Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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I have always dreamt of a publishing house devoted to modern Egyptian literature. In fact I had a small role in initiating such a project. When I was the Secretary of the Egyptian Institute in London (and later cultural attache), I was responsible for the publication of The Bulletin, a magazine that was a channel for introducing Egypt to the British public. It was a monthly and one of its permanent features was an Egyptian short story, which I dutifully translated every month. In those days (from the mid 1940's and late 1950's) the literary scene in Egypt was dominated by such leading men of letters as Taha Hussein, Tewfik El-Hakim, Abbas El-Aqqad, Yehia Hakki, Abdel-Qader El-Mazni, and a younger generation with Said Abdu and Salah Zchray.

Eventually I collected those stories and published them with a certain Farleigh Press, with the title "Modern Egyptian Short Stories". On my return to Egypt after 12 years in London I took up a post with the Higher Council of Arts and Literature, headed by our leading writer the late Youssef El-Sebai. Still preoccupied, indeed possessed, with the idea of crating a library of modern Egyptian literature in English, I submitted a proposal for the translation of samples of our modern literature into English and French. We selected 12 books by the aforementioned writers and had them translated into the two European languages. At that time the roneo was the only means of printing and the 12 novels were roneod.

I took the English translations and headed for London where I tried to promote the scheme. I remember my meeting with Mr Chappel, who was with Longman's Green, the publisher and supplier of the English textbooks for our schools. To cut a long story short, the project did not crystalise, and my dream of the Arabic literature publishing house continued to be just a dream. I always felt jealous of the Heinemann English African literature series, and of the Presence Africaine French African literature series.

Then my dream came true, with the emergence of the AUC Press as a publisher of Arabic, mainly Egyptian modern literature. Under the highly professionalism of its director Mark Linz, the AUC Press has established itself as the leading, in fact the only publisher of modern Arabic literature in English. So far the AUC has published 56 books of literature by both established writers like Taha Hussein, Naguib Mahfouz, Youssef Idris, Ibrahim Aslan, Mohamed El-Bisatie, Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid, Gamal El-Ghilani, Ibrahim El-Mazni, and younger upcoming writers.

While the AUC Arabic Literature Series can now stand apart with both Heinemann and Presence Africaine, its task is much harder than theirs. There is the question of translation which adds a heavy financial burden to the AUC Press. Furthermore there is the problem, a serious one, of finding the professional literary translators. Judging by the number of names, new to me, it seems that Mark Linz has managed to gather a team of excellent translators. It is often said that a good translation should read like an original, and this is what I feel going through books of the series.

An innovation introduced by the AUC Press is the official inauguration and signing of copies by the authors. In this respect the role of Nabila Aql, the promotion manager, should be stressed. The choice of historical buildings for the inauguration ceremony adds glamour to the occasion.

I have concentrated on the Arabic literature series, but the AUC Press publications go beyond this. So far it has published 800 titles on diverse subjects from archaeology and ancient Egypt, to history and biography, architecture and the arts, religious studies etc. One important task of the Press is the distribution of its publications, and a quick look at the impressive list of distributors and sales representatives clearly demonstrates the AUC Press success in introducing Egypt to the world.