Search results for ""author paul starkey""

This volume is designed as an introduction to the contemporary Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most important Arabic novelists of the modern era, with an unrivalled reputation for independence and integrity among contemporary Egyptian writers. The first study in any language devoted exclusively to Sonallah Ibrahim, the volume discusses each of the author’s novels individually, beginning with the seminal Tilka al-ra’iha [That Smell] (1966) and ending with al-Jalid [Ice] (2011). Each work is discussed individually in its literary, social, historical and political context. The volume traces the evolution of Sonallah Ibrahim’s work in terms both of their themes and of their literary technique, and concludes with an attempt at an overall evaluation of the author’s contribution to the contemporary Egyptian novel. Paul Starkey’s account shows how innovative and stylistically rich the Arabic novel has become over a period of some fifty years, beyond the better-known work of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris. As such, the volume will serve as an introduction not only to the individual author but also to the development of Egyptian (and, more generally, Arabic) literature over the last half century.

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Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern times comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years. As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons — religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! — but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: ‘Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!’

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The year is 1970, a period of crisis in the Arab world. Twenty-year-old Hisham has left home for the Saudi-Arabian capital Riyadh, where he's enrolled at university to study politics and economics. But this city has more than academic qualifications to offer a man of Hisham's mettle, and he soon discovers a strange underworld of alcohol and prostitution where fear, pleasure and politics merge. Here hospitals prove the richest cruising grounds, the desert is the place for illicit couplings, and now Hisham is spying on the bedroom activities of his next-door-neighbour's wife, who has taken to leaving her door ajar...Meanwhile, Hisham's disillusioned childhood friend Adnan abandons his artistic ambitions in favour of a loftier cause - Islamism. The two friends - who rapidly grow estranged - come to symbolise the opposite extremes of life in a repressive closed society.

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Sarajevo Firewood, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) award in 2020, explores the legacy of the recent histories of two countries — Algeria and Bosnia-Herzegovina — both of which experienced traumatic, and ultimately futile, civil wars in the 1990s. The novel narrates the lives of two main characters, with their friends and families: Salim, an Algerian journalist, and Ivana, a young Bosnian woman, both of whom have fled the destruction and hatred of their own countries to try to build a new life in Slovenia. As Ivana pursues her goal of writing her ‘dream play’, Khatibi’s novel brings to life in fictional form the memories and experiences of the countless ordinary people who survived the atrocities linking the two countries. As such, it represents both a lasting memorial to the thousands of dead and ‘disappeared’ of the two countries’ civil conflicts, but also a powerful and novel exploration of the experience of exile to which so many have been subjected over the last few decades.

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Banipal 70 – Mahmoud Shukair, Writing Jerusalem is a rich issue of diverse authors and literary news to inspire and enthuse you in this continuing time of Covid-19.The main feature on Palestinian author Mahmoud Shukair is a gift to the great Jerusalemite on his 80th birthday – which took place in March this year – with articles, short stories, reviews of his two collections in English translation, and his trilogy of novels of Jerusalem family life.Two recent Arabic novels are reviewed and excerpted: At Rest in the Cherry Orchard by Iraqi author Azher Jirjees, and No One Prayed over Their Graves by Syrian author Khaled Khalifa. Also included, a memorable short story “A Bicycle Brings an Old Comrade” by Egyptian author Hassan Abdel Mawgoud.Lebanese author Alawiya Sobh talks to Katia al-Tawil about her latest novel To Love Life, with three chapters excerpted.Guest writer is Gibraltarian poet and translator Trino Cruz, working in both Spanish and English, with selected poems from The Fertile Shore.Plus an interview with the editors of the Maktoob project, which translates and publishes Arabic literature in Hebrew.

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