At a glance

A shorthand guide to recent publications compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani

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Magazines

Wighat Nazar, monthly magazine, issue no 50, March 2003, Cairo: Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication The US and European stances on the Iraq crisis are the main subjects covered by this prestigious review of books this month. Aside from Mohamed Hassanein Heikal's long article on American empire, there are reviews of books detailing European interpretations of post-11 September American foreign policy, translations of articles on American-European relations and accounts of developments in technological warfare. Based on reviews of interesting books, these articles prove remarkably stimulating. Discussion is rounded off with an account of the "holy struggle" mentality that has long affected US foreign policy. Contributors to this issue include Abdel-Azim Anis, Zahi Hawwas, Tareq El-Bishri, Hassan Nafaa and Sonallah Ibrahim.

Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, issue no 3, March 2003, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal "A Message from an Egyptian Father to American President [Harry] Truman", a poem by the late Abdel-Rahman El-Sharqawi, opens this issue of Al-Hilal. Written some half a century ago, the poem deals with American hegemony, echoing issues raised by the present US-UK mobilisation against Iraq with remarkable accuracy. Mustafa Suweif's monthly article is entitled "America above all", and it is accompanied by pieces on legitimacy and on fear and hope in the American mentality. The issue includes a range of other interesting contributions, including Tareq El-Bishri on women judges in Egypt, Galal Amin on the so- called "khawaga complex", Ragaa Mansour on cloning, Safinaz Kazim on the spontaneous artist Mohamed Ali and Mustafa Nabil on Egyptian-German academic Mohamed El-Sharabi. The usual array of views, reviews, histories and testimonies fills out the rest of the issue.

Sutour, monthly magazine, issue #76, March 2003, Cairo: Sutour Publications The latest issue of this monthly opens with Iraqi poet Badr Shaker Al-Sayyab's famous poem Gharib ala Al-Khalij (A Stranger to the Gulf), with the rest of the issue dealing more or less exclusively with the impending US-led war on Iraq. Sanaa Hashem interviews lawyer Ali El-Naqib, discussing McCarthyism, Mohamed El-Kholi wonders whether 18th-century imperialism is about to reawaken, Sherif Yunis reports on New York's anti-war demonstrations, Azzazi Ali Azzazi discusses a 30-year-old "prophecy" that America will fall, Inas Taha looks at the stances taken by "Americanised" Arabs, and Raouf Abbas deals with the CIA's tendency to falsify historical fact. The magazine's creative writing pages are almost wholly filled with poetry, publishing a selection of new works.

Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida, occasional magazine, issue #153, February 2003, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces A variety of topics grace the pages of the latest issue of this newly refurbished magazine, with assessments of the last round of the Cairo Book Fair juxtaposed with features on the vernacular poet Bairam El-Tonsi, Cairo in the eyes of French authors in the time of Mohamed Ali, and Ancient Egyptian aesthetics. Literary studies included in the issue deal with prose poetry and with writer Alaa El-Dib's latest novel Ayyam Wardiya (Rosy Days). The issue also includes articles and interviews on a range of topics, from folk art to the little-known writer Mohamed Gaderrab.

The encyclopedia of ancient Egyptian architecture, Dieter Arnold, Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2003. pp274

In this book architect Dieter Arnold documents the tradition of the Egyptians' massive stone monuments and provides a single-volume reference on one of the most remarkable architectures of the ancient world. Separate entries are provided for each of the most important sites, covering monuments as diverse as the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the tombs of the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir Al-Bahari, and the great Ptolemaic temples that line the Upper Nile. Every aspect of building design and construction is also considered, covering technical aspects such as building materials (from reed and mud brick to sandstone and granite) and construction techniques (including pyramid building and the erection of obelisks). With more than 600 entries and 350 illustrations, this encyclopaedia provides a comprehensive perspective on ancient Egyptian architecture.

Books

'Ala Hamish Al-Rihla (On the Margins of the Journey), Mohamed Abul-Ghar, intro. Al-Tayeb Saleh, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation, 2003. pp331 The well-known physician Mohamed Abul-Ghar offers in this book what amounts to a collective autobiography of his generation of Egyptian intellectuals, staring from his birth in a middle-class family in 1940. The most remarkable aspect of the story is the attention Abul-Ghar pays to culture, in the broadest sense. A politically conscious figure who participated neither in the left-wing nor the right-wing movements that have marked the Egyptian political scene, and who was not among those who benefited from the Revolution, Abul-Ghar is representative of the Egyptian intelligentsia and is an objective witness to his age. His rare honesty helps render this account of the last 60 years both powerful and convincing, a notion supported by Sudanese novelist Al-Tayib Saleh in his introduction.

Halim bi Falastin (Sognando Palastina), Randa Ghazi, trans. from the Italian by Miriam Rizkalla, Cairo: Dar Al-Shurouq, 2003. pp238 This book was phenomenally popular when it first appeared in Italian, three editions being immediately sold out. Written by a 16-year-old Egyptian-Italian, Randa Ghazi, who initially knew little of the Palestinian cause, the book was inspired by the Israeli killing of a Palestinian boy, Mohamed El-Dorra, that was widely covered by the world's media. The result of Ghazi's research into El-Dorra's death was a short story, which won a children's literature award and was expanded into the present novel at the publisher's request. Here translated into Arabic, the book has been translated into numerous other languages. To the Arab readers the book is interesting in that it provides an isolated perspective on Palestine, free from the influence of nationalist discourse.

Sykolojiat Al-Dhakira (Psychology of Memory), Mohamed Qasem Abdalla, Kuwait: Alam Al-Maarifa Series, 2003. pp317 This book contains a summary of recent and important developments in the study of memory. Divided into three sections on the nature of memory and its relation to learning and creativity, the different kinds of memory and memory and psychiatric health, respectively, like other volumes in the Alam Al-Maarifa series, the book is both comprehensive and accessible, offering the general reader a wealth of information on a specialised subject.

Malek walla Ketaba (Head or Tail), Nesma Idris, Cairo: Sharqiat 2003. pp155 Nesma Idris, daughter of Egyptian short-story writer Youssef Idris, has been writing and publishing short stories for nearly ten years. This, however, is her first collection, comprising 14 stories uninfluenced by her father's work except in their love of the vernacular language and their use of a collective narrative voice. Inspired by folk tales, the stories often utilise this collective voice, developing it and extracting its potential. The author's own introduction, about the cherished touch of a small child's hands, is an inviting gesture of intimacy.

Al-Siyasa Aqwa minal-Hadatha (Politics more Powerful than Modernity), Dalal Al-Bizri, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp298 At the beginning of the 1970s the Cairo magazine Al-Talia'a published a series of long interviews with ordinary people who spoke openly about their disappointments and pains, their struggle to survive economically, and their frustration with what society had to offer. The result was an invaluable historical document. More recently, the Lebanese sociologist Dalal Al-Bizri, assisted by Alaaeddin Arafat, has followed suit, publishing 18 further such interviews in this book. Conducted with a representative cross-section of society, they amount to a comprehensive account of the disasters of our age. Accompanied by short commentaries, Al-Bizri having preferred to let the texts, reproduced verbatim in colloquial Arabic, speak for themselves, they too will be invaluable for present and future historians and commentators. It is hoped that this book will be properly publicised, the better to inform the public on the most pressing problems they are subject to. Indeed this compilation of grievances is not only of interest to academics but to anyone eager to plough the depths of current everyday life in Egypt. Such projects are to be encouraged and supported, perhaps the even bear the seed of constructive change.

Al-Wasaya fi Ishq Al-Nisaa (Commandments in loving Women), Ahmed El-Shahawi, Cairo: Al-Dar Al-Misriya Al-Libnaniya, 2003. pp255 Critic Mohamed Abdel-Matloub introduces this latest collection of poems by Ahmed El-Shahawi by saying that in them there is an attempt to make the beloved woman the guardian of the poet's commandments, the punishment for betrayal being exile from love's garden. The essence of the poet's message, Abdel-Matloub writes, is a law of love that holds that love flows from male to female, woman being always the loved party and man the lover, femininity being always understood in terms of beauty and dignity. The poet himself introduces the book with a few lines of carefully constructed verse, drawing on mythology and on love's central place in all our lives. El-Shahawi's Sufi orientation finds appropriate expression in these new poems, clustered as they are around the theme of love, a central precept of Sufi thinking. In this way the notion of woman is not restricted to its literal sense but extends to the (feminine) object of love as a universal concept -- a cosmic point of convergence on which the poet's passions close in. Indeed, in this collection, El-Shahawi's poetic project reaches an unprecedented climax of intellectual and emotional intensity.

Al-Mutasawifa Al-Awaloun fil-Adab Al-Turki (The First Sufis in Turkish Literature), Mohamed Fouad Koubereli, trans. Abdalla Ahmed Ibrahim, Cairo: Supreme Council for Culture (National Translation Project), 2002. New edition in two volumes: pp289 and 251 According to the translator's introduction to these books, Mohamed Fouad Koubereli is a pioneer of modern Turkish letters, having introduced contemporary methodologies into Turkish historical writing. This book deals with the history of Sufism in Central Asia and Anatolia, as well as its connection with folk literature and the popular treatment of Sufi saints as social and political heroes. An invaluable reference, the book undertakes a textual analysis of Sufi terminology in modern Turkish literature and displays exemplary scholarship.

Anbiyaa Israel Al-Judud (Israel's New Prophets), Abdel-Ghaffar El-Dwaik, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp448 Jewish fundamentalism played an important role in the emergence of the Israeli state and the formation of Israeli society, and it continues to play a major role in Israel today. This book's importance lies not in its arguing for this fact, but in its efforts at seeking out the historical roots of Jewish fundamentalism, analysing it from a sociological perspective and exploring the ways in which it is politically deployed. The author also gives an account of related academic disciplines, as well as of the views of major thinkers and present-day religious discourse in Israel.

Al-Mughrib fi Huleyy Al-Maghrib, Ibn Said Al-Andalusi, eds. Zaki Mohamed Hassan, Shawqi Daif & Sayeda Kashef, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (Zakhair Series), 2003. pp418 Written by a number of Muslim scholars in Andalusia, this book was brought together by Ibn Said Al-Andalusi. Essentially a history book, it deals with early Islamic history outside Spain, from Amr Ibn Al-'As's conquest of Egypt to the Ikhshidi dynasty. Now meticulously edited by major scholars, Al-Andalusi's book has been made available in a popular and annotated edition, its value also coming from the fact that it has not been published for 50 years.