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

A wide-ranging exploration of the relationship between history and literatureThis issue of Alif explores the relationship between literature and history. What do history and literature have to say to each other? What can literature say that history cannot, and vice versa? Do they work with or against each other? How does the literary dimension of history affect its status, and how does the historicity of literature, in turn, shape its being? What would it mean to speak of a “literariness of history” today? The terms “literature” and “history” in our title are intended to be construed in the broadest possible sense and to cover the widest possible range of genres and modalities of literary and historical writing. The recent proliferation of epithets and sub-disciplines in the study of both literature and history has fundamentally changed both fields while raising further questions about the possibility of scholarly debates that traverse them.Contributors- Balthazar I. Beckett, American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Mohamed Birairi, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt, and the American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Ziad Dallal, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, USA- Karim Elsaiad, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt- Itzea Goikolea-Amiano, SOAS, University of London, London, UK- Rebecca Ruth Gould, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK- Magdi Guirguis, Kafrelsheikh University, Kafr al-Sheikh, Egypt- Isabelle Hesse, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia- Abdullah Ibrahim, literary critic- Madonna Kalousian, independent scholar- Céza Kassem, independent scholar- Ahmed F. Khaleel, University of York, York, UK- Tarif Khalidi, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon- Peter Kornicki, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK- Wen-chi Li, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland- Azza Madian, Cairo Conservatoire and American University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt- Francesca Orsini, SOAS, University of London, London, UK- Daniel Rivet, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, France- Anne C. Vila, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

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A groundbreaking account of how the ancient Egyptians perceived children and childhood, from the Predynastic period to the end of the New KingdomThere could be no society, no family, and no social recognition without children. The way in which children were perceived, integrated, and raised within the family and the community established the very foundations of Egyptian society. Childhood in Ancient Egypt is the most comprehensive attempt yet published to reconstruct the everyday life of children from the Predynastic period to the end of the New Kingdom. Drawing on a vast wealth of textual, iconographic, and archaeological sources stretching over a period of 3,500 years, Amandine Marshall pieces together the portrait of a society in which children were ever-present in a multiplicity of situations.The ancient sources are primarily the expressions of male adults, who were little inclined to take an interest in the condition of the child, and the feelings of young Egyptians and all that touches on their emotional state can never be deduced from the sources. Nevertheless, by cross-referencing and comparing thousands of documents, Marshall has been able to explore how ancient Egyptians perceived children and childhood, and whether children had a particular status in the eyes of the law, society, and the Egyptian state. She examines the maintenance of the child and the care expended on its being, and discusses the kinds of clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles children wore, the activities that punctuated their daily lives, the kinds of games and toys they enjoyed, and what means were employed to protect them from illness, evil spirits, or ghosts.Illustrated with 160 drawings and photographs, this book sheds unprecedented light upon the experience of childhood in ancient Egypt and represents a major contribution to the growing field of ancient-world childhood studies.

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An introductory media Arabic book for the elementary and low intermediate levelsWith the proliferation of satellite television news and social media channels, students of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) have access to an increasingly vast range of print and broadcast news from the Arab world. Media Arabic for Beginners is a unique textbook designed to lead elementary and low intermediate level students of MSA to a solid level of proficiency in the language of Arabic media. Through active engagement with authentic texts selected from a wide variety of news sources and websites, learners are familiarized with vocabulary, idioms, lexical items, and collocations, while grammatical concepts are introduced and explained in context. With sixteen texts accompanied by sixteen audio files and supportive PowerPoint presentations, this content-based approach allows students to develop and enhance their reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills. Vocabulary and grammatical points are presented as PowerPoint slides, making for discrete and manageable learning targets.Media Arabic for Beginners is structured around four themes, each devoted to a dominant news topic: Official Visits and Talks; Elections and Referendums; Attacks and Explosions; and Demonstrations and Protests. Each unit is in turn made up of four lessons, each lesson featuring a text from a particular perspective together with pre-reading activities, reading activities, post-reading activities, and a section with particular focus on grammar. The texts progress from very simple to more complex, as students steadily increase their reading fluency. Each unit ends with a thorough review section with various activities, such as comprehension questions, vocabulary translation, and role play.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR ARABIC FICTIONA sensitive and at times darkly humorous story of a young man’s experience of illness, his contemplation of death, and his determination to maintain his independence through it allAfter reading Kafka, K decides to write his own diary, but he is constantly frustrated by his lack of experiences: he is worn down by the drudgery of his corporate job for a faceless corporation and by his incessant family obligations. When he receives the news that he has leukemia, he finds himself torn between a sense of devastation and a revelation that he has finally found a way out of his writing predicament. Through Mohammed’s measured but forceful writing, this compelling debut has a universality that reaches across time, place, and culture.

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An examination of the myriad lifetimes lived by ancient Egyptian artifacts Egypt has a particular longue durée, a continuity of preservation in deep time, not seen in other parts of the world. Over the centuries, ancient buildings have been adopted for purposes that differed from the original. Temple sites have been transformed into places of worship for new deities or turned into houses and tombs. Tombs, in turn, have been adapted to function as human dwellings already in the Late Antique Period.The Afterlives of Egyptian History expands on the traditional academic approach of studying the original function and sociopolitical circumstances of ancient Egyptian objects, texts, and sites to examine their secondary lives by exploring their reuse, modification, and reinterpretation.Written in honor of the Egyptologist, Edward Bleiberg, this volume brings together a group of luminous scholars from a wide range of fields, including Egyptian archaeology, philology, conservation, and art, to explore the historical circumstances, as well as political and economic situations, of people who have come into contact with ancient Egypt, both in antiquity and in more recent times.Contributor Affiliations:Yekaterina Barbash, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USALisa Bruno, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USASimon Connor, F.R.S.–FNRS, Brussels, Belgium and University of Liege, Liege, BelgiumKathlyn (Kara) Cooney, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USARichard Fazzini, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USAPeter Lacovara, Ancient Egyptian Archaeology and Heritage Fund, Albany, NY USARonald J. Leprohon, University of Toronto, CanadaMary McKercher, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USAEdmund Meltzer, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, California USAJoachim Friedrich Quack, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio USAPaul Edmund Stanwick, independent scholar, New York, NY USAEmily Teeter, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL USAKathy Zurek-Doule, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY USA

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Four translations of major accounts of the life of the fourth-century Egyptian desert father St. Bishoi, in one volume Saint Bishoi of Scetis (d. ca. 417) enjoys tremendous popularity throughout the Christian east, particularly among the Copts. He lived during a remarkable era in which a litany of larger-than-life monastics lived and interacted with one another. Even then, Bishoi stood out as the founder of one of the four great monasteries of Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun): those of Macarius, John the Little, Bishoi, and the Baramus. Yet in spite of Bishoi’s prominence, the various recensions of his hagio-biography have received sporadic, scattered attention.The Life of Bishoi joins other Lives of eminent monastics of early-Egyptian monasticism: the Lives of Antony, Daniel, John the Little, Macarius, Paphnutius, Shenoute, and Syncletica. These Lives are vital for what they tell us about monastic politeia (way of life), spirituality, and theology, both of the early monastics and of those who later wrote, translated, and revised the Lives. They appeared first in Greek and Coptic, and later generations translated and revised them into Syriac, Arabic and Ge‘ez (Ethiopic).This definitive volume contains the first English translation of the Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic Lives of Bishoi, each translation accompanied by an introduction that focuses on certain aspects of the source text. It also has the first transcription and English translation of an important Greek text. The General Introduction provides rich context about the texts and textual traditions in the various languages, and thoroughly revises our knowledge about the Syriac tradition, the translation of the Syriac text here now consequently providing what is the best translation in any modern language. CONTRIBUTORSTim Vivian, California State University, BakersfieldMaged S.A. Mikhail, California State University, FullertonRowan Allen Greer III (1935–2014), an Episcopal priest and Walter H. Gray Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School, was author of Broken Lights and Mended Lives: Theology and Common Life in the Early Church and Anglican Approaches to Scripture: From the Reformation to the Present. Robert Kitchen is a retired minister of the United Church of Canada, living in Regina, Saskatchewan. He read for the D.Phil. (Oxford) in Syriac Language and Literature and has taught Syriac studies in Sweden and Austria. Apostolos N. Athanassakis was Argyropoulos Chair in Hellenic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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An authoritatively written overview of ancient Egyptian architecture from the point of view of an archaeologist and architectural historianThe monuments of ancient Egypt have held scholars and tourists in their thrall for centuries. The sheer mass of the pyramids of Giza, the interaction of the temples at Deir al-Bahari with the natural environment, and the use of light in the hypostyle hall of Karnak all make these buildings world-class masterpieces of architecture, rivaling those of Greece and Rome.Ancient Egyptian Architecture in Fifteen Monuments presents an authoritative overview of Egyptian architecture from the point of view of an archaeologist and architectural historian with decades of fieldwork experience in Egypt and elsewhere. It focuses on fifteen selected masterpieces, from well-known structures such as the Bent Pyramid in Dahshur and the temple of Horus at Edfu to lesser-known monuments in Hierakonpolis, Abydos, Hawara, and Bubastis, each building representing an important stage in the development of Egyptian architecture and a different vision of what architecture should aspire to achieve.Using sixty reconstruction drawings and black-and-white photographs, Felix Arnold presents new insights into form, meaning, and the organization of space, providing a fresh perspective on ancient Egyptian culture and society.

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The politics and governance of Jordan’s Azraq camp for Syrian refugeesAzraq refugee camp, built in 2014 and host to forty thousand refugees, is one of two official humanitarian refugee camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp investigates the relationship between time and power in Azraq, asking how a politics of time shapes, limits, or enables everyday life for the displaced and for aid workers.Based on ethnographic fieldwork, carried out during 2017–2018, the book challenges the perceptions of Azraq as the ‘ideal’ refugee camp. Melissa Gatter argues that the camp operates as a ‘nine-to-five emergency’ where mundane bureaucratic procedures serve to sustain a power system in which refugees are socialized to endure a cynical wait—both for everyday services and for their return—without expectations for a better outcome.Time and Power in Azraq Refugee Camp also explores how refugees navigate this system, both in the day-to-day and over years, by evaluating various layers of waiting as they affect refugee perceptions of time in the camp—not only in the present, but the past, near future, and far future. Far from an ‘ideal’ camp, Azraq and its politics of time constitute a cruel reality in which a power system meant to aid refugees is one that suppresses, foreclosing futures that it is supposed to preserve.

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World-renowned archaeologist Zahi Hawass weaves a spellbinding narrative about how the pyramids were built and why, new in paperbackNearly five thousand years ago, the fourth dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom reigned over a highly advanced civilization. Believed to be gods, the royal family lived amid colossal palaces and temples built to honor them and their deified ancestors. In Mountains of the Pharaohs, Zahi Hawass brings these extraordinary historical figures to life, detailing a soap opera-like saga complete with murder, incest, and the triumphant ascension to the throne of one of only four queens ever to rule Egypt. It was during this dynasty that the magnificent pyramids of Giza were built. These monuments attest not only to the dynasty's supreme power, but also to the engineering expertise and architectural sophistication that flourished under its rule. Hawass tells the complete story of the pyramids, weaving archaeological data with a history of Egypt's powerful pharaohs, and a

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A meticulous study of the social, economic, and religious significance of coffin reuse and development during the Ramesside and early Third Intermediate periods, illustrated with over 900 imagesFunerary datasets are the chief source of social history in Egyptology, and the numerous tombs, coffins, Books of the Dead, and mummies of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Dynasties have not been fully utilized as social documents, mostly because the data of this time period is scattered and difficult to synthesize. This culmination of fifteen years of coffin study analyzes coffins and other funerary equipment of elites from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-second Dynasties to provide essential windows into social strategies and adaptations employed during the Bronze Age collapse and subsequent Iron Age reconsolidation.Many Twentieth to Twenty-second Dynasty coffins show evidence of reuse from other, older coffins, as well as obvious marks where gilding or

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GOURMAND AWARD WINNER 2023, BEST ILLUSTRATEDA delightfully illustrated selection of 100 commonly used Egyptian food expressions Can you guess what Egyptians mean when they say that something is “a peeled banana” or that someone is “sleeping in honey” or has "turned the sea to tahini"? You may find the answers quite unexpected when you open the pages of this delightful giftbook featuring some one hundred popular food-inflected phrases and sayings used by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic.Idiomatic expressions lend color, dynamism, and humor to everyday speech, and convey complex ideas and beliefs with an economy of words that also tell us something about the culture from which they spring. Each expression in Fish, Milk, Tamarind is given in Arabic script and English transliteration followed by its literal and intended meanings, while humorous color illustrations throughout help readers visualize and remember the expressions. Learners and native speakers of Arabic, as well as Egypt enthusiasts and language lovers will find much in this book to teach, entertain, and enthrall them.

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International Booker Prize finalist and "one of the Arab world's most innovative novelists" (Roger Allen) delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North AfricaThe year is 693 and a tense exchange, mediated by an interpreter, takes place between Berber warrior queen al-Kahina and an emissary from the Umayyad General Hassan ibn Nu'man. Her predecessor had been captured and killed by the Umayyad forces some years earlier, but she will go on to defeat them.The Night Will Have Its Say is a retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the seventh century CE, narrated from the perspective of the conquered peoples. Written in Ibrahim al-Koni's unique and enchanting voice, his lyrical and deeply poetic prose speaks to themes that are intensely timely. Through the wars and conflicts of this distant, turbulent era, he addresses the futility of war, the privilege of an elite few at the expense of the many, the destruction of natural habitats and indigenous cultures, and questions about literal and fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts.Al-Koni's masterly account of conquest and resistance is both timeless and timely, infused with a sense of disaster and exile—from language, the desert, and homeland.

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The dramatic story behind the 3,200-year-old colossal Grand Egyptian Museum Ramesses statueKing Ramesses II ruled Egypt for an extraordinary sixty-six years (1279–1213 BC) during the Nineteenth Dynasty. A great warrior and lavish builder, he fathered dozens of children and is widely regarded as the most celebrated and powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom.This wonderfully clear, engaging book recounts the dramatic history of the famed red granite colossal statue of Ramesses II now residing in Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum. One of the biggest statues ever made and part of the urban landscape of modern Cairo, the statue lent its name to Ramses Square and the city's mainline train station, and was so much a symbol of Cairo that it featured in countless Egyptian films. Susanna Thomas recounts the full history of the statue’s creation and installation in the Great Temple of Ptah at Memphis during the reign of Ramesses II, its reuse by Ramesses IV, and the later history of the statue during the Greco-Roman and Islamic Periods. The book also provides an overview of how statues were made in ancient Egypt and includes a brief discussion of the statue cults of Ramesses II, kingship, temples, and the expansion of the New Kingdom capital city of Memphis and its temples. The final section covers the history of the statue since its rediscovery and subsequent rescue in the mid-nineteenth century until its installation in the entrance hall of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza.Written by a New Kingdom specialist and curatorial expert and illustrated with over 130 images, Ramesses, Beloved by Ptah tells the fascinating story of this magnificent statue within the wider context of statue cults and the reign of Ramesses II, and its subsequent rescue and restoration in modern times.

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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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An innovative account of the careers of the Nubians who occupied the Egyptian throne, written by a leading Egyptologist and author of Tutankhamun, King of EgyptThe region of Nubia—now spanning the modern border between Egypt and Sudan—was long a subject of Egyptian imperial domination by its ancient pharaohs. However, in the eighth century BC matters were suddenly reversed, when the kings of Kush, the ancient name for Nubia, became the overlords of Egypt for nearly a century, before being forced to withdraw in the face of Assyrian invasions. Yet the Kushite kingdom would endure back in its heartlands for another millennium, the heritage of its Egyptian sojourn still visible in its fields of pyramid-tombs.This authoritative yet accessible book tells the story of these Nubian pharaohs of Egypt, from the origins of their kingdom of Kush, through their time as rulers of Egypt, to their heritage in the heart of Sudan—and their rediscovery in modern times. The latter uncovers some very unsavory examples of the racist attitudes of some earlier scholars. These engendered enduringly negative attitudes to aspects of careers of the Nubian pharaohs that find little support in the actual surviving evidence. The latter includes a fascinating network of texts from not only Egypt and Sudan, but also Assyria and the Bible, reflecting the interactions and conflicts of the period. There are also the standing monuments of Nubian pharaohs, ranging from temples they built throughout their dominions, to their tombs: pyramids, constructed in their ancestral heartland, in which Nubian and Egyptian funerary customs were intriguingly entangled.Richly illustrated in full color throughout, this fascinating book by a leading Egyptologist will be essential reading for anyone interested in the lives and times of Egypt’s Nubian pharaohs.

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The everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political battles that have shaped Egyptian education, from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of digital disruption in the twenty-firstFrom the 1952 revolution onward, a main purpose of formal education in Egypt was to socialize children and youth into adopting certain attitudes and behaviors conducive to the regimes in power. Control by the state over education was never entirely hegemonic. National education came increasingly under pressure due to a combination of the growing privatization of the education sector, the growth of political Islam, and rapidly changing digital technologies.Educating Egypt traces the everyday practices, policy ideas, and ideological and political and economic contests over education from the era of nation-building in the twentieth century to the age of global change and digital disruption in the twenty-first. Its overarching theme is that schooling and education, broadly defined, have consistently mirrored larger debates about what constitutes the model citizen and the educated person. Drawing on three decades of ethnographic research inside Egyptian schools and among Egyptian youth, Linda Herrera asks what happens when education actors harbor fundamentally different ideas about the purpose, provision, and meaning of education. Her research shows that, far from serving as a unifying social force, education is in reality an ongoing battleground of interests, ideas, and visions of the good society.

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An award-winning account of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s most controversial novel and the fierce debates that it provoked Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Children of the Alley has been in the spotlight since it was first published in Egypt in 1959. It has been at times banned and at others allowed, sold sometimes under the counter and sometimes openly on the street, often pirated and only recently legally reprinted. It has inspired anxiety among the secular authorities, rage within the religious right, and a drawing of battle lines among Arab intellectuals and writers. It dogged Mahfouz like a curse throughout the remainder of his career, led to his attempted assassination, and sparked a public debate that continues to this day, even after the author’s death in 2006. It is Egypt’s iconic novel, in whose mirror millions have seen themselves, their society, and even the universe, some finding truth, others blasphemy.In this award-winning account, Mohamed Shoair traces the story of Mahfouz’s novel as a cultural and political object, from its first publication to the present via Mahfouz’s award of the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 and the attempt on his life in 1994. He presents the arguments that swirled about the novel and the wide cast of Egyptian figures, from state actors to secular intellectuals and Islamists, who took part in them. He also contextualizes the interactions among the principal characters, interactions that have done much to shape the country’s present.Extensively researched and written in a lucid, accessible style, The Story of the Banned Book is both a gripping work of investigative journalism and a window onto some of the fiercest debates around culture and religion to have taken place in Egyptian society over the past half-century.

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A unique, richly illustrated study of Ottoman religious buildings standing today in CairoWith the conquest in 1517 CE of Egypt by the Ottomans, Cairo lost its position as the capital of the Islamic empire to Istanbul but it retained an eminent position as the second most important city, with Egypt still regarded as one of the wealthiest provinces of the new empire. Round minarets with pointed hoods, as symbols of the new rulers, began filling the landscape alongside the octagonal minarets with pavilion tops of the Mamluks, new mosques, zawiyas, and madrasas/takiyas were built to emphasize the continuation of Sunni Islamic rule, while the use of tiles imported from Turkey introduced new decorative styles to the city’s existing rich carvings and marble paneling. This book invites readers and students to revisit a long-overlooked era of Cairo’s architectural evolution, offering a unique, comprehensive study of Ottoman religious buildings still standing today. It provides detailed descriptions and walk-throughs of the buildings covered, visually, through its rich collection of plans, line drawings, and photographs, and through the narrative that infuses each image with life, shedding light on the continuous evolution of architecture in Cairo even after the city had ceased to be the capital of the Islamic empire.

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Spanning twentieth-century Egyptian history and opening with the true story of a prominent Cairo businessman’s murder, this rags-to-riches story wondrously combines real-life events with fiction, told by a “magical storyteller”It was in the spring of 1927 that Cairo's attention was captured by the shocking murder of prominent businessman Solomon Cicurel in his Nile-side villa in the upscale Zamalek district. It was a burglary that went wrong, and four culprits were soon arrested. Their trial was concluded swiftly, their punishments were decisive, and society breathed a sigh of relief.In Ashraf El-Ashmawi's telling, there was a fifth accomplice, Abbas, who fled to his home in the countryside to lay low until the murder trial blew over. However, he did not escape empty-handed and kept stolen documents from Cicurel's villa, ones that he imagined would lead him to a hidden safe. Abbas hatched a plan to return to the capital, find the safe, and make his fortune. The first step was to place his sister Zeinab with Cicurel's widow, Paula.Abbas’s rags-to-riches story unfolds as a tale of modern Egypt, taking in the Second World War, the 1952 revolution and rise of Nasser, the 1967 war, and the Sadat and Mubarak eras. Spanning the 1920s to the 1990s, El-Ashmawi deftly weaves together history with fiction in this intriguing English-language debut.

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An ideal primer on contemporary Middle East Politics, covering the entire MENA region from an interdisciplinary perspective This compelling volume examines important and cross-cutting themes in the study of contemporary Middle East and North African politics and international relations in the current climate. Drawing together contributions from scholars based within the region and beyond, it weaves together essential interdisciplinary, conceptually rich, and forward-looking content. Chapters cover population and youth, civil–military relations, soft power and geopolitical competition, regionalization and internationalization of conflict, the role of oil in reconstruction efforts, extra-regional actors, environmental politics, and specifically, the Israel–Palestine conflict. Students are supported with an extended and innovative glossary, including key concepts, actors and abbreviations. New Perspectives on Middle East Politics serves as an ideal primer and companion volume for scholars of contemporary Middle East Studies, as well as for policy professionals, journalists and the general reader engaging and re-engaging with the region.Contributor affiliations:Mohamed Abdelraouf, Gulf Research Centre, Jeddah, United Arab EmiratesDina Arakji, Carnegie Middle East Center, Beirut, LebanonEyad AlRefai, Lancaster University, Lancashire, England and King Abdulaziz University, Saudi ArabiaPhilipp Casula, University of Basel, SwitzerlandIshac Diwan, Paris Sciences et Lettres and Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, FranceSeif Hendy, American University in Cairo, EgyptSimon Mabon, Lancaster University, Lancashire, EnglandRobert Mason, Lancaster University, Lancashire, EnglandNeil Partrick, freelance consultant, UK

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A fascinating, richly illustrated study of the role and significance of ancient statues in Egyptian history and beliefWhy do ancient Egyptian statues so often have their noses, hands, or genitals broken? Although the Late Antiquity period appears to have been one of the major moments of large-scale vandalism against pagan monuments, various contexts bear witness to several phases of reuse, modification, or mutilation of statues throughout and after the pharaonic period. Reasons for this range from a desire to erase the memory of specific rulers or individuals for ideological reasons to personal vengeance, war, tomb plundering, and the avoidance of a curse; or simply the reuse of material for construction or the need to ritually “deactivate” and bury old statues, without the added motive of explicit hostility toward the subject in question.Drawing on the latest scholarship and over 100 carefully selected illustrations, Ancient Egyptian Statues proceeds from a general discussion of the production and meaning of sculptures, and the mechanisms of their destruction, to review the role of ancient statuary in Egyptian history and belief. It then moves on to explore the various means of damage and their significance, and the role of restoration and reuse.Art historian Simon Connor offers an innovative and lucidly written reflection on beliefs and practices relating to statuary, and images more broadly, in ancient Egypt, showing how statues were regarded as the active manifestations of the entities they represented, and the ways in which they could endure many lives before being finally buried or forgotten.

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An examination of the history and waning culture of zar in Egypt, and the world in which Muslim women negotiate relations with spiritsZar is both a possessing spirit and a set of reconciliation rites between the spirits and their human hosts: living in a parallel yet invisible world, the capricious spirits manifest their anger by causing ailments for their hosts, which require ritual reconciliation, a private sacrificial rite practiced routinely by the afflicted devotees. Originally spread from Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf through the nineteenth-century slave trade, in Egypt zar has incorporated elements from popular Islamic Sufi practices, including devotion to Christian and Muslim saints. The ceremonies initiate devotees—the majority of whom are Muslim women—into a community centered on a cult leader, a membership that provides them with moral orientation, social support, and a sense of belonging. Practicing zar rituals, dancing to zar songs, and experiencing trance restore their well-being, which had been compromised by gender asymmetry and globalization.This new ethnographic study of zar in Egypt is based on the author’s two years of multi-sited fieldwork and firsthand knowledge as a participant, and her collection and analysis of more than three hundred zar songs, allowing her to access levels of meaning that had previously been overlooked. The result is a comprehensive and accessible exposition of the history, culture, and waning practice of zar in a modernizing world.

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A unique textbook of guided readings from the great works of Arabic prose for advanced level students of Classical Arabic literature From Ibn Sina to Sindbad makes some of the greatest works of the Golden Age of Arab Civilization accessible to Arabic students at the mid- to high-advanced level of proficiency, while also providing a ready curriculum for teachers of Advanced Arabic. It introduces students to classical Arabic literature through twenty guided readings of works spanning prose genres from travel writing to philosophy, science, religion, humor, and imaginative fiction, including texts by al-Jahiz, al-Kindi, Ibn Khaldun, and Ibn Rushd. Original texts are supplemented with supporting explanatory material, to make them accessible to students, who then progress through an extensive series of exercises to test their comprehension, develop interpretive and critical reading skills, and apply the linguistic structures to their own speaking and writing. Each of the twenty lessons is designed to stand alone for classroom use or individual study, making this a valuable resource for students and teachers alike.

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A richly illustrated account of the rulers of the first three dynasties of the ancient Egyptian civilization, written by renowned Egyptologist Aidan DodsonThe five centuries that followed the unification of Egypt around 3100 BC—the first three dynasties—were crucial in the evolution of the Egyptian state. During this time all the key elements of the civilization that would endure for three millennia were put in place, centered on the semidivine king himself. The First Pharaohs: Their Lives and Afterlives looks at what we know about the two-dozen kings (and one queen-regent) who ruled Egypt during this formative era, from the scanty evidence for the events of their reigns, through to their surviving monuments. It also considers how they were remembered under their successors, when some of the earliest kings’ names were attributed to allegedly ancient ideas and events, and the ways in which some of their monuments became tourist attractions or were even wholly repurposed.Aidan Dodson recounts how two centuries of modern scholarship have allowed these rulers to emerge from an oblivion so total that some archaeologists had come to doubt their very existence outside the works of ancient chroniclers. Then, within a decade at the end of the nineteenth century, archaeological discoveries revealed a whole series of tombs and other monuments that not only confirmed these rulers’ existence, but also showcased the skills of Egyptian craftsmen at the dawn of history.

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One of Egypt’s greatest contemporary writers, Gamal al-Ghitani (1945–2015) was born into a family of modest means in the Egyptian countryside. He trained as a carpet maker before turning his attention to writing, publishing over a dozen novels and several collections of short stories. This haunting memoir, one of seven autobiographical "notebooks" written before Ghitani’s death, weaves together a series of vignettes in a style that mimics the uneven, discontinuous nature of memory itself. These fragments, or traces, are summoned from across the span of a singular lifetime, from Ghitani’s rural birthplace in Upper Egypt to Cairo, to the Arab world and beyond. We read of his childhood adventures, his erotic awakenings, his time as a political prisoner, and his reports from the battlefront in Iraq and the corridors of power in Syria. There are vivid passages that capture fleeting glances of strangers through car windows, flavors and scents of delicacies he still savored, dreams and sorrows of neighbors in the apartment blocks of Cairo before Nasser, as well as recollections of chance conversations at points of transit, in cafés and on elegant streets, and trysts with unnamed paramours. These memories, and Ghitani’s musings on memory’s own finitude and mutability, make Traces both memoir and a meditation on memory itself, in all its inscrutable workings and inevitable betrayals.

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Classic Egyptian favorites from one of Cairo’s leading restaurants, in a new soft cover edition Traditionally, Egyptian cooking has been best practiced and enjoyed at home, where generations of unrecorded family recipes have been the sustaining repertoire for daily meals as well as sumptuous holiday feasts. Abou El Sid, one of Cairo’s most famous restaurants, here presents more than fifty of its most classic recipes in a cookbook for the enjoyment of home cooks all over the world. Egyptians will recognize their favorites, from holiday dishes such as Fettah to the arrays of appetizers like aubergine with garlic, special lentils, and tahina; those new to Middle Eastern food will find the recipes simple and simply delicious, and enjoy the Egyptian table even if they don’t have the heritage of the pharaohs in their family backgrounds.

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Drawing on her years of experience as an Arabic instructor and course developer, Samia Louis has used a functional approach to create a bright, innovative coursebook for the study of Egyptian colloquial Arabic—the spoken dialect most frequently studied and most widely understood in the Arab world. Designed according to the ACTFL guidelines for teaching Arabic as a foreign language, Kallimni ‘Arabi trains students through ten highly structured lessons in the crucial skills, with particular emphasis on listening and speaking. The associated audio files carry recordings of the dialogues and exercises in each chapter, made by Egyptian native speakers.From the basics of communicating (asking directions, the language of shopping) to more advanced conversations (future plans, hobbies, and free time), Kallimni ‘Arabi is structured so that students learn Egyptian Arabic using real-life situations and expressions. The key topics covered gradually lead students to understand, use, and speak Arabic, rather than simply memorize fixed phrases. Kallimni ‘Arabi is aimed at students with some ability to read and write Arabic, who have had the equivalent of 30 hours of a beginner Colloquial Arabic class or 40 hours of a Modern Standard Arabic program.

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Cairo contains the greatest concentration of Islamic monuments in the world, and its mosques, mausoleums, religious schools, baths, and caravanserais, built by prominent patrons between the seventh and nineteenth centuries, are among the finest in existence. Jim Antoniou takes his readers on a guided walk through the very heart of historic Cairo, among many of its greatest architectural treasures. Illustrated throughout with the author’s own detailed maps and plans and lively sketches, the walk begins at the monumental gates in the north walls of the Fatimid city, follows the ancient thoroughfare of al-Mu‘izz li-Din Allah south past Khan al-Khalili and al-Ghuriya to the Street of the Tentmakers, turns left along the famous Darb al-Ahmar of the Arabian Nights, and ends at the magnificent mosque of Sultan Hasan at the foot of the Citadel. Over ninety historic buildings along the way are identified and described, many of them open to visitors. This is an enthralling walk that everybody can enjoy, whether on foot or in an armchair.

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The building of Egypt’s High Dam in the 1960s erased innumerable historic treasures, but it also forever obliterated the ancient land of a living people, the Nubians. In 1963–64, they were removed en masse from their traditional homelands in southern Egypt and resettled elsewhere. Much of the life of old Nubia revolved around ceremonialism, and in this remarkable study, John G. Kennedy and other leading anthropologists from around the world reveal and discuss some of the most important and distinctive aspects of Nubian culture.Since its original publication, Nubian Ceremonial Life has become a standard text in the fields of anthropology and cultural psychology. In addition to basic ethnographic data, this groundbreaking study contains a number of theoretical discussions on topics of interest to students of comparative religions: the psychology of death ceremonies, the nature of ‘taboo,’ theories of circumcision rituals, and the importance of trance curing ceremonies. The book also presents information about a village of Nubians who had been resettled some thirty years earlier, thereby providing some clues regarding the possible patterns of future culture change among these recently relocated people. With a new foreword by Robert Fernea, this edition brings back into print a major work of scholarship on the unique ceremonial traditions of a changed and changing Nubian world.Contributors: Hussein M. Fahim, Armgard Grauer, Fadwa al-Guindi, Samiha al-Katsha, John G. Kennedy, and Nawal al-Messiri.

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Nobel winning author, Naguib Mahfouz's late-translated novella, Heart of the Night is now available for the first time in paperbackJaafar Ibrahim Sayyed al-Rawi is guided by his motto, “let life be filled with holy madness to the last breath.” He narrates his life story to a friend during one long night in a café in old Cairo. Through a series of bad decisions, he has lost everything: his family, his position in society, and his fortune. A man driven by his passions, he married a beautiful Bedouin nomad for love, and as a consequence pays a punishingly high price. From a life of comfort with a promising future guaranteed by his wealthy grandfather, he descended to the spartan life of a pauper, after being disinherited. Jaafar faces his tribulations with surprising stoicism and hope, sustained by his strong convictions, his spirituality, his sense of mission, and his deep desire to bring social justice to his people. Heart of the Night is a classic Mahfouz gem exploring marriage across class lines, spirituality, and the harsh realities of a precarious, life written by one of Egypt's most celebrated literary masters.

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ELIF SHAFAK'S NEW YORK TIMES ISTANBUL READING LISTA GREAT GROUP READS SELECTIONSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 RUNCIMAN AWARDLONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDAt the neighborhood café where pastry chef Kosmas, charming widower Fanis, and other Rum—Greek Orthodox Christian—friends meet regularly for afternoon tea, American-born Daphne arrives with her elderly aunt. Daphne unsettles hearts, provokes jealousies, and stirs up memories of the 1955 Istanbul pogrom, forcing Kosmas and Fanis to confront their painful history in order to risk new beginnings. A shrewd and humorous tale, A Recipe for Daphne invites the reader into the kitchens, loves, and secret lives of Istanbul's most ancient community.

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An authoritative account by preeminent Egyptologist Miroslav Verner covering over 70 of Egypt's and Sudan's pyramids, their historical and political significance, updated in a magnificent new editionA pyramid, as the posthumous residence of a king and the place of his eternal cult, was just a single, if dominant, part of a larger complex of structures with specific religious, economic, and administrative functions. The first royal pyramid in Egypt was built at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 25922544 BC) by Horus Netjerykhet, later called Djoser, while the last pyramid was the work of Ahmose I, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 15391292 BC).Nearly two decades have passed since distinguished Egyptologist Miroslav Verner's seminal The Pyramids was first published. In that time, fresh explorations and new sophisticated technologies have contributed to ever more detailed and compelling discussions around Egypt's enigmatic and most celebr

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Ancient Egyptian medicine employed advanced surgical practices, while the prevention and treatment of diseases relied mostly on natural remedies and magical incantations. In the first of three volumes, The Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians explores these two different aspects, using textual sources and physical evidence to cast light on the state of ancient medical knowledge and practice and the hardships of everyday life experienced by the inhabitants of the land on the Nile. The first part of the book focuses on ancient Egyptian surgery, drawing mainly on cases described in the Edwin Smith papyrus, which details a number of injuries listed by type and severity. These demonstrate the rational approach employed by ancient physicians in the treatment of injured patients. Additional surgical cases are drawn from the Ebers papyrus. The chapters that follow cover gynecology, obstetrics, and pediatric cases, with translations from the Kahun gynecological papyrus and other medical texts, illustrating a wide range of ailments that women and young children suffered in antiquity, and how they were treated. Illustrated with more than sixty photographs and line drawings, The Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians is highly recommended reading for scholars of ancient Egyptian medicine and magic, as well as for paleopathologists, medical historians, and physical anthropologists.

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The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor. In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265–1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here. With over 50 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, Abu Simbel: A Short Guide to the Temples is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world’s great archaeological sites.

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A rigorous examination of higher education policymaking in the Arab worldNone of the momentous challenges Arab universities face is unique either in kind or degree. Other societies exhibit some of the same pathologiesinsufficient resources, high drop-out rates, feeble contributions to research and development, inappropriate skill formation for existing job markets, weak research incentive structures, weak institutional autonomy, and co-optation into the political order. But, it may be that the concentration of these pathologies and their depth is what sets the Arab world apart. Missions Impossible seeks to explain the process of policymaking in higher education in the Arab world, a process that is shaped by the region's politics of autocratic rule. Higher education in the Arab world is directly linked to crises in economic growth, social inequality and, as a result, regime survival. If unsuccessful, higher education could be the catalyst

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A vivid ethnography of Egyptian migrants to the Arab Gulf states, Migrant Dreams is about the imagination which migration thrives on, and the hopes and ambitions generated by the repeated experience of leaving and returning home. What kind of dreams for a good or better life drives labor migrants? What does being a migrant worker do to one’s hopes and ambitions? How does the experience of migration to the Gulf, with its attendant economic and legal precarities, shape migrants’ particular dreams of a better life? What do those dreams—be they realistic and productive, or fantastic and unlikely—do to the social worlds of the people who pursue them, and to their families and communities back home upon their return? Based on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork and conversations with Egyptian men from mostly low-income rural backgrounds who migrated as workers to the Gulf, returned home, and migrated again over a period of about a decade, this fine-grained study explores and engages with these questions and more, as the men reflect on their strivings and the dreams they hope to fulfill. Throughout the book, Samuli Schielke highlights the story of one man, Tawfiq, who is particularly gifted at analyzing his own situation and struggles, resulting in a richly nuanced account that will appeal not only to Middle East scholars, but to anyone interested in the lived lives of labor migrants and what their experiences ultimately mean to them.

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Between 1948 and 1957, a period that witnessed two wars between Egypt and Israel, 60,000 members of Egypt’s 75,000-strong Jewish population left the country, compelled by growing hostility to them because of their presumed links to Zionism, economic insecurity, and after 1956, overt expulsion. Decades later, during the 1980s and 1990s, the personal reminiscences of eight Egyptian Jewish women, presently residents of New York who had left Egypt, were meticulously collected by Nayra Atiya. While Atiya’s sample of eight narrators represents only a tiny percentage of the Jews who left Egypt, their accounts tell us much about the middle- and upper-class Jews who migrated to the Americas and Europe, giving us a vivid sense of their lives in Egypt before their departure and the dynamic role they played in Egyptian society. They were the children or grandchildren of generations of Jews who migrated to Egypt from around or near the Mediterranean to escape economic hardship and persecution or, in one case, a family conflict. With one exception, Atiya’s interlocutors resided in relatively upscale neighborhoods in Egypt near other Jewish families. They lived in elegant apartments, with servants, fine foods, memberships in elite clubs, and summers spent near Alexandria or in Europe. In Zikrayat, Atiya movingly captures the essence of these women’s characters and experiences, the fabric of their day-to-day lives, and the complex, many-layered mood of those times in Egypt. In doing so she brings to life the ties that bind all Egyptians, offering a glimpse into a now vanished world—and the heartbreak of exile and migration.

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The three-thousand-year-old rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel and the story of their rescue from the rising waters of Lake Nasser in the 1960s are almost as familiar worldwide as the tale of the gold funerary mask and brief life of the boy king Tutankhamun. Yet although they are among the most celebrated, visited, and photographed archaeological sites in the world, the two temples are among the least understood by the visitor. In this lucidly written, beautifully illustrated guide, Nigel Fletcher-Jones explains the main features of both temples, discusses what they teach us about ancient Egypt during the reign of Rameses II (1265–1200 BC), and illustrates which gods and goddesses were worshipped here. With over 80 new photographs, drawings, and diagrams, and packed with fascinating insights, The Brief Guide to Abu Simbel is an indispensable companion and souvenir to one of the world’s great archaeological sites.

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In the shadows of great wealth, and among Cairo’s famous monuments, runs a world of street children. Mustafa, a former student radical who never really believed in the slogans, sets out to tell their story through a documentary he is making with his American girlfriend, Marcia. Alienated from a corrupt and corrupting society, Mustafa watches as the Cairo he cherishes crumbles around him. His former leftist comrades are now all either capitalists or Islamists, while his friends and acquaintances struggle to find lovers worthy of their love and causes worthy of their sacrifice, in a country that no longer deserves their loyalty. Meanwhile, the children of the streets wait for the city to take notice. Cairo Swan Song weaves together a patchwork narrative of overlapping lives, dreams, and realities all centering on Cairo’s famous downtown neighborhood.

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A lifetime ago, Fakhreddin had been an idealistic young lawyer, seeking to fight corruption from his modest quarter of Cairo. Then, a botched attempt on his life forced him to flee the country, propelling him on a wild journey that would lead to Afghanistan’s jihadi training camps. He was transformed into a trained killer, and never once lost sight of his goal: revenge. But did he lose sight of the only person that really mattered to him, his son, Omar? At the very core of Fakhreddin’s bold, nail-biting exploits are his broken family, and broken heart, and his search for redemption and a way home.

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Fatima loves poetry and wants to study French literature—both of which are anathema to her strict and conservative much older brother, Saqr. While living under his roof, Fatima’s hopes and dreams are scrutinized, mocked, and slowly crushed as she is forced into his narrow vision of the right path. Then Fatima meets Isam, a poet like her; they email love letters to each other and meet in secret. Saqr, however, has other ideas: she is married off to Faris, a complete stranger. He is not the cruel tyrant her brother was, but still she did not choose him. Will she escape her past to live the life of love and poetry she craves?

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Eric Rouleau was one of the most celebrated journalists of his generation, a status he owed to his extraordinary career, which began when Hubert Beuve-Méry, director of Le Monde, charged him with covering the Near and Middle East. In 1963, Rouleau was invited by Gamal Abd al-Nasser to interview him in Cairo, a move which was not lost on the young Rouleau—going through him, a young Egyptian Jew who had been exiled from Egypt in late 1951, shortly before the Free Officers coup, was a means to renew diplomatic ties with de Gaulle’s France. This exclusive interview, which immediately made headlines around the world, propelled Rouleau into the center of the region’s conflicts for two decades. Writing between Cairo and Jerusalem, Rouleau was a chief witness to the wars of 1967 and 1973, narrating their events from behind the scenes. He was to meet all the major players, including Nasser, Levi Ashkol, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, and Anwar Sadat, painting striking portraits of each. More than a memoir, his book presents a history, lived from the inside, of the Israel–Palestine conflict.

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Songs are a great way to learn a language, and popular songs can reveal much about the culture and traditions of a country where the language is spoken. 20 Egyptian Songs to Learn and Sing brings together twenty songs performed by popular Egyptian singers, from iconic twentieth-century diva Umm Kulthum to present-day singing sensation Amr Diab. Following on the success of Kilma Hilwa: Egyptian Arabic through Popular Songs: Intermediate Level and Musiqa al-Kalimat: Modern Standard Arabic through Popular Songs: Intermediate to Advanced (AUC Press, 2015 and 2017), Bahaa Ed-Din Ossama and Tessa Grafen build a lively variety of language lessons around each song, accompanying them with notes on vocabulary, grammar and usage, and exercises. Aimed at beginner learners of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic and fans of Arab popular music, 20 Egyptian Songs to Learn and Sing is a motivational and highly enjoyable approach to learning Egyptian Arabic. Suitable for use in the classroom or for self-study. Includes songs by: Dina El Wedidi, Amr Diab, Sayed Darwish, Shadia, Mohamed Monir, Umm Kulthum, Suad Hosni, Nancy Agram, Dalida, and Rema Kheshesh

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The drama of history and the confluence of geography and climate have made Egypt one of the most sought-after travel destinations in the world. But what is that elusive something that makes it unlike anywhere else on earth? In Egypt Inside Out, Trevor Naylor and Doriana Dimitrova escape the crowds and clamor to take us a on a lyrical exploration of place, bringing us the country in all its captivating regional diversity: the wistfulness of Alexandria, the serenity of Aswan, the energy of Cairo, the lushness of Fayoum, the magic of Siwa, the haunting purity of river and desert. Photographing villages, towns, and cities from the cool, intimate interiors of hotels and homes, and from on board boats, taxis, and trains, they transport us to Egypt’s hideaways and dappled shadows, its groves and temples, dazzling colors and sublime light, and the vast splendor of its landscapes and monumental architecture. Written by an author who has known Egypt for more than thirty years, and illustrated with beautifully observed photographs, Egypt Inside Out is a unique journey through the ever-present allure of an extraordinary country.

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Since 1945, the globalization of education and the professionalization of architects and engineers, as well as the conceptualization and production of space, can be seen as a product of battles of legitimacy that were played out in the context of the Cold War and what came after. In this book James Steele provides an informative and compelling analysis of one of Egypt’s foremost contemporary architects, Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim, and his work during a period of Egypt’s attempts at constructing an identity and cultural legitimacy within the post–Second World War world order. Born in 1941 in the small town of Sornaga just south of Cairo, Abdelhalim received his architectural training in Egypt and the United States, and is the designer of over one hundred cultural, institutional, and rehabilitation projects, including the Cultural Park for Children in Cairo, the American University in Cairo campus in New Cairo, the Egyptian Embassy in Amman, and the Uthman Ibn Affan Mosque in Qatar. The first comprehensive study of the work and career of Abdelhalim and his office, the Community Design Collaborative (CDC), which he established in Cairo in 1978, Abdelhalim Ibrahim Abdelhalim: An Architecture of Collective Memory is inspired by Abdelhalim’s deep belief in the power of rituals as a guiding force behind various human behaviors and the spaces in which they are enacted and designed to play out. Each chapter is consequently dedicated to one of these rituals and the ways in which some of Abdelhalim’s primary commissions have, at all levels of scale, revealed and expressed that ritual. In the sequence presented these are: the rituals of possession, reverence, order, the transmission of knowledge, procession, human institutions, geometry, light, the sense of place, materiality, and finally, the ritual of color.

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Aspiring photographer Dunya Noor discovers early on that her curious spirit, rebellious nature, and very curly hair are a recipe for disaster in 1980s Syria. And at the tender age of thirteen, she is exiled to live with her grandparents in England. Many years later in London, she meets Hilal, the son of a humble tailor from Aleppo and no match for Dunya, daughter of the great heart surgeon Joseph Noor. But, dreamy, restless Dunya falls in love with Hilal and they decide to return to Syria together, embarking on a journey that will change them both forever. Rana Haddad’s vivid and satirical debut novel captures the essence of life under the Assad dictatorship, in all its rigid absurdity. With humor and an unexpected playfulness, this is a story of love and light against the forces of conservativism and oppression.

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