At a glance

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

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Magazines

Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, Cairo: Dar Al-Hilal, issue no.11, November 2003 The Islamic world is at the centre of the most recent issue of Al-Hilal, with several articles and essays dealing with Islamic topics on the occasion of Ramadan: Ahmed Saleh on Internet Islam; Mohamed Ragab El-Bayoumi on the Sufi ceremony of dhikr; Nadia Mustafa on foreign interventions in Muslim affairs since the end of the Cold War; and Mahmoud Ahmed on Muslim China. Ramadan notwithstanding, Gamil Mattar supplies his monthly political analysis, Mounir Zahran asks whether the international community can regain trust in the New World Order and Galal Amin celebrates Egyptian intellectual Abdel-Azim Anis's 80th birthday. The Palestinian question figures in a translation of an Economist article that attacks Sharon's protective shield policy and a review of a new photo book depicting life in the Palestinian refugee camps. In addition to columns by Ibrahim Fathi, Safinaz Kazim and Mustafa Darwish, highlights include a column by Sonallah Ibrahim.

Al-Aadab, monthly magazine, Beirut: Dar Al-Adaab, issue no.9 and 10, vol. 51, September-October 2003 The latest issue of the Beirut monthly resumes a comprehensive discussion of censorship in Arab countries, with this issue's folio on the subject, edited and introduced by Abdel-Haqq Al-Abiad, devoted to censorship in Morocco. The folio includes an article by Abdel-Aziz Qouqas on censorship in the time of free-market "open-door" economics, an interview with Moroccan MP Abdel-Samad Al-Maikar and two testimonies by Khanatha Banouna and Zahra Zirawi. Elsewhere in the issue there is an extended essay by Rania Al-Masri on the current American occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a commemorative piece on the roots of terrorism recalling 11 September 2001 by George Haddad, a study of Egyptian novelist Radwa Ashour's last novel Qit'a min Oroba (A Piece of Europe) by Yumna Al-Eid and an interview with Tunisian novelist Salaheddin Boujah by Majid Al-Samera'i.

Al-Dirasat Al-I'lamia, an occasional book, Cairo: Arab Regional Centre for Media Studies, issue no.112, July-September 2003 Celebrating the Egyptian journalist and writer's 80th birthday, this issue of the media-oriented magazine is devoted wholly to the career of Mohamed Hassanein Heikal. The issue opens with the text of a previously unpublished lecture on Egypt's political future given by Heikal at the American University in Cairo in October 2002. Many of Heikal's disciples, including Makram Mohamed Ahmed, Abul-Seoud Ibrahim and Samir Sobhi, provide tributes, and the issue also includes two interviews with Heikal by Sanaa El-Biesi and Mustafa Bakri, with Youssef El-Qa'id presenting extracts from Heikal's books on politics and journalism and recent articles he has written on American neo-imperialism. The magazine also publishes a comprehensive and useful bibliography of works by and about Heikal.

Ahwal Misriya, quarterly, Cairo: Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, issue no.22, autumn 2003 The principal section of the current issue of this celebrated quarterly looks at violence in Egypt, asking whether the recent increase in violence should be considered a temporary symptom or an established trend. Every aspect of violence is discussed, with, among many others, Khaled Abdel-Rasoul writing on violence in the family, Ahmed Abdel-Hadi on the street strongman, Ali Farid on crimes of influence, Diaa Hassan on violence in the cinema and Nefisa Hassan Desouqi on violence against women. The issue's research section focusses on student crime, using Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar as main references. A wide variety of articles fill the rest of the issue: Amina Fahmi reviewing the museums of the Islamic Art and Geographical Association, Ammar Ali Hassan broaching the difference between fundamentalists of the past and extremists of the present, Mohamed Ezzelarab discussing values among street children, Eryan Nasif presenting a vision of the agricultural reform debate that extended from 1952 to 1972 and Salah Biesar taking issue with the current so-called "beautification initiatives" in Cairo.

Sutour, monthly magazine, Cairo: Sutour Publications, issue no.84, November 2003 The most recent issue of the literary monthly focusses on the recently deceased Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, with contributions by, among others, Karim Abdel-Salam, Samah Idris and Barbara Harlow, writing on lessons learned from Said's life and work, the personal relationships one could have with Said, and the link between Said and Ghassan Kanafani, respectively. Both Said and the late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani insisted on the need to provide the new generations with the right to implement their vision, focussing on margins of difference and how to expand them and the means towards resistance of the Other. Extracts from Said's books Blaming the Victims and Out of Place are juxtaposed with assessments of his many contributions: these include Ferial Ghazoul on "Said the Renaissance Man" and Faisal Darrag on "the man who fought the dragon in the dragon's land". The magazine also includes a report on the Ismailia Film Festival and a commentary on this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida, monthly magazine, Cairo: General Organisation of Cultural Palaces, issue no.161, October 2003 To commemorate 30 years since the October War, Al-Thaqafa Al-Jadida has produced a special issue containing a large-scale folio on the victory of 1973 with many literary texts inspired by the event -- an involuntary ironic twist, considering the magnitude of the defeat from which the Arab World is currently suffering. The magazine republishes poetry by Fouad Haddad, Salah Jahin, Salah Abdel-Sabour and Ahmed Abdel-Mo'ti Hegazi -- all of which was written directly after, and under the influence of, the October War. There is also an editorial attempt at assessing the effects of the October War on each of the arts, with different writers dealing with specific topics: Abdel-Aziz Mowafi discusses the concept of war literature; Ahmed Shamseddin El-Haggagi writes on the folk poet Gaber Abu Hussein and the effect of the war on his performances following his son's death in combat; Youssri Hassan interviews numerous writers on the subject of the October War, concluding that it has not yet given rise to any one great work of literature; Hamed Abu Ahmed looks at war literature in Latin America; Bahaa Jahin reviews the work of the British WWI poet Wilfred Owen; Mohamed Abul-Magd and Mazen El-Sheikh trace the resonance of war in cinema; and Mohamed El-Shafie listens to war in folk songs.

Books

Shitaa Al-Urii (Naked Winter), Youssef Abu Rayya, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp134 This, the sixth book by Youssef Abu Rayya, is his second collection of short stories, the rest of his output having been published in the form of novellas. The new texts are divided into two sections, containing eight and 10 stories, respectively. Set in the provincial (Delta) small town for which Abu Rayya is well-known, the stories display a structural rigour and aesthetic discipline that is to be commended. Here, as elsewhere, Abu Rayya is careful to avoid emotional involvement with his characters and his favourite settings; he is equally cautious of the temptation towards lyricism, preferring a more sober and tightly wrought approach to poetry. As well as displaying the more articulate qualities that made his last novel a wide-ranging success, the stories sometimes tend towards abstraction, with a few being little more than well-told contemporary parables, or fables of small town life.

Al-Ma'asi Al-Tarikhiya Al-Kubra (The Great Historical Tragedies), Hassan El-Sherif, Cairo: General Organisation of Cultural Palaces "Memory of Writing" Series, 2003. pp312 This, the latest in the General Organisation of Cultural Palaces' admirable republishing initiative, is a classic account of major tragedies in the history of humanity that takes the form of a collection of short tales. To mention but one topic -- the subject of several, admirably economical chapters -- it deals with the collapse of Napoleon Bonaparte's empire in the early 19th century. Written by a well-known scholar, and, like all the books published in this series, out of print for many years, the book might have benefited from a brief account of its history and a biography of its author. Instead, the present edition implies that the book has never been published before -- an irritating shortcoming in what is otherwise a cherished read.

Hakaza Tatrammal Al-Imbratoriyat (Thus Empires are Widowed), Ahmed Zarzour, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation "New Writings" Series, 2003. pp111 This book, the latest by Ahmed Zarzour, contains 27 short poems that display all the raw vitality and concern with day-to-day life that inform the so-called "generation of the 1990s" prose poets. The book suggests a questioning of the present state and future of the prose poem: how might this as yet nascent form avoid the dangers it is confronted with, perhaps the most important of which is the lack of an adequate readership? It would not be entirely unfair to suggest, however, that this lack reflects not only prose poetry's ambiguity and the failure of its practitioners to develop any articulate set of literary instruments, but also an inherent paucity of style and content -- something that the present volume by Zarzour might be said to demonstrate.

Jama'at Al-Adab Al-Naqis (The League of Incomplete Literature), Haitham El-Wardani, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp141 Haitham El-Wardani belongs to the younger generation of short-story writers -- a generation whose distinct voice is currently coming into its own. Five years ago, El-Wardani joined forces with five other writers -- Ahmed Farouq, Ahmed Gharib, Nadine Shams, Allaa El-Barbari and the late Wael Ragab, all of whom no longer write fiction regularly, to produce a collaborative book, Khutout ala Dawa'ir (Lines on Circles), a collection of six short stories, one by each. The present book, El-Wardani's debut volume, reflects an urge to try out as many forms as possible. It demonstrates a range of approaches to the art of short-story writing from dry reportage to formal experimentation. More significantly, it shows how far El-Wardani has come since his contribution to the aforementioned book, whose authors' fates might be thought to be ironically reflected in the present book's title.

Shahed ala Harb Afghanistan (Witness to the Afghanistan War), El-Sayed Hani, Cairo: private printing, 2003. pp503 During Washington's attack on Afghanistan in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, the writer of the present book went to Afghanistan for the newspaper Al-Akhbar. Following a period spent in Pakistan, Hani spent several months in the thick of the battle, and this is his comprehensive eyewitness account of what he saw during this charged period. "I met with people who prefered death to life," he writes in the introduction, "ate with them, grew my beard like them, wore the jilbab and taqia and bore arms, firing my Kalashnikov over the mountains. I walked with them in demonstrations screaming the name of Bin Laden... The most painful part was the sight of American bombs and missiles hitting the homes of the poor, demolishing them and killing their inhabitants... Once, I helped to take the bodies of two old people out of the rubble" left by the American bombs.

Mukhayilat Al-Amkena: Mudun wa Nusous (The Imagination of Places: Cities and Texts), Khalil Al-Ni'iemi, Cairo: GEBO, Family Library, 2003. pp232 From Sanaa to Marakesh, from Rome to Lisbon: a dozen or more cities through which Syrian novelist Khalil Al-Ne'iemi has passed, recording not only the surface impressions of what he perceived but also the deep marks the cities left in him. Born in Damascus, El-Ne'iemi has lived in Paris for more than two decades. He is the quintessential traveller, journeying inwards and outwards at the same time. "In travelling, the writer's personal history glows and his capacity for surprise boils over," he writes, "the surprise he has almost buried in the rubble of familiar places. Thus, [in travelling] being rid of the traps of overbearing places becomes a way of resisting psychological demise. Yet the question remains: how do we create places? How do we save their imagination and texts from death?"

Kharij Al-Kitaba (Outside Writing), Ibrahim Dawoud, Cairo: Miret for Publication and Information, 2003. pp109 This book is not only "outside writing", it is also outside the form that Ibrahim Dawoud has chosen since his first collection of poems, Tafasil (Details), which appeared in 1998. A prose text by a poet, it incorporates texts that do not belong to this or that literary genre, but emanate from a drive to fix pregnant moments and absent people and yet still remain open-ended. A provincial young man in the city, poor except in his lust for knowledge and discovery, Ibrahim stops at Cairo downtown's famous "Bermuda Triangle" where the city's intellectuals live. He stops at Hosh Qadam, the original residence of vernacular poet Ahmed Fouad Negm and blind musician Sheikh Imam Eisa. He chatters and rambles, paying little attention to form or literary convention, yet the book displays the qualities that make his poetry distinct: the search for an elusive detail, for moments of loneliness, fear and warmth, and for texts that lie outside the usual arena of literary writing.