Highlights of the year's publications, compiled by Amina Elbendary and Mahmoud El-Wardani In Praise of Books, Nelly Hanna, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2004. pp219 This book, by Nelly Hanna, professor of Arabic Studies at the American University in Cairo, is a major contribution to Egypt's cultural record. It reveals a lively middle class Egyptian culture during the first three ceturies of the Ottoman rule. In fine detail, the author explores economic influences on culture during periods of plenty and poverty. Drawing on both published and unpublished sources, Hanna unveils a full-fledged Cairene middle class culture that bridges the gap between the salons (majalis) of the elite and the common people. Lord Cromer: Victorian Imperialist, Edwardian Proconsul, Roger Owen, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. pp436 Roger Owen's new biography of Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer), the first since 1932, will be required reading for anyone interested in modern Egyptian history. It shows with admirable clarity and attention to detail the margins of manoeuvre enjoyed by one of Britain's proconsuls during the high noon of British imperialism, demonstrating how decisions were the result of a complex process of negotiation involving local politics, the wider international balance of power and the changing opinions of the British Foreign Office. Not least, however, it also shows how the accidents of one man's life, together with his personal convictions, acted to extend and solidify Britain's occupation of Egypt. The Dreams, Naguib Mahfouz, Translated by Raymond Stock, Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2004. pp125 The Dreams is a collection of Mahfouz's most recent and shortest short stories, originally published in Arabic in the women's weekly magazine Nisf Al-Dunya. Published in the years after recovering from a knife attack in 1994, the short stories are in some sense a continuation of a theme Mahfouz had started earlier with his 1982 collection Ra'aytu Fima Yara Al-Na'im (I Saw as the Sleeper Sees). Yet, as the translator Raymond Stock discusses in his introduction, Mahfouz himself explains that unlike Ra'aytu, each of the short stories here actually begins with an actual dream which he then developed into a story. The results are very powerful, concise, surrealist visions written in poetic prose. Zayni Barakat, Gamal Al-Ghitani, Translated by Farouk Abdel-Wahab and with foreword by Edward Said, Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2004. pp241 Zayni Barakat is Al-Ghitani's political parable set during the twilight years of the Mameluke sultanate in Egypt and on the eve of the Ottoman conquest. It tells the story of the rise to power of Cairo's muhtasib, Al-Zayni Barakat, through the multiple narratives of a Venetian traveller, Visconti Gianti, and other native Egyptians. Even though the themes of the novel are historical, they have, in Edward Said's words, "an urgent connection with the present, that is modern, post-independent, post-revolutionary Egypt". Indeed, some readings of the novel correspond the principle character of Zayni Barakat with Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Written in Arabic in 1970, this English translation was previously published by Viking in 1988 and Penguin in 1990. Cairo: City of Sand, Maria Golia, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004. pp232 The latest in the genre of Western writing about Cairo, Maria Golia's Cairo, City of Sand, deals with the city's contemporary reality through a number of intriguing themes. Unlike precursors which focussed on history or topography, this book is interested in present realities such as daily interactions between Cairenes; examining the roles of family, tradition, and bureaucracy in everyday life. It also explores Cairo's relationship with its significant others, from foreign occupations to current influences like Western consumerism, tourism, Gulf Arabs and refugees. Of particular interest is chapter four; entitled "Listening", it deals with the city's linguistic subtexts, "examining linguistic memes, jokes, grandiloquence and the art of dissimulation". Humanism and Democratic Criticism, Edward W Said, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. pp154 The five essays in this volume on humanism and democratic criticism grew out of lectures Edward Said first gave at Columbia University in January 2000 as part of Columbia University Press's annual series on aspects of American culture as well as lectures delivered at Cambridge University in October and November 2002. Influenced by the events of 11 September and the ensuing war on terror, the campaign in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, the essays are dedicated to what Said describes as the "idea of humanistic culture as coexistence and sharing". The volume also includes Said's essay on "The Public Role of Writers and Intellectuals". From Oslo to Iraq And the Road Map, Essays, Edward W Said with introduction by Tony Judt and afterword by Wadie E Said, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. pp323 Published posthumously, this third and final volume after Peace and Its Discontents and The End of the Peace Process, brings to a close the collection of one hundred some political essays Said published on the pages of Al-Ahram Weekly since the announcement of the Oslo plan in 1993 till his death in 2003. The essays in this volume deal with the Second Intifada, 11 September, the War on Terror, and the Iraq war. In the afterword, his son, Wadie E Said, comments that Said's "writings remain as a testament to the historic victory that an oppressed people might achieve". Fil Masrah Al-Misri: Tajreeb wa Takhreeb (On Egyptian Theatre: Experiment and Destruction), Farouk Abdel-Qader, Cairo: Al-Urouba for Studies and Research, 2004. pp143 In his introduction to this, his latest book, critic Farouk Abdel-Qader points out that the kind of "serious theatre" that he kept up with as editor of a specialist magazine and as a culturally aware theatre-goer only thrived in Egypt for two decades, between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s. Many factors then contributed to its demise: the 1967 defeat, censorship and theatre people's own failure to uphold their principles. The disappearance of serious theatre has therefore given way to new kinds of theatre: Commercial theatre, and theatre that perpetuates the status quo. In this context Abdel-Qader feels that the Ministry of Culture's decision to found an Experimental Theatre Festival in Cairo was a form of madness: why spend money on bringing theatrical experiments from across the world to Cairo at a time when our own Egyptian theatre is as good as dead? The first half of the book is made up of articles on the aforementioned festival's seasons between 1988 and 1994, while the second half, also made up of previously published articles, comprises reviews of specific productions, such as two performances of Alfred Farag's The Barber of Baghdad, the one staged in 1964 and the other in 2002. Meshaynaha Khotan (The Path We Trod), Raouf Abbas, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, 2004. pp336 This is the first volume of autobiography by historian Raouf Abbas, one of the most accomplished intellectuals of our times.Careful to avoid imparting personal or intimate information, this is almost unique among autobiographies in that it deals only with the public aspect of the writer's experience, yet manages to be thoroughly engaging and informative all the same. Born in 1939 into a poor family in the Cairo neighbourhood of Shoubra, Abbas describes an underprivileged childhood, drawing a positive picture of Muslim-Copt relations. Abbas moves on to even more absorbing topics -- campus in the 1960s, corruption, bribery, security control and other unsavoury aspects at variance with the principles of the July Revolution, his research on the labour movement in Egypt as well as stints in Japan and Qatar. Madha Ba'd Suqout Saddam (What Comes After the Fall of Saddam), Ibrahim Nafie, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Translation and Publication, 2004. pp337 In this lavishly illustrated volume the chairman of the board of Al-Ahram reviews the political circumstances of the region in the light of the fall of the Saddam regime, going through the developments that led up to it and often relying on first-hand experience of Egyptian negotiations with Washington, and referring to Al-Ahram delegation's visit to Washington towards the end of January 2003. An informative gripping account not only of the circumstances of Saddam's fall but also of the bearing of international relations on the region as a whole, it discusses Palestine, Egypt and other Arab countries. Ma Ba'd Al-Hub (Beyond Love), Hadiya Hussein, Beirut: Arab Institution for Studies and Publication, 2004. pp180 This is the second novel by Iraqi writer Hadiya Hussein, who has produced since 1993 three collections of short stories as well as her debut novel Bint Al-Khan (Daughter of the Khan). Dealing with the experience of fleeing Saddam's rule via Jordan following the 1991 Gulf War, an experience the writer herself went through, the book's protagonist speaks out against the regime, comes to the attention of the authorities and is helped out of the country by her lover, who provides her with false identification papers. The novel's principal virtue is the way it deals with the world of Iraqis in exile: women and children, blue-collar workers, scientists, doctors and teachers, and the unemployed. An account of exile in Jordan, the text is infused with nostalgia for what the heroine has left behind, including her lover, her grandmother, her bed and her neighbours. Al-Kha'if wal-Mukhif (The Frightened and the Frightening), Zuhair Al-Jazairi, Damascus: Al-Mada Publishing Company, 2004. pp359 Completed in 2003 in London, this is the sequel to Iraqi novelist Zuhair Al-Jazairi's Haffat Al-Qiyama (The Edge of Judgement Day), begun in 1991 but not completed until 1997. The present volume takes up the lives of the latter book's tormented protagonists, whose actions, as critics were quick to note, emanate as much from oppressing circumstances as free will. With a generous sprinkling of violence and episodes that frequently take on a Kafkaesque tone as they develop, the author has portentous insights regarding the Shias of Iraq -- a facet that makes this book relevant reading for those eager to understand the psychological and historical aspects of the current situation in Iraq. Though a left-wing secularist himself, Al-Jazairi is well qualified for bringing the Muslim-secular debate up to date, for he is the grandson of the Grand Ayatollah Al-Jazairi of the 1920 Iraqi Revolution. Al-Khalidiyah, Mohamed El-Bosati, Cairo: Dar Al Hilal, 2004. pp120 This is Mohamed El-Bosati's eighth novel, not to mention nine collections of short stories and plenty of acclaim for being one of two Generation of the Sixties writers (the other being Ibrahim Aslan) who have achieved remarkable success in recent years. And once again El-Bosati tries his hand at something new, different from other books he has written -- vaguely Kafkaesque. Here there is no distinction between the realm of reality and that of dreams, so much so that the text can be read as an extended nightmare. A civil employee, the protagonist invents a new small town and draws up the documents for the police station to be at its centre, down to naming the employees and their salaries. He goes on to describe life in this imaginary place -- an endless series of illusions and frustrations that provides El-Bosati with a novel approach to themes of corruption and chaos. At the end the protagonist is arrested and thrown out of the novel. Bayn Al-Adab Wal Siyasah (Of Literature and Politics), Ali El-Raie, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces, 2004. pp359 The late Ali El-Raie was among Egypt's most vociferous and engaged senior critics, and his concern with drama added much to our understanding of relatively nascent traditions of both writing and performance in the Arab world; he drew attention to the importance of folk performance traditions -- shadow puppet theatre, for example -- and headed the theatrical establishment in the 1960s, its most active decade. This book, published four years after the author's death and edited by his daughter Laila, brings together a great many articles written from the early 1980s on and published in magazines and newspapers like Al-Ahram and Al-Musawwar. The editor divided them into four sections dealing with politics, characters, situations, literature and theatre. Nawafidh Al-Nawafidh (The Windows of Windows), Gamal El-Ghitani, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, 2004. pp134 One of novelist Gamal El-Ghitani's slimmer volumes, this is part of a long, ongoing project entitled Dafatir Al-Tadween (Notebooks of Chronicling), three instalments of which -- Khalasat Al-Kara; Dana Fatadala; Rashahat Al-Hamra -- have already appeared. A series of thematic duos, the novels depict, respectively, reality and dreams, writer and place, self and beloved. This, the fourth, depicts sight and psyche. Each "notebook", the writer tells us, can be read independently of the other three, even despite the growing unity of the whole, with motifs intertwined like arabesques. Certainly the present book is easy to make sense of on its own, with the metaphor of the window servicing El-Ghitani's semi-autobiographical project. It is a modernist, if not wholly experimental text, in which the first window in the narrator's life sets off a chain reaction of reminiscences reflecting the development of his psyche, always through looking out of windows, whether literal or metaphorical: "The first window hangs in a room into which I arrived at a moment I can no longer remember. I can't remember my first days in it, nor even glimpses of those days. The first image dates back to my first year there, precisely 1948. We went out at night and the stars were intense. Air force lights seeking out Israeli aircraft. Afterwards, I realised that this was the only raid launched by the enemy at this point. The moment has remained, a first memory. What came before it no longer exists..."
