At a glance

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

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Magazines

Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, issue #10, October 2003, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal This month's issue of Al-Hilal opens with a special section entitled "Islamists, Radicals, Liberals", to which many writers contribute: Raouf Abbas on liberalism and its practice in Egypt since the 1919 Revolution; Assem El-Desouqi on the role of left-wing radicalism; Heba Raouf Ezzat on modernising Islamic discourse. Other parts of the magazine provide the usual stock of articles by established names: Mustafa Suweif on the new academic year; Ibrahim Fathi on Edward Said's book Orientalism; Galal Amin on unemployment. The issue includes a profile of novelist Bahaa Taher, written by critic Sabri Hafez; an article on Iraqi poet Nazik Al-Malaeka by Wadie Falastin; and one on Iraqi translator Abdel-Wahed Lo'a by Safinaz Kazim. Mustafa Nabil discusses the Sinai road network; Abdel-Azim Anis denies any connection between Al-Qa'eda and Saddam Hussein; and Mahmoud Abdel-Fadil explores Israeli infiltration of Iraq following the US-led invasion. Al-Hilal has introduced a new department entitled "Cultural Families" in this edition of the magazine, and this opens with Mona Helmi discussing her own family of authors and artists: Nawal El-Saadawi, Sherif and Atef Hatata. The issue also includes Al-Hilal's monthly instalment of news, views and reviews, including a recap of the year in cinema by Mustafa Darwish.

Sutour, monthly magazine, issue #83, October 2003, Cairo: Sutour Publications The majority of the material published in the most recent issue of Sutour forms part of its central folio entitled "Those Without A Place", which considers the case of a young man who killed himself after being rejected for a job in the diplomatic corps due to his modest family background, despite excelling in all the required exams. Many newspapers have discussed his tragic death, and Sutour's contribution to the debate that the case has given rise to includes contributions by Hazem Ahmed Hosni, Salman Khan, Sherif Beshir and Abdel-Khaleq Farouq, among others, on a range of topics from poverty to social inequality and class prejudice. The issue also includes a study of the work of Albert Qusair by Mohamed Abdel-Rehim and an article on Sayed Darwish and Imam Eisa by El-Sayed Mohamed Awad.

Adab wa Naqd, monthly magazine, issue #218, October 2003, Cairo: Tajammu' Party One third of this issue of Adab wa Naqd is devoted to the Egyptian farmer, the fellahin, and it includes previously published material alongside new writing: chapters from Salah Eisa's book on the fellahin Rijal Rayya wa Sekina (Raya and Sekina's Men); an account of the role of the popular nationalist hero Adham El-Sharqawi in the public imagination by Eid Abdel-Halim; texts written by Latin American freedom-fighter Che Guevara on the Cuban peasantry selected by Mustafa Ebada; a discussion by Shahenda Muqallad of her struggle against feudalism since the murder of her husband Salah Hussein in 1966; testimony from novelist Youssef El-Qa'id of his experience of village life. The rest of the issue includes a wide variety of material: a review of the last round of the Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival, a study of secularism in the Egyptian context, and the proceedings of the magazine's seminar on the "culture of resistance", in which El-Sayed Yassin, Bahaa Taher and Hussein Abdel-Razeq all participated.

Books

Al-Muwashahat Al-Andalusiya (The Andalusian Muwashah), Soliman El-Attar, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (Folk Studies Series), 2003. pp416 This affordable edition of an essential classic that has been out of print in Egypt for some time comes at exactly the right moment. The author, who has headed the Egyptian Institute for Islamic Studies in Madrid, is an expert scholar who has translated, among other things, the Supreme Council of Culture's edition of Cervantes' classic novel Don Quixote. In this, his comprehensive study of one of the Arabs' most interesting poetic and musical forms, he presents the result of years of dedicated research that has probed not only the genesis and characteristics of the muwashah, a poetic and musical genre that emerged in Andalusia under Arab rule, but also the principal figures involved in its emergence, such as Zeriab and Abdrabbuh. He also discusses the origins of modernism in Abbasid poetry and music, concluding with the idea of modernism in Cordoba. El-Attar covers every aspect of his subject: the art of tawshih, the difference between the muwashah and the dor, the connection between Spanish romance and the art of zajal and subsequent manifestations of the muwashah in the form of tango and other Latin American musical forms.

Mujarad Dhikrayat (Mere Memories), Rifaat El-Said, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation (Family Library Series), 2003. pp370 This is a new edition of the autobiography of the secretary-general of the Tajammu' Party and one of its founders, which was first published in Syria by Dar Al-Mada last year. In the book, El-Said provides testimony of his experience in the late-1960s, when he worked in the International Peace Council and met Khaled Mohieddin in what was the beginning of a powerful connection combining the personal with the political and lasting to this day. El-Said also recounts his experience as a leftist who spent more than a decade in political detention, offers an exceptionally amusing account of working with the late Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat when the latter was still vice-president, and provides a more-or-less complete account of the politics he has witnessed and participated in.

Al-Muhamashoun fi Sa'id Misr (The Marginalised in Upper Egypt), Amal Tantawi, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp244 This sociological study takes as its premise the notion that the laws of neo-capitalism engender a form of unequal progress whereby some parts of the economy become "centres" and others "margins". In this context the author uses the theoretical sections of the book to survey the concept of marginality and how it is used in both the academic and political arena. She discusses different reasons for marginalisation, including ethnicity, immigration, gender and religion, devoting a chapter to academic methodology and including the methods involved in choosing a geographical location, sampling and collecting material. She gives as an example a project she undertook in 1993-1994. In conclusion, Tantawi formulates a new concept of marginality based on sociological heritage, case studies and historical readings. The last section focusses on the example of the Upper Egyptian city of Assiut, which represents tradition and convention, as opposed to Cairo, a relative bastion of modernity, in order to highlight mechanisms of marginalisation and control using, among other methods, interviews with representative individuals.

Amrikanli, Sonallah Ibrahim, Cairo: Dar Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, 2003. pp484 One of the generation of the 1960s most prominent voices, Sonallah Ibrahim's latest novel is a new aariation on a familiar theme, the crisis of the intellectual, which Ibrahim has touched on in many of his previous works, often from the perspective of the persecuted left-wing activist. Following his account of the Lebanese Civil War and of the Zufar movement in Oman, Ibrahim now turns his attention to the United States under Clinton. It would be impossible to summarise such a disturbing text. Its general outline, however, concerns an Egyptian historian who travels to the US to teach, the author accompanying his protagonist from the lecture hall to the underworld of criminals and advancing an ongoing discussion of Egyptian history from ancient times to the present as he does so. An alternative interpretation of the book would see it as an attempt to answer the question of how Egypt has reached its present state of ignorance and backwardness.

Khayal Murahiq (An Adolescent's Imagination), Ali Mansour, Cairo: private printing, 2003. pp104 This is the seventh collection of poems by Ali Mansour, whose first book was entitled Al-Fuqaraa Yanhazimoun fi Tajrubat Al-Ishq (Poor People Defeated in the Experience of Love). A member of the so called generation of the 1990s, Mansour writes daily life-oriented prose, raising the pitch of ordinary speech to a prfoundly moving, and often spiritually inclined, register. In line with Mansour's achievement, the present volume includes 16 poems, most of which were written in 2001, and it reflects not only the contemporary crisis of Arabic poetry but also the connection between the taf'ila poem and later forms.

Uyoun Al-Akhbar (Essential Chronicles), Ibn-Qatiba Al-Dainawi, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (Zakhair Series), 2 volumes, 2003. pp720 These books are an important part of the Arab literary canon, previously unavailable to the Egyptian reader. The author, Abu Mohamed Abdallah Ibn-Muslim Ibn-Qatiba Al-Dainouri, who died 276 years after the Hijra, wrote on textual exegesis, poetry and language, evidencing an encyclopaedic grasp of the knowledge of his times. These two volumes incorporate a vast amount of material, including eight books on a range of subjects from war to food and women. They include not only studies and reflections, but also the "chronicles" of the books' title, mixing information with poetry, jokes, anecdotes and parables. All this material emerges from the Muslim society in which the author lived and wrote. With its progressive orientation and daring interest in the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, the book amounts to a project for cultural and social development, including both a panorama of the human condition and a perspective on reform.

Al-Khafafish wa Qisas Okhra min Afghanistan (Bats and Other Stories from Afghanistan), Spozmi Zeriab et al, trans. Mohamed Alaaeddin Mansour and Abdel-Hafiz Yaqoub, Cairo: Supreme Council of Culture (National Translation Project Series), 2003. pp322 A small country near the roof of the world, Afghanistan has witnessed the mightiest conflicts of the end of the last century and the beginning of the present one. However, Afghanistan is more than the arena in which the two superpowers fought out their differences prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than a place ruled by fundamentalists and more than the target of Washington's post-11 September wrath. It is also the home of an interesting tradition of Farsi literature, represented here in 17 short stories by six contemporary writers who reflect the intimate side of such experiences. The stories may be rudimentary by artistic standards, but they remain articulate expressions of a reality more disturbing than anyone could have imagined.

Maqtou'at Murghama (Forced Passages), Badr El-Dib, Cairo: Poetry Magazine Book, 2003. pp71 Badr El-Dib's poetry constitutes a rare literary case. In 1948 he produced his first collection of poems, The Letter, but never published it. Now, in his introduction to the present volume, El-Dib says that despite being too ill to undertake sustained intellectual activity, these "passages" nevertheless got written against his will. "I never intended to write them," he writes, "never thought much about them. However, they formed themselves inside me, forcing me to put pen to paper in difficult circumstances and without any calculation of literary or artistic merit." The poems themselves live up to this description, being unexpected, varied and confessional. They are as stimulating as anything El-Dib has written.