Compiled by Iman Hamam and Mahmoud El-Wardani FICTION Beirutius: madina taht al-ard (Beirutius: an Underground City), Rabie Gaber, Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 2005. pp239 Between 1992 and 2003 Lebanese novelist Rabie Gaber published ten novels, on average a novel a year. Gaber is thus a remarkably prolific author, but most of his work amounts to little more than musings, which are both divorced from reality and maintain an unbridgeable distance from the reader. However, his latest novel is different from those that preceded it in that it is immersed in reality rather than divorced from it. In the book, the narrator meets a cinema security officer who addresses him as Rabie Gaber, editor at the newspaper Al-Hayat, and goes on to recount the story of an underground city, Beirutius, built entirely beneath the surface of modern Beirut and to some extent modeled on it. How the city survives, or even came into being, is unclear, yet Gaber uses it to draw connections between the subterranean life of Beirutius and life during the civil war in its terrestrial counterpart Beirut. Mawt al-ragul al-mayet (Death of a Dead Man), Jamal Abu Hamdan. Amman: Dar Azmina for Publication and Distribution, 2005. pp74 Jamal Abu Hamdan is a prolific writer who has published numerous collections of short stories, as well as novels, plays, and television dramas. Among other works, he is the author of the much- publicised television series al-Tariq ila Kabul, which Arab satellite channels were recently forced to stop broadcasting. In this, his latest book, Hamdan delivers 15 portraits depicting death in various contexts of intimacy and familiarity and always with a lack of fear. Death in these portraits is a friend with whom we can stop and chat. Even though each story is separate from the rest and can be read independently, the book as a whole constitutes an integrated world. "This morning I found out about my death for the first time," begins the first story. "I did not hear about it on the news ... for I am a nobody, someone not mentioned in the national media, and there is no one to notice my death." This idea of dying unnoticed recurs in the book; death is a familiar experience, free of charge, and it demands neither fear nor sadness. On the contrary, death walks the streets among us. Taht khat al-faqr (Under the Poverty Line), Idris Ali, Cairo: Dar Merit, 2005. pp231 Taht khat al-faqr (Under the Poverty Line) is the most recent novel by the Nubian writer Idris Ali, combining autobiographical elements with dramatised persecution and anger. For the most part it adopts a stream of consciousness technique, allowing the writer to indulge in long, angry monologues directed against all and sundry. Taht khat al-faqr is subtitled "Confessional Writing" and begins with a chapter entitled "Cairo 1994". Here, Ali screams in anger against the city, its writers and critics, all of whom are oblivious to his suffering, ridiculing his threats and not taking him seriously. In the chapters that follow, Ali treats the reader to glimpses of the narrator's childhood in Nubia in the 1940s and scenes from his adolescent years in Cairo, where he worked as a servant and as a street vendor, as well as in other menial jobs. This is a novel characterised by the bravery of its author who, unlike many other Arab writers of fiction, does not shy away from confessing the poverty and difficulties he has experienced in life. However, the reader may find himself confused as to where to draw the line between the narrator of the novel and the novelist himself: as Ali here mixes autobiography with fiction, it is possible to get lost in a maze of the real and the imaginary. Those who are familiar with the details of Ali's life will be aware that some of what is described here actually happened, though this in itself does not explain these events. Facts of life aside, Taht khat al-faqr is never less than intelligent, and many of its sections, especially the flashbacks to the narrator's childhood in Nubia, make for very interesting reading. al-Fadiha al-italiya (The Roman Scandal), Mohamed Baraka, Cairo: Dar-Nevro, 2005. pp102 Mohamed Baraka, a journalist with Al-Ahram and a writer of fiction, has published two collections of short stories, Comedia al-insigam (Resonance Comedy, 1998), and Three Informers and a Lover (2002). Of these stories, the critic Safinaz Kazem wrote that "Baraka is adept at writing brief, condensed snap-shots. At first, one laughs, but after laughing one cannot help but ponder and question the wider significance of what Baraka has written," and it is this ability to satirise that distinguishes his writing -- whether creative or journalistic. "Why doesn't Cairo love me?" Baraka asks in the opening chapter of Al-fadiha al-italiya, a question he asks himself every day as he heads "back home like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime. I leave the newspaper's central desk and walk slowly like an antiquated robot, my thoughts flying like bats that have lost their sense of direction. A bout of energy descends on me as I enter the electrical graveyard called a lift, which is empty. Now I can perform my gymnastics on the metal railing inside the lift before it reaches the ground floor. Once there, I'll have to put on a mask suitable for confronting the outside world. I clock out, not knowing how I have managed to bear six hours in this place. I greet the security men with a decorum befitting my Armani tie and exit from the newspaper's electronic gates." Al-fadiha al-italiya is the story of a not very great journalist who works in a great journalistic establishment, recounting his struggles inside and outside it. Told mainly in a colloquial manner, the novel is an interesting read, if only for the way it reveals the pre-occupations of a younger generation of fiction writers. Puzzle, Hussein Abdel-Halim, Cairo: Dar Merit, 2005. pp84 This novel, the third by Hussein Abdel-Halim, has been inspired by the idea of a jigsaw puzzle, and it is made up of a series of miniature stories. These stories, or episodes, are the kind of thing one might find on the crime pages of newspapers, and, though unrelated to each other, they are nonetheless held together by a common atmosphere of repressed violence in which things appear to be on the verge of complete breakdown. Abdel-Halim has selected real-life events, and his work features women who have sought a way out of poverty through prostitution and men whose dependence on alcohol or drugs has prevented their plans from ever being realised. The novel's principal virtue is the way in which the writer avoids moralising from this material. Instead, he has used the language and materials of the streets in order to reveal some of the secrets of the vernacular. POETRY Mithl ghirban sood (Like Black Crows), Mohamed Saleh, Cairo: Dar Merit, 2005. pp40 Poet Mohamed Saleh, a master of the profession, has been parsimonious about publishing his work: though he began writing poetry in the mid-sixties, achieving critical acclaim with many of his poems in free- verse, his first collection, Watan al-jamr (Homeland of Fire), was published only in 1984. His second collection, Khat al-zawal (Erasure Point) included prose poems, though the majority of the poems in this volume are very much in the free-verse manner popularised by Al-Sayab and Abdel-Sabour. However, the following three collections, the present one included, have revealed Saleh's marked shift away from free-verse and towards prose poetry. Indeed, Saleh is one of the few poets of his generation who has engineered so severe a rupture with more conventional rhymed verse. Saleh is rarely lyrical, and he is not keen on flowery language or ambiguity. His language is always economical and sharp. Perhaps this is why critics have described his mature manner as being a "poetry of news," in other words a poetry that seeks the kind of efficient communicative manner familiar from news reports. Mathl ghirban sood, the present collection, includes a poem entitled "Immortality," in which the poet writes: "He seeks immortality, / Even as he digs his grave. / What happens in the grave / Does not bother him. / He plants a tree / In the graveyard, / Builds a bench for visitors, / And a prominent tombstone, / On which his name would be engraved." Sama' ala tawalah (Sky on a Table), Farid Abu-Saada, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, New Writing Series, 2005. pp86 Farid Abu-Saada, who began writing poetry in the early eighties, is one of Egypt's most prominent prose poets, and Sama' ala tawalah (Sky on a Table) is the ninth collection that he has published, in addition to two plays. Perhaps poetry crossed a bridge in the 1980s from the confines of metre and rhyme to prose, a crossing that has allowed a number of creative writers to toy with poetry in addition to their other interests. This latest collection comprises a long poem, "What I recall of the sky's words," divided into three sections. In its concluding lines the poet writes: "As if the coffin were carried by four sheikhs, / And as if metal birds were following people, / They fall and rise, / Die and are resurrected, / Until they reach the grave / To find the grave a room, / The room a bed, / The bed a dome of clouds, / And a table / With an old sky on it / Deep in sleep / With a man / In the middle of the room / As if he were me / Facing a window./ Behind him, / A funeral proceeding, / But his picture / Has already disappeared." Ka'anani urid (As if I Wanted To), Ghada Nabil, Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat. pp87 In her short career Ghada Nabil has published a collection of prose poems ( Al-Mutarabissa binafsiha, 1999) and a novel, Wardat al-Rimal (The Sand Rose, 2004). This, book is her second collection of poems, and it contains18 texts connected primarily by the use of a wild imagery that draws on delirium or intense grief. In a poem entitled Ibtithal (Vulgarity), for example, Nabil writes: "All the pigeons landing on a neighbour's balcony railing / have turned into pottery. / I hear the crooning of plaster birds. / I have wanted to sleep / for years / in an unexplored desert, / before me the gift of a hand / protecting my room / and growing more blue. / You are as blue as a god. / Shyness descends over the cells of my tongue / always, / without protection, / after sorrow and rage, / except during the memory of an orange joy". al-Ams faqadtu ziran (Yesterday, I lost a Button), Tamer Fathy, Cairo: Dar Sharqiyat, 2005. pp71 This is the debut collection of a poet who is not yet 25, yet it establishes a distinct voice and tenor. In the process of discovering his relationship with language, the poet has severed connections with his predecessors, and in so doing has managed an impressive achievement of his own. Fathy tells the stories of clothes: clothes that in shops and shop windows yearn to be liberated from the hangers on which they hang. The author traces their lives back to childhood, follows their daily routines, and even marks their deaths. Clothes turn into living organisms full of feelings, and the author manages to write about them convincingly, without becoming emotionally engaged: "When clothes desire death / they look ruffled / or short-sleeved. / They dodge the hegemony of the clothes-peg; / they throw themselves out of windows, / and as they fall they remember entering plastic wrappings, / arguments about prices, / and the first sting of the iron." GENERAL al-Hassad al-mur: al-dawla wa gama'at al-unf al-deeni fi misr (Bitter Harvest: The State and Religious Violence Organisations in Egypt) Abdel-Reheim Ali. Cairo: Mahrousa Centre for Publication and Press Services, 2005. pp421 In this, the fifth installment of a work in progress started more than ten years ago, the author examines the history and development of radical Islamist organisations ( gama'a islamiya ) in Egypt since their earliest manifestations in the wake of the 1967 defeat to the non- violence initiative adopted by the gama'a islamiya in 2003, which led to the release of these organisations' leaders. The author looks at certain major events in particular: the student coup carried out at the Military Technical College in1967; the foundation of the Takfir wa hijra organisation by Shukri Mustafa; and the Sadat regime's exploitation of these movements to marginalise leftist and Nasserist currents among university students. The author concentrates on the last mentioned of these most of all, giving details of the first groups to gain government support and discussing figures such as Essam al-Aryan, Abdel-Moniem Abu Fotuh, Karam Zuhdi and Salah Heshmat. Such figures, it is worth noting, later became the leaders and theorists of the gama'a islamiya. Documentary appendices make up around half the book, and these include a document entitled The Necessity of Confrontation issued by the Gama'a islamiya in 1987, which lays the foundations for killing an apostate ruler, a 1997 document issued by the same organisation entitled Critique of the Opinions of al-Bawti in his Book on Jihad and the Gama'a Islamiya, and a third by Abu Isra al-Assyouti discussing Sheikh Nasser Eddin al-Albani's contributions to the jurisprudence of jihad. The book also includes statements by the gama'a islamiya over a ten-year period, from the wake of the failed assassination attempt on President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in 1994 to the Eid Al-Adha statement in March 1999. al-Islam wal-adyan al-masriya al-qadima (Islam and Ancient Egyptian Religion), Mohamed Abu Rahma, Cairo: Madbouli, 2005. pp184 As the author of this comparative study demonstrates, Ancient Egypt was not a land of paganism and despotism: the character of its people is not only embodied in their scientific achievements, but also in their ethical and religious thought. In the book Rahma examines the principal religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas of the Ancient Egyptians and the way these were passed on to Greek and Roman civilisation. He also traces the relations between Ancient Egyptian religion and Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Rahma engages with current debates on his subject, warning against the temptation to manipulate history to present advantage. Such debates include those on whether Yussef was Egyptian, the relationship between the Pharaoh and Moses, the influence of Ancient Egyptian religion on Judaism, as well as the connections between the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine and the vision of Osiris. Yet, despite his warnings, one feels in closing the book that the author has not always followed his own rules, sometimes manipulating the facts to support his own views. al-Ihtilal al-amriki lil Iraq (The American Occupation of Iraq), Mohamed El-Sayed Said. Cairo: Dar Merit, 2005. pp331 In his introduction to this new book on the American-led occupation of Iraq, Mohamed El-Sayed Said points out that the occupation is forcing Iraqi and Arab intellectuals to rethink their positions not only on the American- led occupation but also on the defunct Saddam regime. The crisis in Iraq, he says, cannot be reduced either to a case of a corrupt and bloody despotism removed by foreign intervention, or to the development of a racist and tyrannical new world order. On the contrary, the present challenge is to oppose the occupation without paving the way for any new Saddam. Made up of articles written on the eve of, during and immediately after the US-led invasion, some of which the author wrote while in the United States, the book is divided into three main sections: "Prior to Invasion", "Suffering and Hope" and "Problematics of Liberation." One of the book's most attractive qualities is that the author does not expect the reader necessarily to agree with his opinions; rather, he gives readers the opportunity to analyse the issues at stake and to agree or disagree with what he says according to their own individual aspirations for an alternative Arab future free of the crimes and distortions of despotic regimes. Azmat al-dawla al-masriya al-moa'sirah (The Crisis of the Contemporary Egyptian State) Adel Ghoneim, Cairo: Dar al-A'lem al-Thalith, 2005. pp264 In this involving study Adel Ghoneim offers a profound analysis of the crisis of the contemporary Egyptian state, probing its political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions. Concentrating on the period between 1981 and 2002 and paying most attention to the 1990s, Ghoneim argues that three kinds of crisis have beset the Egyptian state following the assassination of President Anwar El-Sadat in 1981. The first is structural and concerns capitalism in an Egyptian context, which, the author says, generates dependency and contradictions in Egyptian institutions. The second concerns the conflicts between state institutions and those of civil society, and the third is conceived of as a failure on the part of various segments of society to perform a leadership role. The author goes on to consider several possible scenarios for transcending the present crisis, whether based on Political Islam, neo-liberalism, socialism, or increased democratization. Derrida arabiyan: qira't al-tafkik fi al-fikr al-naqdi al-arabi (Derrida in Arabic: Reading Deconstruction in Arab Criticism), Mohamed Ahmed Al-Banki, Beirut and Bahrain: Arab Foundation for Studies and Publications & Bahrain Ministry of Information, 2005. pp358 In this book Mohamed Ahmed Al-Banki argues that deconstruction, the distinct philosophical stance promulgated by the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida, has widely influenced Arab writings from the academic to the journalistic and creative. However, he is aware that while some serious critical work in the Arab world had been influenced by deconstruction in a constructive way, other work has merely adopted Derrida's ideas as the latest fad. This is a very welcome and serious volume, in which the Bahraini critic attempts to define Derrida's influence in the Arab world, as well as to take stock of the current state of Arab criticism. Divided into three main sections, the book deals first with "traveling theory" and Arab critical thought, then with the uses made of deconstructive strategies within Arab critical thought, and lastly with examples of the work of Arab intellectuals who have been influenced by Derrida. In the first section, Al-Banki deals with various schools of thought that have developed out of writers as different as Aristotle, Kant and Marx, showing the impact of these on Arab critical thought, before going on to discuss Western philosophical trends that have sought to reconcile classical philosophical writings with contemporary reality. Thus, Al-Banki examines the work of Louis Althusser, Pierre Bourdieu, Edward Said and, naturally, Jacques Derrida. The second section of the book charts the influence of these schools on Arab critical thought, with a concluding chapter that reads Arab deconstructionist ventures from the seventies to the nineties. The book's third and final section deals with the writings of critics and thinkers including Mustafa Nassef, Abdel-Aziz Hamouda, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, Abdel-Salam Ben-Abdel-Ali, Kamal Abu Deeb, Bakhti Ben-Aouda, and Ali Harb, all of whom are Arab writers who have in one way or another used deconstruction as a methodological tool.
