Search results for ""author r. neil hewison""

The Fayoum, a large and exceptionally fertile depression in Egypt’s Western Desert, some 90 kilometers southwest of Cairo, is a region both rich in history and outstanding in natural beauty. Its historical legacy includes temples, pyramids, and towns from the Middle Kingdom and the Ptolemaic Period, as well as churches, monasteries, and mosques from later times.Neil Hewison here outlines the history (and prehistory) of the Fayoum and its lakes, describes the agriculture and rural life of the region, then guides the visitor around the province site by site, never averse to taking an interesting detour along the way.Originally published in 1984, this guide to one of Egypt’s most distinctive and beautiful regions quickly became regarded as a classic. The text has been thoroughly revised and updated for this new edition, including a new section on the recently declared UNESCO World Heritage Site of Wadi al-Hitan, the Valley of the Whales. The book is illustrated with color photographs and two maps.Recommended by Lonely Planet.

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NAMED A BEST NEW POTTERY BOOK TO READ IN 2022 BY THE BOOK AUTHORITYLavishly illustrated with over 250 full-color photographs of unique designs and rare methods, providing an in-depth look at the pottery produced in the FayoumThe Fayoum, a broad, fertile depression in Egypt’s Western Desert, known for its great salt lake, its rich green fields, and its unique pharaonic and Greco-Roman remains, is also home to three very different centers of pottery production. The potters of Kom Oshim specialize in decorated garden pots and other utilitarian ware, and guard the special secret of how to make the largest clay vessels in Egypt, up to an extraordinary two and a half meters tall. At al-Nazla, ancient traditions are kept alive, as members of a single extended family continue to use millennia-old techniques passed down from generation to generation, hand-forming among other things their distinctive spherical water jars with amazing dexterity and speed. In the small village of Tunis, the establishment of a pottery school by a Swiss couple in 1990 led to a complete transformation, and the village now hosts more than twenty-five pottery workshops and showrooms, whose products are sold in Cairo, London, and New York.In this lively insight into a varied and vital craft, the author reveals the stories of the three villages and the skilled potters who make their living there, looking at how they learned their trade and how they work, from the preparation of the clay to the formation of the pots on the wheel or by hand, to the decoration, the glazing, and the firing, and finally to the display or distribution and sale of the finished product.For past and future travelers to Egypt, lovers of the craft of pottery, practitioners, and collectors, this beautifully illustrated exploration of the ceramics of the Fayoum will inspire and enchant.

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A classic novel from one of the great contemporary writers of Egypt and the Middle EastCairo, January 1952. Egypt is at a critical point in its modern history, struggling to throw off the yoke of the seventy-year British occupation and its corrupt royalist allies. Hamza is a committed young radical, his goal to build a secret armed brigade to fight for freedom, independence, and national self-esteem. Fawziya is a woman with a mission too, keen to support the cause. Among the ashes of the city love may grow, but at a time of national struggle what place do personal feelings have beside the greater love for a shackled homeland? In this finely crafted novel, Yusuf Idris, best known as the master of the Arabic short story, brings to life not only some of the most human characters in modern Arabic fiction but the soul of Cairo itself and the soul of a national consciousness focused on liberation.

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