Jamāl Ghīṭānī

al-Majālis al-maḥfūẓīyah

Sāʻāt

حكايات الغريب

حكيم، توفيق

Memoirs of Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm; Egyptian novelist and dramatist.

توفيق الحكيم يتذكر

ملامح القاهرة في 1000 سنة

"In the course of my long travels I have never seen a city so devastated. After a long time I ventured out into the streets. Death, cold and heavy, hung in the air. Walls have no value here, doors have been eliminated. No one is certain that they will see another day." The Egypt of the Mamluk dynasty witnessed a period of artistic ostentation and social and political upheaval, at the heart of which lay the unsolved question of the ruler's legitimacy. Now, in 1516, the Mamluk reign is coming to an end with the advance of the invading Ottomans. The numerous narrators, among them a Venetian traveler and several native Muslims, tell the story of the rise to power of the ruthless, enigmatic, and puritanical governor of Cairo, Zayni Barakat ibn Musa, whose control of the corrupt city is effected only through a complicated network of spies and informers.

Zayni Barakat

In this surrealist novel with political and religious aspects and an edge of satire, the narrator is an unseen, unheard presence with the privilege of observing events from the past, mostly those involving his father and grandfather. Inanimate objects that have "witnessed" events (such as a date palm, or a brick in a hospital wall) report to the narrator, who seems to know no temporal or physical boundaries. A sense of displaced time saturates the blending of real and unreal events, such as the fight in the desert around Karbala against Israel and the forces of the West (including William Casey (the former CIA director), the narrator's father, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and al-Husayn). Nasser, who has miraculously reappeared after his death, is shocked and appalled to find that peace has been brokered with Israel and that Israelis have made Egypt a holiday destination.

The Book of Epiphanies

For Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), Cairo was always a place of special resonance. As the place in which he was born and lived his whole life, it is a city he loved passionately and visited and revisited in his writing. It is the setting for nearly all his novels and short stories, not merely as a backdrop but as an integral part of his fiction, playing its own role in the dramas. In this special new and expanded edition of the bestselling book first published in 1999, photographer Britta Le Va guides us through his pages, and treads his streets and alleys, to produce a collection of outstanding visual images of the historic city, while novelist Gamal al-Ghitani describes a walking tour with the great man around the streets of Gamaliya, that historic heart of the old city where both of them-more than thirty years apart-were born and grew up.

The Cairo of Naguib Mahfouz

غيطاني، جمال

The Mahfouz Dialogs records the memories, views, and jokes of Naguib Mahfouz on subjects ranging from politics to the relationship between his novels and his life, as delivered to intimate friends at a series of informal meetings stretching out over almost half a century. Mahfouz was a pivotal figure not only in world literature (through being awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 he became the first writer in Arabic to win a mass audience), but also in his own society, where he vastly enhanced the image of the writer in the eyes of the public and encapsulated as the victim of a savage attack on his life by an Islamist in 1994 the struggle between pluralism, tolerance, and secularism on the one hand and extremist Islam. Moderated by Gamal al-Ghitani, a writer of a younger generation who shared a common background with Mahfouz (al-Ghitani also grew up in medieval Cairo) and felt a vast personal empathy for the writer despite their sometimes different views, these exchanges throw new light on Mahfouz's life, the creation of his novels, and literary Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Mahfouz Dialogs

For Naguib Mahfouz, Cairo has always been a place of special resonance, a city he loves passionately and has revisited in his writings. Photographer Britta Le Va, a longtime admirer of the novels of Mahfouz, guides us through his pages and treads his streets to produce a collection of visual images of the city. Each complements a verbal image selected from Mahfouzs writings. In his introduction, novelist Gamal al-Ghitani describes a walking tour with the novelist through the streets of Gamaliya, the heart of the old city where both of themmore than thirty years apartwere born and raised. Mahfouz reminisces and remarks on what has changed and what has not in eight decades

Jamāl Ghīṭānī

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