Search results for ""The American University in Cairo Press""

This ground-breaking view of the navigational landscape of the Nile in medieval Egypt draws on a broad range of sources: medieval Arabic geographies; traveler accounts; archaeology; and meteorological, hydrological, and geological studies. John Cooper first charts the changing geography of the Nile waterways, particularly in the Delta, from the eve of Islam to the early modern period, and logs the "rise and fall" of these waterways for natural and/or anthropogenic reasons. He then presents a new perspective on the Nile, drawing on traveler accounts and environmental data to portray the river as a uniquely challenging and sometimes dangerous navigational environment requiring extensive local knowledge by skilled and hard-working Nile navigators. Finally, he looks at how the main Delta and Red Sea ports of medieval Egypt fitted into the navigational landscape described, explaining how these ports were affected by changes occurring to the navigational landscape, and how they reflected the navigational conditions of the Nile and surrounding seas.

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Cairo has long been recognized as one of the great cities of the world, and many travelers have recorded their descriptions of it over the centuries--from the early eye-witness account of Herodotus to the reflections of Sir Richard Burton, Florence Nightingale, and Mark Twain. A Cairo Anthology gathers together the impressions of many of these writers: with them we experience the excitement of exploring the great city, through its crowded streets and colorful bazaars, we enter the hotels, hire donkeys, ascend to the historic Citadel, and look out across the Nile toward the Sphinx and the Pyramids, and we visit those vast monuments that are in reality always larger and more extraordinary than one can believe, and climb to their summits to gaze back at Cairo, the Mother of the World. About the series: The elegant, pocket-sized volumes in the AUC Press Anthology series feature the writings and observations of travel writers and diarists through the centuries. Vivid and evocative travelers' accounts of some of the world's great cities and regions are enhanced by the exquisite vintage design in small hardback format that make the books ideal gift books as well as perfect travel companions. Designed on cream paper stock and beautifully illustrated with line drawings and archival photographs.

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What was it like to live in Iraq before the earth-shaking events of the end of the twentieth century? The mid seventies to the late eighties witnessed Saddam Hussein's rise to power, the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in the north, and the Iraq-Iran war. It also brought an influx of oil wealth, following the 1973 war and the spike in oil prices, and a parallel influx of Arab talent, including many Egyptians, as the Egyptian left became disenchanted with Sadat. The massive migration also extended to workers and peasants, some of whom created an entire Egyptian village just outside Baghdad.We witness all of this and more through the eyes of an Egyptian woman married to an engineer working in Iraq. The narrator, who works for an Egyptian magazine's bureau in the Iraqi capital, has a behind-the-scenes view of what was really happening at a critical juncture in the history of the region. Moreover, she has a mystery to solve: an Iraqi woman from the marshes in the south of Iraq, who is also a communist journalist, has disappeared, and as the mystery unfolds we learn of her love for an older Egyptian Marxist journalist. This is Iraq before and beyond Saddam, Iraq as the Arabs knew it, in the lives of interesting people living in a vibrant country before the attempted annexation of Kuwait and the American invasion. This is the Iraq that was

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You are bored, bored, bored, stuck in a half-job, berated by your parents and unsure whether you should marry your cousin. You want to change. A chance encounter on Facebook leads you to Emmie and her underground world of strange fashion, drinking, dancing, sex, and drugs. You become an Emo and discover philosophical atheism and practical Satanism. Although Emmie’s rules include no sex and no love, you become addicted to her and the belief that she will be the one to change you. You fall in love. Your inability to disobey her leads you to embrace her creed. The efforts of your family to restore you to the fold fail, and your heroism leads her to succumb to you.One final act of ‘degeneracy’ too far leads you into the arms of the state’s torturers and to reaffirm society’s values, if with a greater sense of freedom and adventure.Status: Emo is a romp through the mind of the young Egypt. Written in 2010, it predicts revolt and hints at culture wars to come.

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Trying to evade intelligence agencies out to assassinate him, the Cerebellum, an Egyptian scientist with a past association with the Iraqi nuclear program, rents a room on the roof of a brothel in a Cairo slum. His interaction with the other residents is limited; instead he spends most of his time in the virtual world, where he has a love affair with candygirl, a gorgeous avatar. On the other side of the planet, an ex-NSA agent has joined a secret organization whose mission is to assassinate Iraqi scientists. He does not allow his doubts about the legality - or the ethics - of his mission to interfere with his work. He chases his victim relentlessly, but when his top-of-the-line equipment fails to locate the Cerebellum in Cairo's slums, he takes the chase to the virtual world.

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Upon returning from a trip abroad, the author–narrator learns that his father has died during his absence. Crushed with grief and guilt, he begins a journey of discovery of self and existence. Beset by doubts and at times despair, he almost gives up, but then is granted the priceless gift of appearing before the mythical–mystical Diwan, the council that oversees all affairs of this world, keeping a record of everything that has ever happened or existed and righting wrongs past and present. With the guidance of the Great Master, the Prophet’s grandson al-Husayn, he is able to witness events of his father’s life, his own life, and that of his beleaguered country as he progresses through Sufi states and stations.Granted the ability to be in several places and various eras simultaneously, the narrator is able to bring together heroes and villains and great events and debacles in Egypt’s and all of Islam’s history. Alternating scenes depict the historical martyrdom of al-Husayn in Karbala, and a fantastical confrontation between two camps fighting over the soul of Egypt: in one camp we meet President Gamal Abdel Nasser, al-Husayn, the narrator’s own father, and a ragtag army of valiant but ill-equipped Egyptians in combat with one led by Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin. This surrealist novel with political and mystical overtones and an edge of satire reveals one of Egypt’s greatest living writers at his finest.

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Then, she looked at me assiduously, “What is it that you do exactly?”I replied, savoring my last sip of coffee, with all the sass of a gypsy, “A novelist.”How to write a novel? Where to find inspiration? What is it that novels do for us? What is the nature of love? And most importantly, how and where to find it? Embarking on a literary and romantic journey, an aspiring novelist guides the reader through the streets of Damascus to bookstores, libraries, historical landmarks, cafés, and neighborhoods that carry the traces of history and the possibilities of the future. Mining the rich and divergent histories, narratives, texts, memories, and people that occupy the narrator’s mind and everyday life, Writing Love casts a critical eye on contemporary society and offers a playful testament to the tangential nature of writing and the many ways to fall in love.Writing Love was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.

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At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Egyptian women gained the unique right to divorce their husbands unilaterally through a procedure called khul'. This has been a controversial application; notwithstanding attempts to present the law as being grounded in Islamic law, opponents claim that khul' is a privileged women's law, and a western conspiracy aimed at destroying Egyptian family life and, by extension, Egyptian society. In Khul' Divorce in Egypt, Nadia Sonneveld explores the nature of the public debates--including the portrayal of khul' in films and cartoons--while an examination of the application of khul' in the courts and everyday life relates and compares this debate to the actual implementation of the procedure. She makes it clear that the points of controversy bear little resemblance to the lives of the lower-middle-class women who apply for khul'; they merely reflect profound changes in the institutions of marriage and family.

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This groundbreaking work presents original research on cultural politics and battles in Egypt at the turn of the twenty-first century. It deconstructs the boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, drawing on conceptual tools in cultural studies, translation studies, and gender studies to analyze debates in the fields of literature, cinema, mass media, and the plastic arts.Anchored in the Egyptian historical and social contexts and inspired by the influential work of Pierre Bourdieu, it rigorously places these debates and battles within the larger framework of a set of questions about the relationship between the cultural and political fields in Egypt.

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This classic learning aid, popular with teachers and students alike, has now been fully revised and substantially expanded for a complete new edition. With a fully vocalized Arabic text in clear, legible type, this invaluable lexicon now contains more than 3,500 Arabic verbs from 1,450 verb roots. Entries feature concise English definitions, the perfect and imperfect tenses and verbal noun of each verb, and carefully crafted context sentences to illustrate the correct usage and clarify the meaning. An index of English definition helps the user navigate the entries.

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A new paperback edition of the first collected volume from the Cairo School of Urban StudiesBringing together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars, this volume explores what happens when new forms of privatization meet collectivist pasts, public space is sold off to satisfy investor needs and tourist gazes, and the state plans for Egypt’s future in desert cities while stigmatizing and neglecting Cairo’s popular neighborhoods. These dynamics produce surprising contradictions and juxtapositions that are coming to define today’s Middle East.The original publication of this volume launched the Cairo School of Urban Studies, committed to fusing political-economy and ethnographic methods and sensitive to ambivalence and contingency, to reveal the new contours and patterns of modern power emerging in the urban frame. Contributors: Mona Abaza, Nezar AlSayyad, Paul Amar, Walter Armbrust, Vincent Battesti, Fanny Colonna, Eric Denis, Dalila ElKerdany, Yasser Elsheshtawy, Farha Ghannam, Galila El Kadi, Anouk de Koning, Petra Kuppinger, Anna Madoeuf, Catherine Miller, Nicolas Puig, Said Sadek, Omnia El Shakry, Diane Singerman, Elizabeth A. Smith, Leïla Vignal, Caroline Williams.

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Yusuf Idris (1927-91), who belonged to the same generation of pioneering Egyptian writers as Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, is widely celebrated as the father of the Arabic short story, just as Mahfouz is considered the father of the Arabic novel. Idris studied medicine and practised as a doctor, but even as a student his interests were in politics and the support of the nationalist struggle, and in writing - and his writing, whether in his regular newspaper columns or in his fiction, often reflected his political convictions. He was nominated for the Nobel prize for literature more than once, and when the prize went to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988, Idris felt that he had been passed over because of his outspoken views on Israel. In all, Yusuf Idris wrote some twelve collections of superbly crafted short stories, mainly about ordinary, poor people, many of which have been translated into English and are included in this collection of the best of his work. But although he is best known for his short stories, he also wrote nine plays and a number of novels and novellas, the best of which are also sampled here.

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This is a new collection of short fiction from the Arabian Gulf. Here, for the first time, is a volume of short stories from this commercially and culturally vital and vibrant center of the Arab world. Life before oil in this region was harsh, and many of the stories in this collection - by both men and women from all corners of the country - tell of those times and the almost unbelievable changes that have come about in the space of two generations. Some tell of the struggles faced in the early days, while others bring the immediate past and the present together, revealing that the past, with all its difficulties and dangers, nonetheless possesses a certain nostalgia.

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Hawa is a child of the grinding hardship of a Palestinian refugee camp. She has had to survive the camp itself, as well as the humiliation and destruction of an abusive family life. But now, later in life, something most unexpected has happened: she has fallen in love. Velvet unfolds over a day in Hawa’s life, as she makes plans for a new beginning that may take her out of the camp. She sifts back through her memories of the past: the stories of her family, her childhood, and her beloved mentor, who invited her into the glamorous world of the rich women of Amman. This is a novel of enormous power and great beauty. Rich in detail, it tells of the women of the camp, and the joy and relief that can be captured amid repression and sorrow.

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Twice a princess, twice exiled, Neslishah Sultan had an eventful life. When she was born in Istanbul in 1921, cannons were fired in the four corners of the Ottoman Empire, commemorative coins were issued in her name, and her birth was recorded in the official register of the palace. After all, she was an imperial princess and the granddaughter of Sultan Vahiddedin. But she was the last member of the imperial family to be accorded such honors: in 1922 Vahiddedin was deposed and exiled, replaced as caliph—but not as sultan—by his brother (and Neslishah’s other grandfather) Abdülmecid; in 1924 Abdülmecid was also removed from office, and the entire imperial family, including three-year-old Neslishah, was sent into exile. Sixteen years later on her marriage to Prince Abdel Moneim, the son of the last khedive of Egypt, she became a princess of the Egyptian royal family. And when in 1952 her husband was appointed regent for Egypt’s infant king, she took her place at the peak of Egyptian society as the country’s first lady, until the abolition of the monarchy the following year. Exile followed once more, this time from Egypt, after the royal couple faced charges of treason. Eventually Neslishah was allowed to return to the city of her birth, where she died at the age of 91 in 2012. Based on original documents and extensive personal interviews, this account of one woman’s extraordinary life is also the story of the end of two powerful dynasties thirty years apart.

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Middle Eastern cuisine is renowned all over the world for its sophistication, variety, and flavor. Bilhana (Egyptian for 'bon appétit') brings a contemporary twist to traditional Middle Eastern dishes with the use of healthy cooking methods and the freshest ingredients the region has to offer. Spanning the vast area south of the Mediterranean from the East (Lebanon and Egypt) to the West (Morocco), from simple mezze or breakfast dishes to elaborate stews and roasts, the recipes in this book showcase the vibrant colors and immense variety of Middle Eastern cooking as well as being easy to follow. Included are recipes for Roasted Eggplant with Tahini, Alexandrian Grilled Shrimp, Shakshuka, Moroccan Lamb Stew, Vegan Moussaka, Green Beans in Garlic and Caramelized Onions, Pomegranate and Guava Salad, and much more. Exquisitely illustrated with more than 130 full-colour photographs.

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Ruqayya was only thirteen when the Nakba came to her village in Palestine in 1948. The massacre in Tantoura drove her from her home and from everything she had ever known. She had not left her village before, but she would never return. Now an old woman, Ruqayya looks back on a long life in exile, one that has taken her to Syria, Lebanon, the Gulf, and given her children and grandchildren. Through her depth of experience and her indomitable spirit, we live her love of her land, her family, and her people, and we feel the repeated pain of loss and of diaspora.

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It is the winter of 1915 and Iraq has been engulfed by the First World War. Hungry for independence from Ottoman rule, Ahmad leaves his peaceful family life on the banks of the Tigris to join the British-led revolt. Thousands of miles away, Welsh teenager Carwyn reluctantly enlists and is sent, via Gallipoli and Egypt, to the Mesopotamia campaign. Carwyn's and Ahmad’s paths cross, and their fates are bound together. Both are forever changed, not only by their experience of war, but also by the parallel discrimination and betrayal they face. Ruqaya Izzidien's evocative debut novel is rich with the heartbreak and passion that arise when personal loss and political zeal collide, and offers a powerful retelling of the history of British intervention in Iraq.

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Salman Abu Sitta, who has single-handedly made available crucial mapping work on Palestine, was just ten years old when he left his home near Beersheba in 1948, but as for many Palestinians of his generation, the profound effects of that traumatic loss would form the defining feature of his life from that moment on. In this rich and moving memoir, Abu Sitta draws on oral histories and personal recollections to vividly evoke the vanished world of his family and home from the late nineteenth century to the eve of the British withdrawal from Palestine and subsequent war. Alongside accounts of an idyllic childhood spent on his family’s farm estate Abu Sitta gives a personal and very human face to the dramatic events of 1930s and 1940s Palestine, conveying the acute sense of foreboding felt by Palestinians as Zionist ambitions and militarization expanded under the mandate. Following his family’s flight to Gaza during the 1948 mass exodus of Palestinians from their homes, Abu Sitta continued his schooling and university education in Cairo, where he witnessed the heady rise of Arab nationalism after the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 and the momentous events surrounding the Israeli invasion of Sinai and Gaza in 1956. With warmth and humor, he chronicles his peripatetic exile’s existence, as an engineering student in Nasser’s Egypt, his crucial, formative years in 1960s London, his life as a family man and academic in Canada, and several sojourns in Kuwait, all against the backdrop of seismic political events in the region, including the 1967 and 1973 Arab–Israeli wars, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the 1991 Gulf War. Abu Sitta’s narrative is imbued throughout with a burning sense of justice, a determination to recover and document what rightfully belongs to his people, an aim given poignant expression in his painstaking cartographic and archival work on Palestine, for which he is justifiably acclaimed.

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Set in contemporary Tangier, Morocco, Detective Laafrit investigates the case of four corpses washed up on the beach. The victims are presumed illegal immigrants, drowned trying to reach Spain packed in small fishing boats, however Laafrit soon discovers that one of them has been brutally shot. Guns are illegal in Morocco and the mysterious shooting shakes the police force as the hunt for the murder weapon begins in earnest. With the help of his informants, Laafrit's investigation reveals a spiraling conspiracy of international sabotage.

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Siwa is a remote oasis deep in the heart of the Egyptian desert near the border with Libya. Until an asphalt road was built to the Mediterranean coast in the 1980s, its only links to the outside world were by arduous camel tracks. As a result of this isolation, Siwa developed a unique culture manifested in its crafts of basketry, pottery, and embroidery and in its styles of costume and silverwork. The most visible and celebrated example of this was the silver jewelery that was worn by women in abundance at weddings and other ceremonies. Based on conversations with women and men in the oasis and with reference to old texts, this book describes the jewelery and costume at this highpoint of Siwan culture against the backdrop of its date gardens and springs, social life, and dramatic history. It places the women's jewelery, costume, and embroidery into social perspective, and describes how they were used in ceremonies and everyday life and how they were related to their beliefs and attitudes to the world. The book also describes how, in the second half of the twentieth century, the arrival of the road and of television brought drastic change, and the oasis was exposed to the styles and fashions of the outside world and how the traditional silver ornaments were gradually replaced by gold.

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This multi-layered novel about the depths of human experience and the struggle between polarities, on the surface presents a love story of unrequited passion between Rama and Mikhail. Their story reflects the relationship not only between man and woman, Copt and Muslim, but also between Upper and Lower Egypt. Through a delicate grid of intertextual references and juxtaposed narratives, the dreams and hopes, fears and defeats of Rama and Mikhail move from the local to the global, corresponding to human dreams and anxieties everywhere.

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Tsenhor was born about 550 bce in the city of Thebes (Karnak). She died some sixty years later, having lived through the reigns of Amasis II, Psamtik III, Cambyses II, Darius I and perhaps even Psamtik IV. By carefully retracing the events of her life as they are recorded in papyri now kept in museums in London, Paris, Turin, and Vienna, the author creates the image of a proud and independent businesswoman who made her own decisions in life. If Tsenhor were alive today she would be wearing jeans, drive a pick-up, and enjoy a beer with the boys. She clearly was her own boss, and one assumes that this happened with the full support of her second husband Psenese, who fathered two of her children. She married him when she was in her mid-thirties. Like her father and husband, Tsenhor could be hired to bring offerings to the dead in the necropolis on the west bank of the Nile. For a fee of course, and that is how her family acquired high-quality farm land on more than one occasion. But Tsenhor also did other business on her own, such as buying a slave and co-financing the reconstruction of a house that she owned together with Psenese. She seems in many ways to have been a liberated woman, some 2,500 years before the concept was invented.Embedded in the history of the first Persian occupation of Egypt, and using many sources dealing with ordinary women from the Old Kingdom up to and including the Coptic era, this book aims to forever change the general view on women in ancient Egypt, which is far too often based on the lives of Nefertiti, Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra.

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Saleem, fed up with all the violence, religiosity, and strict family hierarchies of his Iraqi village, flees to Spain to establish a new life for himself. But his lonely exile is turned upside down when he encounters his father, Noah, in a Madrid nightclub after not seeing him in more than a decade. Noah looks and acts like a new man, and Saleem sets out to discover the mystery of his father's presence in Spain and his altered life. In doing so, he recalls formative moments in Iraq of familial love, war, and the haunting accidental death of his cousin Aliya, Saleem's partner in the hesitant, tender exploration of sexuality. When the renewed relationship with his father erupts in a violent conflict, Saleem is forced to rediscover his sense of self and the hard-won stability of his life. Through Saleem's experiences and reflections, the fast-paced narrative carries the reader between Spain and Iraq to a surprising resolution.

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This sequel to the well-known kullu tamam!, on Egyptian Arabic, by the same authors, focuses on the modern written language used in real life by providing short texts taken from Egyptian newspapers, official statements, and the internet, and introduces personal and business letters, some of them in handwritten form (ruq‘a). For those who have studied kullu tamam!, the first lessons give contrastive word lists and exercises to make the link with Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Extensive pattern drills, translation exercises in both directions, and writing exercises aid understanding and encourage active use of the language. The key to the exercises, the Arabic –English / English –Arabic glossary, and the audio CD containing the texts allow for classroom use as well as for self-study.

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Suhaila lies in a coma in a Paris hospital. Her son Nadir flies in from Canada, and friends keep vigil. As she lies voiceless and suspended between life and death we, like Nadir, come to discover her through the multiple narratives that hover around her sickbed: fragments of conversations, memories, and letters, all (re)membered, first by Nadir, and then through Suhaila's diary entries in Paris and in Canada. The loved ones of the title are the constellation of friends, predominantly women, who flock to Suhaila's side from all over the world to envelope her in the warmth of friendship that may ultimately save her and enable her rebirth. Suhaila comes alive through the stories about: her excesses, her love of dancing, of wine, and of poetry, despite years of abuse by her Iraqi husband, the bleakness of exile from home, and the frustrating separation from her only son. "The Loved Ones" is an intimately moving, polyphonic narrative of displacement and nomadism, a disjointed, at times disfigured tale that blends diverse time frames so that the past, the present, and the future are unified, interlocked, and intertwined. This award-winning novel is a hymn to friendship and to boundless giving that ultimately restores life - it is a story about memory and history, a story against forgetting.

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Pharaoh Khufu is battling the Fates. At stake is the inheritance of Egypt's throne, the proud but tender heart of Khufu's beautiful daughter Princess Merensankh and Khufu's legacy as a sage, not savage ruler.

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Based on the personal journals of Robert Grenville Gayer-Anderson (1881-1945), Egyptologist, poet, surgeon, soldier, psychic, and noted collector, this candid and charming historical biography tells of Gayer-Anderson's strange and eclectic life in the final days of the British empire. As a child, he crossed an unforgiving America with his entrepreneurial and eccentric Irish parents. As a man, he immersed himself in the Arab way of life as colonials seldom did; he saw ghosts and witches, sailed the Nile, wrestled Turks and crocodiles, fought at Gallipoli, smoked opium, performed surgery in the desert, gathered and cared for artefacts and boys in his Cairene home, survived an assassination attempt and, in the name of science and Henry Wellcome, in flowery glades he boiled the flesh from the skulls of Nuba warriors. His personal journals are filled with frank accounts of his exploits and of the illustrious and colorful people who wandered by: Lawrence of Arabia, Gordon, Kitchener, Conan-Doyle, Eric Gill, and Stephen Spender, among others. Drugs, race, class, family, sex, and selfhood are vividly mixed in this tale of two wars, colonial life, medicine, anthropology, and psychic phenomena. The stiff-upper-lipped ritual of a very British upbringing vied with his Romantic and consuming love of beauty, vividly embodied in the Gayer-Anderson Museum in Cairo, which to this day houses his vast collection of carpets, furniture, glassware, and other curios.

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The sensational discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's tomb, close on the heels of Britain's declaration of Egyptian independence, accelerated the growth in Egypt of both Egyptology as a formal discipline and of 'pharaonism'-popular interest in ancient Egypt-as an inspiration in the struggle for full independence. Emphasizing the three decades from 1922 until Nasser's revolution in 1952, this compelling follow-up to Whose Pharaohs? looks at the ways in which Egypt developed its own archaeologies-Islamic, Coptic, and Greco-Roman, as well as the more dominant ancient Egyptian. Each of these four archaeologies had given birth to, and grown up around, a major antiquities museum in Egypt. Later, Cairo, Alexandria, and Ain Shams universities joined in shaping these fields. Contesting Antiquity in Egypt brings all four disciples, as well as the closely related history of tourism, together in a single engaging framework. Throughout this semi-colonial era, the British fought a prolonged rearguard action to retain control of the country while the French continued to dominate the Antiquities Service, as they had since 1858. Traditional accounts highlight the role of European and American archaeologists in discovering and interpreting Egypt's long past. Donald Reid redresses the balance by also paying close attention to the lives and careers of often-neglected Egyptian specialists. He draws attention not only to the contests between westerners and Egyptians over the control of antiquities, but also to passionate debates among Egyptians themselves over pharaonism in relation to Islam and Arabism during a critical period of nascent nationalism.Drawing on rich archival and published sources, extensive interviews, and material objects ranging from statues and murals to photographs and postage stamps, this comprehensive study by one of the leading scholars in the field will make fascinating reading for scholars and students of Middle East history, archaeology, politics, and museum and heritage studies, as well as for the interested lay reader.

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Egypt has placed its hopes on developing its vast and empty deserts as the ultimate solution to the country's problems. New cities, new farms, new industrial zones, new tourism resorts, and new development corridors, all have been promoted for over half a century to create a modern Egypt and to pull tens of millions of people away from the increasingly crowded Nile Valley into the desert hinterland. The results, in spite of colossal expenditures and ever-grander government pronouncements, have been meager at best, and today Egypt's desert is littered with stalled schemes, abandoned projects, and forlorn dreams. It also remains stubbornly uninhabited. Egypt's Desert Dreams is the first attempt of its kindto look at Egypt's desert development in its entirety. It recounts the failuresof governmental schemes, analyzes why they have failed, and exposes the main winners of Egypt's desert projects, as well as the underlying narratives and political necessities behind it, even in the post-revolutionary era. It also shows that all is not lost, and that there are alternative paths that Egypt could take.

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Hind, newly arrived in New York with her eight-year-old son, several suitcases of unfinished manuscripts, and hardly any English, finds a room in a Brooklyn teeming with people like her who dream of becoming writers. As she discovers the various corners of her new home, they conjure up parallel memories from her childhood and her small Bedouin village in the Nile Delta: Emilia who sells used shoes at the flea market smells like Zeinab, the old woman who worked for Hind's grandfather; the reflection of her own body as she dances tango awakens the awkwardness of her relationship to that body across the years; the story of Lilette, the Egyptian bourgeoise who has lost her memory, prompts Hind to safeguard her own. Through this kaleidoscopic spectrum of disadvantaged characters we encounter unique but familiar life histories in this award-winning and intensely moving novel of displacement and exile. It was the winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2011 Arabic Booker prize.

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At the World Heritage site of Wadi al-Hitan, or the Valley of the Whales, in Egypt’s Western Desert, an ecotour in the desert reveals a site of invaluable prehistoric fossils, from whales and rays to sea turtles and crocodiles. Forty million years ago, this region in Egypt was submerged under the ocean, with a coastline of mangrove swamps. Yet while this site reveals incredible steps in the evolution of some species, it also proves the extraordinary perfection of others: crocodiles, sea turtles, and even bats have changed very little over the course of millions of years! Today, their descendants can still be found in Egypt, struggling to survive a much greater challenge than they faced with the dinosaurs: people. Water-resistant and compact, filled with colorful illustrations and photographs, comprehensive text, diagrams, and maps, this foldout guide is the perfect travel companion through geological time.Includes:- Chart of prehistoric animals and their Egyptian contemporaries, including whales, crocodiles, dugongs, sea turtles, fruit bats, and lizards- Map of Egypt today with contrasting image of the continent 40 million years agoAbout the series: The AUC Press Nature Foldout series combine, in beautifully practical form, a wealth of information written by leading experts with striking full-color illustrations on the flora and fauna of Egypt and the Middle East. Designed for nature lovers and outdoor adventurers, as well as for indoor use, the foldouts come in an easily foldable format, at once compact, waterproof, and portable, making them durable and convenient travel guides. Size is 23 x 8.5 in. / 58.5 x 21.5 cm unfolded.

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As the 25 January Revolution got under way and grew from strength to strength, six young Egyptian photographers found themselves following and documenting the events in different parts of Cairo, and converging-as the demonstrations converged-on what became the focal point of the revolution, Tahrir Square. Between them they photographed many of the unprecedented and startling events around the city and in the square, from the early battles of the protesters against heavily armed security forces, through the attacks by paid thugs on camel and horseback, and the peaceful occupation of Tahrir Square, to the victory celebrations and the inspiring clean-up afterward. Together in this stunning visual record they present the days of the Revolution in sequence, from tear gas to tears of joy, picturing a story of determination and courage that inspired the world.

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When Egyptians began demonstrating against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak on 25 January 2011, few could anticipate that the demonstrations would grow into a revolution to astonish the world. Millions of Egyptians were soon joining in every day in cities across the country, but Tahrir Square became the beating heart of the revolution, its center, its life force, and its spirit, a spirit that was peaceful, inclusive, creative, and determined. Swedish photographer Mia Gr ndahl returned day after day to the square, to record the incredible tent city within a city that would not budge until the president did, and to capture the great humanity of the revolution that impressed Cairo, Egypt, and the world. This book presents a selection of her moving photographs from those historic days, along with the testimony in words of some of the people who were there.

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Brought up in poverty in a remote part of an unstable Arab republic, the narrator studies Islamic law and Arabic and becomes a cleric and civil servant in the capital. At the age of almost 40 he accepts a position as imam of a mosque serving his compatriots in a richer and more cosmopolitan neighboring Arab country. His humdrum life changes when an educated and independent woman recruits him as consultant for a book on the great tenth-century Arab poet al- Mutanabbi. As their work together on his poetry leads to friendship and then love, the imam becomes embroiled in ideological conflict with activist Islamists at his mosque. Taken into protective custody after his enemies declare him apostate, and separated from the woman he loves, the imam chronicles how their relationship opened his eyes to a new world and taught him to overcome his old inhibitions. Judgment Day touches on debates within contemporary Islam and on the transformative and humanizing power of love between men and women.

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This unique visual reference guide will be an invaluable resource to professional designers – from architects to illustrators, production designers, art directors, decorators, film concept artists, sculptors and painters. It uses colour photographs to illustrate a wide range of locations and styles of architecture throughout Egypt, particularly highlighting universal architectural elements that may be incorporated into a variety of designs and styles including arches, doorways, windows, balconies, wall finishes and more. Photographic plates of modern and ancient Egypt, showing markets, buildings, temples, tombs and daily life are cross-referenced with enlarged details and grouped for functional comparisons to cater to the various approaches a designer may take from conception to completion. With some 1,000 colour illustrations, thorough referencing and detailed observation, this book will serve a very specific need while also appealing to a wider audience as a visual celebration of many aspects of Egypt, familiar and unfamiliar. For ease of use for the designer, the book also includes a CD with all images and interactive referencing abilities.

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Though Egypt was ruled by Turkish-speakers through most of the period from the ninth century until 1952, the impact of Turkish culture there remains under-studied. This book deals with the period from 1805 to 1952, during which Turkish cultural patterns, spread through reforms based on those of Istanbul, may have touched more Egyptians than ever before. An examination of the books, newspapers, and other written materials produced in Turkish, including translations, and of the presses involved, reveals the rise and decline of Turkish culture in government, the military, education, literature, music, and everyday life. The author also describes the upsurge in Turkish writing generated by Young Turk exiles from 1895 to 1909. Included is a CD containing appendices of extensive bibliographic information concerning books and periodicals printed in Egypt during this period.

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Clamor of the Lake begins with the appearance of an old fisherman of unknown origin sailing a black boat. Taciturn and enigmatic, he takes on a woman and her twin boys. While he gives away nothing about his past, his undemanding companionship prompts the woman to narrate her turbulent life. Meanwhile, in a nearby village by the lake, Gomaa and his wife have found respite from the dreariness of their existence in the fantastic objects the sea churns up during gales—a sword, alluring panties, a talisman. But when the waves cast up a chest that speaks in a language no one can comprehend, Gomaa is haunted by its voice. As the tumult of the lake drives a wedge between the couple, it turns two neighbors into close allies: Karawia, a café proprietor, and Afifi, a grocer. Eventually, they too will be haunted by the siren song of the lake.In Mohamed El-Bisatie’s lyrical novel, the stories of these various figures converge on the mercurial presence of the lake, which in the end proves the narrative’s true hero. An accomplished experiment in the poetics of space, Clamor of the Lake won the 1995 Cairo International Book Fair Award for Best Novel of the Year.

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Cairo’s Museum of Islamic Art houses one of the richest collections of artifacts from all periods of Islamic history and all parts of the Islamic world. Structured as a guide, but fully illustrated with superb color photographs, this book suggests a simple but comprehensive itinerary through one of Egypt’s most fascinating museums. Taking readers through the various exhibits, this useful guidebook explains and illuminates the esthetic and historic importance of the museum’s main works on display, including metalwork, textiles, woodwork, glass, carved stone and ivory, and the art of the book. Written by one of the leading authorities on Islamic art and architecture, and lavishly illustrated throughout with specially commissioned color photographs, this is the definitive guide to Egypt’s great collection of Islamic art.

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“The millennial generation’s most celebrated literary achievement.”—Al-Ahram Weekly“The first glimmer of hope for a true fictional renaissance—an instantly rewarding read embraced by an unprecedented range of literary figures”—The Daily Star What is madness?” asks the narrator of Ahmed Alaidy’s jittery, funny, and angry novel. Assuring readers that they are about to find out, the narrator takes us on a journey through the insanity of present-day Cairo—in and out of minibuses, malls, and crash pads, navigating the city’s pinball machine of social life with tolerable efficiency. But lurking under the rocks in his grouchy, chain-smoking, pharmaceutically-oriented, twenty-something life are characters like his elusive psychiatrist uncle with a disturbing interest in phobias. And then there’s Abbas, the narrator’s best friend who surfaces at critical moments to drive our hero into uncontrollably multiplying difficulties. For instance, there’s the ticklish situation with the simultaneous blind-dates Abbas has set up for him on different levels of a coffee-shop in a Cairo mall with two girls both called Hind. With friends like Abbas, what paranoiac needs enemies?

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Since 2004, economic reforms in Egypt have led to robust expansion, a healthy external position, and enhanced investor confidence. But despite these positive macroeconomic developments, inflation has been steadily rising. Does fiscal policy threaten price stability? Does wage growth in the Egyptian economy lead price inflation, or is it the reverse? In this volume, these and other questions are examined by contributors who participated in a conference held in Cairo in late 2007.Here is a coherent and comprehensive analysis of the factors driving prices in Egypt, in an attempt to find a satisfactory balance between prices and economic growth. While Egypt is the focus of the analysis, the papers draw upon the relevant literature, and international experience, the findings can be applied to other middle-income economies. This timely study helps to explain the complex issues facing economists and policymakers, with proposals for reform.Contributors: Hala Abou-Ali, Hala Fares, Omneia A. Helmy, Alaa Ibrahim, Hanaa Kheir-El-Din, Rania Al-Mashat, Diaa Noureldin, Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, and Sherine Al-Shawarby.

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In Before the Throne, Naguib Mahfouz summons nearly sixty of Egypt's rulers to the afterlife Court of Osiris, from a king who unified Egypt for the first time, around 3000 BC, to a president assassinated by religious extremists in 1981. He includes names as familiar as the pharaoh Ramesses II and as obscure as the medieval vizier Qaraqush. Defending their behaviour before the divine tribunal, those who acted for the nation's good are honoured with immortality, but those who failed to protect it leave the gilded hall of eternal justice with a very different verdict. Full of Mahfouz's unique insight into his country's timeless qualities, this controversial work skillfully traces five thousand years of Egypt's past as it flows into the present, through the mind of its most acclaimed author.

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This collection of short stories, both poignant and skillfully crafted, bring to life the tragic demise of traditional Nubian life and culture. If the earlier dams that were built across the Nile during the first half of the twentieth century caused increasing numbers of the men-folk to migrate north to Cairo and Alexandria to work as servants, waiters, and doormen, the completion of the High Dam in 1964 sounded the death knell. While the temples of Abu Simbel were meticulously relocated at great expense, the drowning of the ancient heartland of the Nubian people along the banks of the Nile went largely unnoticed. Haggag Oddoul’s work, as well as documenting the personal tragedy of individuals caught up in massive social transformation, also casts a nostalgic light on the heritage and way of life of the Nubians: their rhythmic dancing, their beautiful women, the lively humor of their elders, and the enormous centrality of their traditions and the spirits with which they shared the environment. Two stories in this collection, ‘’Zeinab Uburty’’ and ‘’Nights of Musk,’’ offer a bucolic and dream-like insight into the world that has disappeared for ever under the water behind the dam. Meanwhile, two other stories, ‘’Adila, Grandmother’’ and ‘’The River People,’’ document the departure of the men, while the women are left behind to go fallow, and the second and third generations born in the cities of the north have only their grandmother’s tales and her pigeon Arabic to remind them of their heritage.

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The Long Way Back tells the story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh area of Baghdad. Through exquisite layering of the overlapping worlds of the characters, their private conflicts and passions are set against the wider drama of events leading up to the overthrow of prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim and the initial steps to power of the Baath party in Iraq in 1962-63.The skilful building-up of the characters and their worlds within a brief and clearly determined period of recent history allows for a bold and intelligent portrayal of the ambiguous strengths and weaknesses of Iraqi and wider Arab culture. In addition, the dramatization of the relationships between generations, social groups, and genders is achieved with a mixture of humor, bitter irony, and compassion that identifies it as a great work of Arabic literature.

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