Issue No. 594
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11 - 17 July 2002 Issue No. 594 Books |
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At a glance
A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-WardaniMagazines
Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, July 2002, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal
This month's issue of the prestigious Cairo monthly is a rare commemorative offering celebrating the 50th anniversary of the July 1952 Revolution. Printed on larger, glossier paper, it has more pages than usual, highlights including historians Yunan Labib Rizq on the challenge of the Revolution and responses to it and Raouf Abbas on the memoirs of the Revolution's leaders. Elsewhere in the issue, Assem El-Dessouqi discusses the Revolution from a scientific perspective, while Abdel-Moneim El-Gemi'ie tells the story of King Farouk's secret services. The editors have also republished a significant essay on the place of the Revolution in modern Egyptian history by Mohamed Shafiq Ghurbal. Profiles include Huda Abdel-Nasser on her father Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Amani Abdel-Hamid on the members of the Revolutionary Command Council and Ibrahim Saadeddin on "steely administrator" Zakariya Mohieddin.
Shu'oun Arabiya, quarterly, issue no.109, Spring 2002, Cairo: Arab Lague
In the latest issue of this Arab League quarterly, the editorial deals with the nature of the Arab regimes following 11 September, while the folio section discusses the by now well-worn issue of civilisations in dialogue. This latter section includes Ahmed Kamal Abul-Magd on the darker shadows cast by 11 September, Radwan El-Sayed on the meaning of "civilisation", as this word is now often used, Turki Al-Hamad on history and politics, Hassan Hanafi on Western positions on Islam and Rita Awadi on Islam in the West. Another folio section in the magazine tackles Arab minorities in exile: deconstructing the ghetto mentality, the Arab presence in Latin America and Arab thought in France are among the topics broached here. Two studies on Arabs in America -- by El-Sayed Amin Shalabi and Mohamed Khaled El-Azzr, respectively -- deal with American interests in the Middle East and American policy towards the Palestinians following 11 September.
Al-Arabi, monthly magazine, issue no.534, July 2002, Kuwait: Ministry of Information
The Kuwaiti magazine's distinguished department entitled "Opinion Poll" this month deals with contemporary Dubai: economics of knowledge, media revolution, informatics. Elsewhere, Salah Eisa celebrates the 50th anniversary of the July 1952 Revolution, while Al-Habib Al-Janhani asks whether Western-Islamic relations comprise "clash" or "dialogue". Atef Mu'tamid deals with possible new sources of oil and the shift away from the Arabian Gulf. Critic Gaber Asfour discusses the intellectual resonance of contemporary poetry, while Shawqi Bazie reviews Franco-Lebanese writer Amin Malouf's most recent novel. Besides its regular publication of poems and short stories, in this issue Al-Arabi has introduced a new department entitled "Writer and Place", in this case a 20-page portrait of Cairo by Egyptian novelist Gamal El-Ghitani. The "Face to Face" section has Tharwat Okasha confronting Abul-Maati Abul-Naga.
Sutour, monthly magazine, issue no.68, July 2002, Cairo: Sutour Publications
The central theme of this month's issue of this well-known Cairo magazine is "Arab disintegration". Introduced by Karim Abdel-Salam, it features, among others, Mohamed Raouf Hamed on "geniuses of the South": why, it asks does the South fail to recognise such people, causing their emigration? Continuing this theme, Yehya El-Rakhawi reflects on how immigration is reshaping the world's contours, Samar Shishkali looks at the causes and the effects of the emigration of the Arab World's brightest and best, and Fathalla El-Sheikh writes on "stolen intellects". The magazine also publishes an interview with the late Egyptian film director Radwan El-Kashef. Kamal Ramzi reviews the last round of the Cannes Film Festival, while Abdel-Raziq Okasha explores the isolation and frustration of plastic artists in the Arab World. Finally, Salah El-Mulla and Khaled Ismail advance critical appraisals of the July Revolution on the occasion of its 50th anniversary.
Books
Al-Kutub Weghat Nazar (Books, Viewpoints), monthly review of books, Cairo: Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publishing, July 2002
In this issue of the prestigious cultural review, senior political analyst Mohamed Hassanein Heikal supplies the fourth instalment of his series chronicling the events of the 1952 Revolution, which celebrates its golden jubilee this month. The series goes back to the political and social history of Egypt in 1940s, narrating and analysing the fall of the monarchy and the events leading up to the Free Officers' movement in 1952.
Other articles related to the July 1952 Revolution include Dhuqan Qarqut's testimony on the revolution and Galal Amin's analysis of the revolution's effects on the Egyptian economy.
Elsewhere in the issue Imad Gad reviews two books on Jewish fundamentalism, Hassan El-Mistikawi writes on "the republic of football," Radwan El-Sayed on the ideas of reform and revolution in the thought of Rifa'a El-Tahtawi and David Blanks on various European historical narratives on Islam, reviewing Franco Cardini's Europe and Islam and Minou Reeves's Muhammad in Europe in the process. In the artistic section, Ahmed Foad Selim tackles Time and Art while Tarek El-Shinnawi and Gamal Ismail each contribute an article on young filmmakers in Egypt and the issues facing new generations as portrayed in film, El-Shinnawi focusing on the new generation of comedians.
Aghani Al-Haya (Life Songs), Abul-Qasem El-Shabi, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation (Arab Horizons Series), 2002. pp269
This is the latest edition of the only diwan (collection) of the Tunisian poet Abul-Qasem El-Shabi (1909-1934), whose poetry has entered the literary canon despite the brevity of his career. El-Shabi was a member of the Cairo-based Apollo Group of poets even though he never left his native Tunisia, it being through the group's magazine, read in his home village across the Western Desert, that El-Shabi forged links with the group's rebellious founders. El-Shabi's sole wish was that his diwan, completed shortly before he died, should be published in Cairo, sending the manuscript of Aghani Al-Haya to poet Ahmed Zaki Abu-Shadi, who nevertheless did not manage to see the book into print. It would be a further 21 years before the diwan was finally published by Maktabet Misr. El-Shabi has since acquired an impressive reputation across the Arab World, his work having been recently celebrated by the Kuwaiti Al-Babatin Foundation. This edition of the diwan includes poems not found in the original manuscript, as well as critical studies and a comprehensive bibliography.
Al-Maskout 'Anhu fi Qarya Janoubiya (The Unsaid in a Southern Village), Awatef Abdel-Rahman, Cairo: Fustat Centre for Studies and Consulting, 2002. pp152This book contains field work undertaken by Cairo University professor of journalism Awatef Abdel-Rahman, in collaboration with a team of locals, to gauge the condition of women and women's relations with their families and their social conditions in the author's birthplace, the village of Zarabi in southern Assiut. As Abdel-Rahman indicates, the main theme of her project is women in the media, looking at what access women have to the media and how they benefit from it, whether the media favoured by women is information or entertainment, and how women assesses press, radio and television coverage of women's affairs. In the book, the publisher writes, "an essentially scientific work has turned into an interactive relation with real, lived experience that eschews tabular hard figures and dry facts in favour of a vital and honest expression of real people's hopes and fears."
Dhikrayat min Hayati (Memories), Abdel-Azim Anis, Cairo: Al-Hilal, 2002. pp321
In this, his most recent book, the Egyptian mathematician, activist and literary critic Abdel-Azim Anis describes significant moments from his career, giving deft portraits of a number of influential characters. He excavates territories otherwise consigned to memory, retrieves positions he has held, places he has travelled to and experiences he has had for the benefit of the present reader. Anis has had a profound influence on the development of the educational curriculum in Egypt, and his role in the country's intellectual and political life has often placed him behind bars, sometimes for many years, and he has also worked as a journalist and publisher.
The present book, an anecdotal autobiography, goes back to the author's birth in the neighbourhood of Al-Azhar in Cairo in 1923, progressing through his university years, his graduation and his appointment at Alexandria University, to his PhD studies in London and his return to Egypt and resignation following the Tripartite Invasion in 1956. Among the many characters remembered is novelist Ihsan Abdel-Qudous, with whom Anis worked during his period as a journalist. However, his revelatory, intimate portraits cover a wide range of characters, from Taha Hussein, Tharwat Okasha and Mustafa Musharrafa to Che Guevara. But it is not until the last section of the book that Anis deals with his political detention in the late 1950s and early 1960s. "Today, as I approach the age of 80," Anis writes in the introduction, "there is nothing in my life that I regret."
Al-Amir Al-Saghir (The Little Prince), Nabil Khalaf, Paris: Darwich Press, 2002. pp81
As publisher and critic Saleh Al-Darwich points out on the back cover of this book, this volume is not so much about as for children, for whose benefit poet Nabil Khalaf has written. As a result, the book is free of both technicality and pretension, Khalaf achieving instead a rare identification with his potential readership and offering what amounts, in effect, to a child's own writing. The fourth collection of poems by Khalaf, who has also written fiction and drama for children, Al-Amir Al-Saghir incorporates 18 pieces written in colloquial Arabic, and the book's simple language and entertaining imagery combine to convey a message of love, responsibility and respect.
Ba'd Khuroug Al-Malak Mubasharatan (Just After the Angel's Exit), Azmi Abdel-Wahab, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2002. pp74
In this, Azmi Abdel-Wahab's fourth collection of poetry, ten new poems exemplify the poet's masterful command of prose as a medium of poetic expression, Abdel-Wahab not resorting to prose out of ignorance of the rules of rhythm, unlike some of his contemporaries. On the contrary, the poet's three books thus far -- Al-Asmaa La Taliq Bil Amaken (The Names Don't Fit the Places), Biakadhib Sawdaa Kathira (With Many Black Lies), Al-Nafafidh La Athar Laha (No Sign in the Windows) -- display an accomplished understanding of the requirements of poetic composition and an emotive flare that remains his own. Here too Abdel-Wahab is consistent: "I will see them clearly/ When they lower my old body/ With the appropriate pomp/ When I encounter lovers/ Who could not bear their bodies' obscenities/ And therefore went/ To angels who comb their hair/ Who warm up their extremities/ Green wings growing from them."
Al-Tabaqat Al-Ijtima'ia wa Mustaqbal Misr (Social Classes and Egypt's Future), ed Abdel-Baset Abdel-Mo'ti, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2002. pp511
The essays published in this book are the fruit of a research project entitled "Egypt 2020", which aimed to gauge developments in Egyptian society during the first two decades after the millennium. Thus, the researchers analyse five possible futures, all of which, as editor Abdel-Baset Abdel-Mo'ti points out, are conditioned by the degrees of awareness displayed by social and political forces. The five scenarios discussed are: a regressive state, an Islamic state, a neocapitalist state, a neosocialist state, a welfare state. The essays, written by Mahmoud Gaber, Mohamed Naguib, Hassanein Kishk, Mohamed Abdel-Moneim Shalabi, Adel Lutfi and Abdel-Mo'ti, analyse a wide cross section of society with reference to each of these possibilities for the future, concentrating on the causes and effects of each. Settling on 1975 as their starting point, the researchers explore the transformations in Egyptian society since that date, examining concentrations of wealth and power with a look towards the future.
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