Cairo's literary scene

CAIRO: It all began with the novel The Yacoubian Building. The book by Alaa al-Aswani, published in 2002, marked the start of a new reading boom in Egypt, and topped the Arabic bestseller lists for two years.
It was only after this success that the author was able to publish a work that he had already written in 1990, but which the General Egyptian Book Organization, a government-funded institution that prints, publishes and markets Egyptian books at local, Arab and international levels had previously rejected.
Speaking in Cairo, the author says it is much easier to publish a book today than it was ten years ago. “We had a reading crisis in Egypt in the 1990s. Hardly anyone was reading fiction,” he says. “As a result, the private publishing houses were cautious about taking on writers, so I tried it through the state book organization and failed.”
Al-Aswani, who still works as a dentist in spite of his success and gives interviews at his dental practice every Friday, points out the newly opened bookstore on the other side of the street.
“The shop is doing well. But anyone wanting to open a bookstore in the 1990s might just as well have chucked money in the Nile. Now it's worth getting into this business, and that means people are reading again.”
Many new bookstores have sprung up in recent years, a fact that shows there is a burgeoning market in Egypt. The words “Al-Kotob Khan” (The Book Market) are written in elegantly contoured Arabic characters on the door of a bookstore in Maadi, a district beyond the center of Cairo which is home to mostly educated members of the upper middle class. Next to the entrance, there is a sign with two bestseller lists, one for Arabic- and the other for English-language books.
The Arabic list is topped by the Arabic Booker Prize-winning novel by Egyptian author Jussuf Ziedan, Azazeel. Topping the English-language bestsellers is the young Egyptian writer Samar Ali with her volume of poetry, Tannoura, ahead of Paulo Coelho, Khaled Hosseini and Barack Obama's Change We Can Believe In.
Samar Ali is 27 years old, like al-Aswani she earns a living as a dentist, and writes poems in English and short stories in Arabic. Her volume of poetry was published by the recently founded publishing house Malamih, which focuses on young, innovative literature and comics from Egypt and publishes works in both English and Arabic.
“I grew up in Madrid, and my degree course was taught in English, so I'm bilingual”, explains the writer at Café Boursa in downtown Cairo. Together with other young writers and the established author and university professor Sahar el-Mougy, Ali likes to come here to unwind after a creative writing course session.
El-Mougy confirms the impression that the literature scene has been invigorated over the past few years. This is partly due to the relative freedom granted to writers by the state, she says. But the writer is under no illusions: “The government uses us as a fig leaf to show how liberal it is,” she says. “But the moment we start criticizing the government, that's where the freedom stops.”
El-Mougy is a role model for many female students and young writers. She writes columns on social and political issues for the independent newspaper Almasry Alyoum and in her latest novel Noon (the Arabic character “N”) argues not just for spiritual, but also for sexual independence for women.
For a long time, reading in Egypt was regarded as a pastime for intellectuals, university professors and literary critics. Few people read out of curiosity or simply for pleasure. But now, literature is reaching sections of society beyond the traditional elite.
For the writer and publisher Mekkawi Said, the Internet and the blogger scene have had a decisive influence on literature's sudden enhanced appeal. His novel, Cairo Swan Song, which has just been translated into English, caused few ripples in the literary world when it first appeared in 2007.
“Then numerous bloggers talked about the book and recommended it. This intensive promotion on the Internet finally led to the book being included on the shortlist of last year's Arabic Booker Prize. Only then did newspaper critics write about it,” says Said.
His novel has already sold 50,000 copies. That is a large number when you consider that the print-run of a book in Arabic is usually limited to between 3,000 and 5,000 copies.
But the new culture of reading is not solely due to the active blogger scene in the Arab world. The increasing popularity of bookstores is a result of catering to all types of people. The Book Market bookstore, which opened three years ago in Maadi, is at once a publishing house and a cultural center. Karam Youssef says its location outside the city center is no problem: “Book worms will go to any lengths to seek out the books they want.”
But the established bookstore Diwan is taking no chances. Aside from the well-patronized main store in the district of Zamalek, it has opened branches in four other parts of Cairo. That way, it can ensure it meets the needs of readers in the Egyptian capital.
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* Susanne Schanda is a freelance journalist. This abridged article, translated from German, is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from Qantara.de. The full text can be found at www.qantara.de.
Source: Qantara.de, 6 November 2009, www.qantara.de
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