'Mamur Zapt' Much as I enjoyed the "Writers' Reading" feature that appeared in this month's edition of your enjoyable and interesting Books Supplement ( Cairo Review of Books, July 2005), I wonder what your gentlemen contributors (only two women readers, unfortunately) read in their spare time. After all, reading all those hefty tomes sounds like quite a lot of work, especially in summer, and there may be an argument for something lighter too, especially if these books are to be carted off to the Mediterranean coast or to the Red Sea for a well-deserved break. One writer even said that he would be spending the summer reading one of his own books, which sounds to me like something best avoided. Might I use the columns of the Books Supplement to make a summer reading recommendation of my own to readers of your newspaper? Summer reading can also be light reading, and I think my recommendation is more worthwhile than the Dan Brown book recommended (seriously?) by Edwar el-Kharrat in your interview with him in this month's newspaper. El-Kharrat says that when he was a young man he used to read detective stories in the summer vacations. Now that he is older, I wonder whether he has had the time to read the Egyptian detective fiction (in English) of Michael Pearce? A friend of mine in London lent me a copy of one of this author's "Mamur Zapt" novels, based on the doings of the commissioner of the Cairo police during the British colonial period (1910). While the time the novel refers to is thankfully far behind us, the author's grasp of certain features of Egyptian life is amusing and the period detail cannot fail to raise a smile. Apparently Pearce was born in what was then the Anglo-EgyptianSudan, and his novels seem to indicate that he has a fair grasp of Arabic, at least of certain Arabic terms. In the Mamur Zapt novels, the Mamur is described as being the "head of what in the past had been known as the Khedive's Secret Police and what was today thought of as the Political Branch". He is responsible for solving the kind of difficult crimes that are beyond the powers of the regular Cairo police, rather in the way that Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard sometimes overrules local police forces to help out Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle's stories. In the novel that I read, The Last Cut, the Mamur Zapt is trying to solve the mystery attached to the death of a young woman in Cairo, linked in a way that only he can explain to a dastardly attack on the Nile Barrage near Cairo. I particularly liked Pearce's comic characters, including Madame Labiba Latifa, wife of the Dean of the Cairo Medical School and a lady of advanced views. Mahmoud el-Zaki, a young lawyer in the Ministry of Justice who works with the Mamur Zapt, though not a comic character, is also well-drawn. Apparently Pearce wrote a series of these novels in the 1990s and won a prize for his novel The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. I have only just discovered these books and intend to read more of them. Have other readers read these novels, and what did they think of them? Adam Norris London UK ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lebanon (dis)entangled With reference to Youssef Rakha's review of Mohamed Soweid's Cabaret Suad (Cairo review of Books, June 2005), though it was refreshing to see a Lebanese work reviewed in the Books Supplement, it was a bit disappointing to find that the reviewer had skimmed over the bulk of the political and human-interest content of one of the most realistic novels to have come out of Lebanon in recent years. No doubt Rakha's attempt to place Cabaret Suad in the context of world literature was beneficial, but I found the lack of attention to detail, to say the least, disheartening. How could an Egyptian who has obviously never lived in Lebanon presume to know what might fairly be described as "a window onto militia warfare"? Certainly Soweid's book is not. In fact, notwithstanding the oversophisticated tone and the verve of the review, Rakha has failed to take account of the most relevant aspect of the book, namely its being a contemporary, rather than postmodern, political comment. And since the review must have been written in the wake of Rafiq Al-Hariri's assassination, it would have been interesting to read an appropriately informed article taking into account the difference in the situation this event has made. Mamha Lofti Sidon Lebanon ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Orientalism revisited With reference to Iman Hamam's review of The Rise of Oriental Travel and Fayza Hassan's of The Orientalist: In Search of a Man Caught Between East and West (Cairo review of Books, June 2005), it was enjoyable to encounter such a mature take on Orientalist themes. However, my impression is that the theme of representations of the Orient in Western literature, together with the notion that the Orient in question is in itself a Western construction, as the late Edward Said argued in his seminal work Orientalism, merits a special issue in its own right. May I suggest that the November issue be dedicated to that theme, since November will mark the 70th birth anniversary of Said, himself one of the most distinguished contributors to your esteemed publication. Wafaa Abdel-Azim Cairo Egypt ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Congratulations I was happy to see the Books supplement revived. Always an invaluable source for people like me, teaching Arabic literature in Europe, I cannot express how grateful I am to the Weekly for restoring this essential feature of your esteemed paper. As for the new format I only saw the copy on the internet, and I would very much appreciate it if you could mail me one of the print copies of the Cairo Review of Books. On another note, perhaps you could consider reviewing books in foreign languages other than English and French. Lots of interesting books relevant to your region appear here in Italy, and I am sure the same thing goes for Germany, Spain and other European countries. So may be as a start you should try to widen the network of your reviewers to include people who know German, Italian or Spanish. Elisabeta Bartuli University of Venice Italy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Always keen reader of the Books Supplement, I was profoundly disheartened when it was discontinued last year. You can only imagine with what joy I received the newly formatted Cairo Review of Books. That the new format turned out to be more reader-friendly could only add to my pleasure. Well done and congratulations. Meanwhile, I have always been interested in the "At a Glance" section of the supplement, in which you sample the latest publications. It is my hope, however, that future issues of this section will include a wider variety of books and magazines not only from Egypt but from the rest of the Arab world as well. Mohamed Abou El-Leil London UK ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I would like to congratulate you on the newly formatted Books Supplement, which I found very attractive and as much a pleasure to leaf through as to read. The shorter reviews section was both informative and interesting to read. I hope that future issues will preserve this highly commendable feature as it allows one to keep up with the latest in Arabic publishing both quickly and conveniently. I look forward to seeing more supplements in the future. Inas Fathi Reheb City Egypt
