3 - 9 May 2001
Issue No.532
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 3 - 9 May 2001 Issue No.532 |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
An unexpected familiarity
Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with the Venezuelan ambassador to Egypt and was surprised to find that he is an avid reader of my books. He prefers to read them in English, he said, because Spanish editions are usually translated from the English texts and are thus at one further remove from the original.
A cultured and sensitive man, the ambassador told me how he had devoted himself to Arabic literature for months after he found out he was to serve in Egypt, in order to familiarise himself with his new home, temporary as it would be. Naturally, since my novels were available, he took to reading a great many of them. What pleased me most of all was not the fact that he praised them. Rather, it was his continual assertion that, having read the books before he arrived, upon coming here he said he felt he understood something of Egypt and Egyptians, that the books had familiarised him with the history, the culture and the society of Egypt. This pleases me, mind you, as a vindication of literature, which is so often denigrated for being divorced from reality.
The Venezuelan ambassador's kind attention to my work had actually taught him something about where I come from, so that when he finally arrived nothing was too strange.
Based on an interview by Mohamed Salmawy.
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