it is an incredibly well-written.
In the shadows of great wealth, and among Cairo’s famous monuments, runs a world of street children. Mustafa, a former student radical who never really believed in the slogans, sets out to tell their story through a documentary he is making with his American girlfriend, Marcia. Alienated from a corrupt and corrupting society, Mustafa watches as the Cairo he cherishes crumbles around him. His former leftist comrades are now all either capitalists or Islamists, while his friends and acquaintances struggle to find lovers worthy of their love and causes worthy of their sacrifice, in a country that no longer deserves their loyalty. Meanwhile, the children of the streets wait for the city to take notice. Cairo Swan Song weaves together a patchwork narrative of overlapping lives, dreams, and realities all centering on Cairo’s famous downtown neighborhood.
In the shadows of great wealth, and among Cairo's famous monuments, runs a world of street children. Mustafa, a former student radical who never really believed in the slogans, sets out to tell their story through a documentary he is making with his American girlfriend, Marcia. Alienated from a corrupt and corrupting society, Mustafa watches as the Cairo he cherishes crumbles around him. His former leftist comrades are now all either capitalists or Islamists, while his friends and acquaintances struggle to find lovers worthy of their love and causes worthy of their sacrifice, in a country that.
Unlike The Literary Atlas of Cairo, which focuses on the literary geopolitics of the cityscape, this companion volume immerses the reader in the complex network of socioeconomic and cultural lives in the city. The seven chapters first introduce the reader to representations of some of Cairo's prominent profiles, both political and cultural, and their impact on the city's literary geography, before presenting a spectrum of readings of the city by its multiethnic, multinational, and multilingual writers across class, gender, and generation. Daunting images of colonial school experiences and startling contrasts of postcolonial educational realities are revealed, while Cairo's moments of political participation and oppression are illustrated, as well as the space accorded to women within the city across history and class. The city's marginals are placed on its literary map, alongside representations of the relationship between writing and drugs, and the places, paraphernalia, and products of the drug world across class and time.
Readings from literary works that re-construct a century of Cairo's changing social life. Unlike The Literary Atlas of Cairo, which focuses on the literary geopolitics of the cityscape, this companion volume immerses the reader in the complex network of socioeconomic and cultural lives in the city. The seven chapters first introduce the reader to representations of some of Cairo's prominent profiles, both political and cultural, and their impact on the city's literary geography, before presenting a spectrum of readings of the city by its multiethnic, multinational, and multilingual writers across class, gender, and generation. Daunting images of colonial school experiences and startling contrasts of postcolonial educational realities are revealed, while Cairo's moments of political participation and oppression are illustrated, as well as the space accorded to women within the city across history and class. The city's marginals are placed on its literary map, alongside representations of the relationship between writing and drugs, and the places, paraphernalia, and products of the drug world across class and time. Together, The Literary Atlas of Cairo and The Literary Life of Cairo produce a literary geography of Cairo that goes beyond the representation of space in literature to reconstruct the complex network of human relationships in that space.
The Book of Cairo by Ahmed Naji,Hassan Abdel Mawgoud,Eman Abdelrahim,Nael Eltoukhy,Areej Gamal,Hatem Hafez,Hend Ja'far,Nahla Karam,Mohamed Kheir,Mohamed Salah al-Azab Pdf
A corrupt police officer trawls the streets of Cairo on the most important assignment of his career: the answer to the truth of all existence… A young journalist struggles over the obituary of a nightclub dancer… A man slowly loses his mind in one of the city’s new desert developments... There is a saying that, whoever you are, if you come to Cairo you will find a hundred people just like you. For over a thousand years, the city on the banks of the Nile has welcomed travellers from around the world. But in recent years Cairo has also been a stage for expressions of short-lived hope, political disappointments and a violent repression that can barely be written about. These ten short stories showcase some of the most exciting, emerging voices in Egypt, guiding us through one of the world’s largest and most historic cities as it is today – from its slums to its villas, its bars and its balconies, through its infamous traffic. Appearing in English for the first time, these stories evoke the sadness and loss of the modern city, as well as its humour and beauty. Translated by Adam Talib, Raphael Cohen, Basma Ghalayini, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Raph Cormack, Andrew Leber, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Elisabeth Jaquette, Kareem James Abu-Zeid & Yasmine Seale. One of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2019. '[The Book of Cairo] has no need for camels or pyramids or an exaggeration of whatever the Western eye is looking for. Reading it feels like sitting in a cafe in Cairo with young literary men and women, listening to their stories that dig deep into what Cairo is and is not.' - Asymptote Journal 'Though each story in The Book of Cairo is unique – ten stories by ten writers, translated by ten translators – they feed into one another artfully, like a movie soundtrack, a concept album, or a full novel. The cogs of Cairo turn through this book, and they move faster and more erratically as the pages turn – just as life in Cairo itself does.' - Books and Bao
The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions by Waïl S. Hassan Pdf
The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions is the most comprehensive treatment of the subject to date. In scope, the book encompasses the genesis of the Arabic novel in the second half of the nineteenth century and its development to the present in every Arabic-speaking country and in Arab immigrant destinations on six continents. Editor Waïl S. Hassan and his contributors describe a novelistic phenomenon which has pre-modern roots, stretching centuries back within the Arabic cultural tradition, and branching outward geographically and linguistically to every Arab country and to Arab writing in many languages around the world. The first of three innovative dimensions of this Handbook consists of examining the ways in which the Arabic novel emerged out of a syncretic merger between Arabic and European forms and techniques, rather than being a simple importation of the latter and rejection of the former, as early critics of the Arabic novel claimed. The second involves mapping the novel geographically as it took root in every Arab country, developing into often distinct though overlapping and interconnected local traditions. Finally, the Handbook concerns the multilingual character of the novel in the Arab world and by Arab immigrants and their descendants around the world, both in Arabic and in at least a dozen other languages. The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions reflects the current status of research in the broad field of Arab novelistic traditions and signals toward new directions of inquiry.
After a failed study mission in France, Abd al-Rahman returns home to Iraq to launch an existentialist movement akin to that of his hero. Convinced that it falls upon him to introduce his country's intellectuals to Sartre's thought, he feels especially qualified by his physical resemblance to the philosopher (except for the crossed eyes) and by his marriage to Germaine, who he claims is the great man's cousin. Meanwhile, his wealth and family prestige guarantee him an idle life spent in drinking, debauchery, and frequenting a well-known nightclub. But is his suicide an act of philosophical despair, or a reaction to his friend's affair with Germaine? A biographer chosen by his presumed friends narrates the story of a somewhat bewildered young man who like other members of his generation was searching for a meaning to his life. This parody of the abuses and extravagances of pseudo-philosophers in the Baghdad of the sixties throws into relief the Iraqi intellectual and cultural life of the time and the reversal of fortune of some of Iraq's wealthy and powerful families.
Following several years of hardship in Vienna, fortunes begin to change for Sudan native Hamza when he meets Austrian native Sandra, who shows him the Palm House, a famous Viennese greenhouse, where the frost of Hamza's heart begins to thaw. By the author of Cities without Palms.
Munira's Bottle by محيميد، يوسف,Yūsuf Muḥaymīd Pdf
In Riyadh, against the events of the second Gulf War and Saddams invasion of Kuwait, we learn the story of Munirawith the gorgeous eyesand the unspeakable tragedy she suffers as her male nemesis wreaks revenge for an insult to his character and manhood. It is also the tale of many other women of Saudi Arabia who pass through the remand center where Munira works, victims and perpetrators of crimes, characters pained and tormented, trapped in cocoons of silence and fear. Munira records their stories on pieces of paper that she folds up and places in the mysterious bottle given to her long ago by her grandmother, a repository for the stories of the dead, that they might live again. This controversial novel looks at many of the issues that characterize the lives of women in modern Saudi society, including magic and envy, honor and revenge, and the strict moral code that dictates malefemale interaction. Yousef al-Mohaimeed is a rising star in international literature. Muniras Bottle is a rich and skillfully crafted story of a dysfunctional Saudi Arabian family. One of its strengths lies in its edgy characters: Munira, a sultry, self-centered, sexually repressed woman; Ibn al-Dahhal, the bold imposter who deceives and betrays her; and Muhammad, her perpetually angry and righteous brother, a catalyst who forces the events. Western readers will welcome it for its opening door into Arab lives and minds.Annie Proulx Mohaimeed writes in a lush style that evokes a writer he cites as an influence, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. [He] takes on some of the most divisive subjects in the Arab world.
In a fictional Gulf country, with its gleaming glass towers and imported greenery, the routine of day-to-day life is suddenly interrupted when the national football team qualifies for the World Cup. The Emir issues an edict ordering all native Emiratis to travel to France to support the team, leaving the country to the care of its imported labor. How do they handle such newly found freedom? As though steered by a perverse blend between Dante and Scheherazade, we descend layer by layer beneath the façade of modernity: from the colorful multilingual throngs rejoicing for the Emirati team to the hierarchies that underpin them, from the luxurious gardens and swimming pools into the darker secrets of the bedroom, from the rigid and inhibiting strictures of the present to a remote age of innocence. Three narratives interweave to form a tight and thought-provoking examination of the psychology of control. Drumbeat received the Sawiris Foundation Award for Egyptian Literature.
The Traveler and the Innkeeper by Fāḍil ʻAzzāwī Pdf
From the Iraqi author of Cell Block Five. This timely, elegant novel's hero is an Iraqi secret police inspector who routinely uses enhanced interrogation techniques, which even he considers torture. Convinced that he is protecting society from anarchy, he is at peace with the world until ordered to interrogate a childhood friend, a journalist with possible links to violent subversives. Then he falls in love with his friend's wife. The plot of this novel, which was written in Iraq in 1976 and published in Arabic in Germany in 1989, is further complicated by street protests in Baghdad following the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War of June 1967. Despite the grim subject matter of this novel, it is at heart a love story, lyrically narrated.
Taha Hussein's classic autobiographical novel The Days helped usher in the era of modern Arabic writing and remains one of the most influential and best-known works of Arabic literature For the first time, the three-part autobiography of one of modern Egypt's greatest writers and thinkers is available in a single paperback volume. The first part, An Egyptian Childhood (1929), is full of the sounds and smells of rural Egypt. It tells of Hussein's childhood and early education in a small village in Upper Egypt, as he learns not only to come to terms with his blindness but to excel in spite of it and win a place at the prestigious Azhar University in Cairo. The second part, The Stream of Days: A Student at the Azhar (1939), is an enthralling picture of student life in Egypt in the early 1900s, and the record of the growth of an unusually gifted personality. More than forty years later, Hussein published A Passage to France (1973), carrying the story on to his final attainment of a doctorate at the Sorbonne, a saga of perseverance in the face of daunting odds.
A selection of the most important works of Egypt's Nobel literature laureate. 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," and the first to translate Naguib Mahfouz into English, 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.
One of NPR's Best Books of 2017! A groundbreaking anthology of science fiction from Iraq that will challenge your perception of what it means to be “The Other” “History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be heard.”—Operation Daniel In a calm and serene world, one has the luxury of imagining what the future might look like. Now try to imagine that future when your way of life has been devastated by forces beyond your control. Iraq + 100 poses a question to Iraqi writers (those who still live in that nation, and those who have joined the worldwide diaspora): What might your home country look like in the year 2103, a century after a disastrous foreign invasion? Using science fiction, allegory, and magical realism to challenge the perception of what it means to be “The Other”, this groundbreaking anthology edited by Hassan Blasim contains stories that are heartbreakingly surreal, and yet utterly recognizable to the human experience. Though born out of exhaustion, fear, and despair, these stories are also fueled by themes of love, family, and endurance, and woven through with a delicate thread of hope for the future. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A new novel, funny, wise, moving, true, as only Lisa Alther can write ("she had me laughing at 4 in the morning" --Doris Lessing), set on a cruise ship, about a woman, a doctor in charge of the ship's clinic, recovering from the loss of her longtime female lover, a much-admired writer, and coping with the high-wire madcappery of cruise ship life as she reckons with her past and feels her way into the future. Dr. Jessie Drake, in her mid-sixties, following the sudden deaths of her parents and Kat, her partner of twenty years, has fled the Vermont life she has known for decades. In an effort to escape the oppressive constancy of grief, she accepts a job from an old flame from her residency in New York City's Roosevelt Hospital, and agrees to assist Ben as the ship's doctor on a British liner. Jessie boards in Hong Kong, and, as the Amphitrite sails throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, cruise ship antics ensue. Jessie is lulled back into a long-ago romance with the ship's co-doctor, and both she and her new/old beau become enmeshed with the ship's lead (female) singer/entertainer. Among the passengers who fling socialized behavior aside on the high seas: a former Florida beauty queen (Miss Florida Power and Light) on a second honeymoon with her husband, as she causes high-velocity scandal, while juggling onboard affairs with a suicidal golf pro, and a defrocked priest hired as one of the liner's gentleman hosts, until she vanishes--poof!--from the ship off the coast of Portugal . . . As the ship sails through the Gulf of Aden and into a possible hijacking by Somali pirates, Jessie retreats into her lover's journals, written during her final months, journals filled with sketches of potential characters, observations on life and love--as well as drafts of a long new poem in progress, "Swan Song," that seems to be about being in love with someone else, someone new. As Jessie's grief turns to suspicion about the woman she thought she knew so well, her illumination of the poem's meaning begins to lift the constraints of the past and make clear the way toward the future.
