Book worm at book fair

The most exciting things on offer at this year's Cairo International Book Fair are vintage encyclopedias, finds Amina Elbendary
Going to the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF) is a rite of passage, an aspect of living in this city and for many a family affair: it provides annually a reference point, the signposts by which one can almost trace an intellectual upbringing, replete with conversions. Like much that has changed in city life in this millennium, so too has the book fair. Yet we keep on returning every January regardless.
Despite the changes there is comfort to be found in the familiarity of this year's event. Publishers are mostly where they always are, where you expect them to be. The books on offer, too, you have probably seen before. In fact, if there is a single unifying feature to the books displayed at CIBF this year, it's that there's nothing new. Usually a random, cursory survey of the displays will give some indication of the current intellectual mood. In some years a plethora of Islamiyyat everywhere, editions of classical works hardbound in gilded green and maroon covers as well as paper-backs listed under "popular Islamiyyat". Other years genetic science and cloning crawled into the spotlight. This year, however, you cannot pinpoint any particular subject.
What is intriguing about this year's book displays is not what is on offer but rather what is not. If you expected promotions of books on militant Islam and the Taliban and Bin Laden, then you will have to look very diligently. If you wondered whether books marking the 50th anniversary of the July 1952 Revolution will be promoted, you will search in vain. At best you might find neglected copies of free officers' memoirs lying here or there. If -- like this hapless book worm -- you wanted to fill-in-the-missing-blanks in your modern Arabic literature library, you are doomed. There is practically no literature on offer at the fair. Canons of modern Arabic literature are not republished (a lone volume of Salah Abdel-Sabour's collected poems was discovered by sheer luck at GEBO's hall) and new literature -- it would seem -- is just not being published. The meagre number of titles promoted as 2002 publications largely consist of collections of essays and newspaper articles by veteran writers.
So it was with more than a journalist's curiosity that I stopped to find out just what the hullaballoo surrounding one of GEBO's stalls was all about. People were crammed over tables full of thick paper-back volumes, triumphant buyers emerging from the throng with stacks of the volumes and gleeful smiles. Just what is it all about?
It is about Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization. Do you wish to buy a full set or are you looking for a specific volume (and if not, the question was so politely implied, could you please get out of the way)?
The Story of Civilization was translated into Arabic as Qisat Al-Hadara in the 1940s and 1950s under the supervision of then Arab League cultural commissioner Ahmed Amin. The translators included such leading intellectuals as Zaki Naguib Mahmoud, Abdel-Hamed Younis and Mohamed Badran among others. The General Egyptian Book Organisation has reprinted this edition as part of its 2001 Maktabat Al- Usra (Family Library) series, itself part of the Al- Qira'a lil-Gami' (Reading for All) yearly summer reading festival supported by Mrs Suzanne Mubarak. The Family Library has also reissued Selim Hassan's encyclopaedia on ancient Egypt in 16 volumes (Misr Al-Qadima) as well as Mohamed Abdallah Enan's encyclopaedia on the history of Islam in Andalusia in eight volumes and Ahmed Shalabi's 15-volume sira of the Prophet Mohamed. All have been bestsellers at the newsstands. None except the last 10 volumes of The Story of Civilization is available at the fair.
A kind, elderly gentleman explained to the amazed book worm that he was indeed buying all the volumes of The Story of Civilization for his home library. "I read several of the volumes in English but I want to complete the set in Arabic. It's been published before, you know, back in the good old days, the 1950s -- before the naksa..." Another eager buyer was stacking them all up: Had I seen the Rousseau volume by any chance? It's the latest so far, no? Yet another was ready with a little piece of paper that had the volumes missed throughout the year, "they sell out right away; if you don't reserve a copy in advance you miss it. The price is also very reasonable, you see." Indeed, at LE7 a volume they provide affordable intellectual nourishment. The first 10 volumes are sold out and can only be bought as part of the 22-volume set for LE150.
Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization (interestingly enough only Will's name appears on the cover of the Arabic translation -- is this a function of 1950s sexism?) is indeed one of those monumental meta-narratives that purport to offer the lay reader an overview of "world history;" a genre of historiography that has been falling out of favour throughout the 20th century. It is the result of four decades of work by the Durants. The New York Times reviewer called it "a splendid, broad panorama of hereditary culture in words and images that the layman can fully understand" and it remains (especially with a new edition published in the 1990s) a classic reference work for American readers. The series began as a history of the 19th century but Will Durant soon realised that long century could only be understood in terms of what had come before. The Durants ended up embarking on an encyclopaedic survey of "civilisation": ancient and modern, Occidental and Oriental. It remains, however, an undertaking done from the perspective of the 1930s, and from a decidely Western standpoint. While this context does not inherently undermine the value of the Durants' scholarship, it is one that sheds light on the work and helps in understanding it better -- for there is no such thing (and indeed there could not be) as an "objective" history of the world in 11 volumes. Yet this is a context that is not acknowledged in this translation, which would have greatly benefited from a scholarly introduction and updated annotations. The lack of any editorial updating is a point that Ahmed Etman, historian of ancient Egypt, made at a seminar on Tuesday discussing the encyclopaedia. He also argued that archaeological and historical knowledge have changed considerably in the last 50 years. Careful editing could have updated the information within the footnotes. Proofreading and translation mistakes also ought to be corrected, he reckoned, calling on GEBO, the current publisher, to establish a committee of specialists to review the edition before any more copies are printed as part of next year's summer festival.
The intellectual context which the Durants come from is made clear in the titles of the 11 volumes of this collossal work. The first volume, first published in 1935, is devoted to "Our Oriental Heritage" and presents a survey of "civilised" history with a sweeping look at the "Orient." First come the ancient Egyptians, who perfected monumental architecture, medicine and mummification; the Babylonians, who developed astronomy and physics; the Judeans, who preserved their culture in the immortal books of the Old Testament; and the Persians, who ruled the largest empire in recorded history before Rome. The second volume jumps straight away to Greece, following conventional Western historiography, prevalent since the Renaissance, that sees early modern Western Europe as the heir to Greece and that presumes a direct link between the two cultures and civilisations. Thus "The Life of Greece" elucidates "the origins of democracy and the political legacy to the Western world; the golden age of Athens, its architecture, poetry, drama, sculpture and Olympic contests; the blossoming of philosophical thought amid a society still rooted in slavery and barbarism; and the mysterious lost island of Crete, land of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth" as the publisher's blurb has it. Further volumes span Roman History (volume three: "Caesar and Christ"), the European middle ages (volume four: "The Age of Faith"), "The Renaissance," "The Reformation," "The Age of Reason," "The Age of Louis XIV," "The Age of Voltaire," "Rousseau and Revolution," and finally the last volume "The Age of Napoleon", with the French Revolution presented as the crowning achievement of Western civilisation, ushering in the modern world.
There is practically no Africa or Latin America in The Story of Civilization, a point Abdel-Moneim El- Gemei raised at the seminar. There is no volume dedicated to the history of Islam, although medievalist Ishaq Ebeid lauded Durant for being objective in dealing with the achievements of Arab-Muslim civilisation and its contribution to European civilisation in the middle ages, particularly in "The Age of Faith", volume four of the English edition. Durant surveyed various Muslim achievements in government, literature, medicine, science as well as philosophy, often referring to and quoting primary sources, including the writings of Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Ikhwan Al- Safa (The Brethren of Purity).
Will Durant was a philosopher with a holistic view of civilisation, Ebeid argued, and his open attitude towards other cultures and civilisations is one that contains lessons for modern doomsday theorists like Samuel Huntington and Frances Fukuyama. He was not trained as a historian but as a philosopher and his lifelong study of civlisations took him all over the globe -- twice. A true Renaissance man, he was conversant in several languages. Will and Ariel were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the tenth volume.
The question that all the participants raised -- and that, indeed, remains unanswered -- is why Egyptian (and presumably Arab) historians do not embark on a collective effort to write the history of the world from their perspective, one that need not be fanatically nationalist. Why is there no equivalent Qisat Al-Hadarat in Arabic scholarship? And why, too, is Arab scholarship not producing modern encyclopaedic works in genres other than world history?
Encyclopaedic reference works such as Misr Al- Qadima and The Story of Civilization are what modern Egyptians should be reading, seems to be the thinking, just as Britannica's Great Books of the Western World offers what a modern educated Westerner is supposed to read throughout his lifetime. The very fact that such volumes are popular and that there is obviously a demand for them seems to suggest that the depressing refrain, repeated ad nauseam by intellectuals, that "people just don't want to read anymore" might not be true after all. Perhaps, after all, the trouble is in finding something interesting to read, and finding it at an appropriate price. That what fills these criteria, however, are only works written over half a century ago, must be a cause for concern.
Boxes full of encyclopaedias being too ambitious a reading project to undertake, I satisfied myself with three volumes of the encyclopaedia in question, simply to get a taste of it.
Back on Salah Salem Road, it is a beautiful winter morning, wonderfully bright and sunny. Reprints of classic Arabic songs procured at Sawt Al-Qahira ensure there is occasion to be merry during the drive back to the office -- despite the lightness of the shopping bags.
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