Search results for ""Author Kamal Ruhayyim""
The American University in Cairo Press Days in the Diaspora: An Egyptian Novel
"How could a good Muslim boy like you be born into a Jewish family!" For Galal, forced to leave Egypt in the 1960s Jewish exodus with his family, the Diaspora has none of the beauty of a rich tapestry of history; it is a day-to-day struggle to fit into his new life in Paris, reconcile the conflicting demands of family and friends, and come to terms with who he is. The quest for belonging and identity is at the heart of this sensitive and tender narrative. Earthy, rambunctious supporting characters burst from the page, spontaneous, emotional, yet, for all their fa ade of confidence, no less adrift than Galal himself. Ruhayyim's Paris of the 1960s is startlingly relevant: then, as now, religion offers an illusory source of community and identity for migrants to the west, not fitting in, yet cut off from their roots. Deeply personal, this unusual, uplifting coming-of-age novel takes us into the heart of an ordinary young man in the grip of an unforgiving historical moment.
£12.82
The American University in Cairo Press Diary of a Jewish Muslim: A Novel
Egyptian Muslims and Jews were not always at odds. Before the Arab-Israeli wars, before the mass exodus of Jews from Egypt, there was harmony. Spanning the 1930s to the 1960s, this sweeping novel accompanies Galal, a young boy with a Jewish mother and a Muslim father, through his childhood and boyhood in a vibrant popular quarter of Cairo. With his schoolboy crushes and teen rebellions, Galal is deeply Egyptian, knit tightly into the middle-class fabric of manners, morals, and traditions that cheerfully incorporates and transcends religion-a fabric about to be torn apart by a bigger world of politics that will put Galal's very identity to the test.
£11.24
The American University in Cairo Press Menorahs and Minarets: A Novel
In the third part of Kamal Ruhayyim's trilogy, Galal, the son of a mixed Jewish/Muslim family returns to Egypt after ten years in Paris. What he finds is a society in flux, yet still stifled by convention. As his sense of alienation increases, Galal searches for a way to put down roots in a society where he feels he no longer truly belongs, as he struggles with his confused relationships with his extended family: Jewish cosmopolitan businessmen on one side and Muslim rural farmers on the other. Ruhayyim paints an uncompromising portrait of the rigid traditions, passed on from generation to generation, that reach into the most intimate areas of peoples' lives, as family elders curb or otherwise circumscribe how the younger generation lives and loves.
£11.24
