► To buy Homecoming: Sixty Years of Egyptian Short Stories, click here.

►  For other books by Denys Johnson-Davies, click here.

Magdi Guirguis, co-author (with Nelly Van Doorn-Harder) of The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy, volume 3 of The Popes of Egypt (AUC Press, 2011), in this recent interview, reflects on the legacy of the late Shenouda III, the 117th Pope of Egypt, elected Patriarch in October 1971, who died last month, and the future of the Coptic Church.

The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy spans the five centuries from the arrival of the Ottomans in 1517 to the present era. Guirguis, an independent Coptic researcher and a specialist in Egyptian documentary sources from the Ottoman period, reconstructs the authority of the popes and the organization of the Coptic community during that period. Nelly Van Doorn-Harder addresses the political, religious, and cultural issues faced by the patriarchs who led the Coptic community into the twenty-first century.

Ashraf Khalil was in Tahrir Square almost every one of the eighteen days during the January 2011 Egyptian uprising. His new book Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation (AUC Press, 2012) is a dramatic and absorbing eye witness account of his experience in the throes of the 25 January Revolution, combined with an insightful overview of Egypt’s modern history.

Khalil, a forty-year-old American Egyptian correspondent, has covered the Middle East for most of the past fifteen years. He is a former Los Angeles Times correspondent in Baghdad and Jerusalem, and a former editor-in-chief of the Cairo Times independent weekly news magazine. His articles appear in various prominent publications including The Economist, The Times, The Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Christian Science Monitor.

The AUC Press will hold two book signing receptions for the publication of Liberation Square: the first one on May 3 at the AUC New Cairo Campus; the second on May 7at the AUC Tahrir Campus. Click here for further details.

► To read more about the book, click here.

► To read the prologue of the book, click here.

► To read a recent interview with Ashraf Khalil, click here.

The AUC Press will be participating in the London Book Fair, held from April 16 to 18, at Earls Court in London.

AUC Press books, including recent bestselling publications such as Grand Hotels of Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel by Andrew Humphreys, will be available at Stand K725. (Eurospan Limited is the AUC Press distributor in the United Kingdom and Europe).

Egypt's late Pope Shenouda III, who headed the country's Coptic Orthodox Christian community for the past four decades, died in Cairo on March 17 at the age of 88, raising many questions about the legacy and future of the Coptic Church.

The three-volume series, published by the AUC Press, looks at the history of Egypt's Coptic Church and its patriarchs, from Saint Mark to the late Shenouda III.

On Friday, March 23, Turath, the Arab Students Organization of Columbia University is organizing the Egypt Symposium, a comprehensive, day-long conference exploring various aspects of the post-revolutionary Egyptian society. The event will address the complex changes slowly unfolding in Egypt, in the realms of media, development, markets, and politics. From panels on art to discussions with young revolutionaries, the Egypt Symposium will situate the complexities of present-day Egyptian society.

The AUC Press Bookstore on the AUC New Cairo Campus has moved from its location outside the portal near Gate 1 to the Campus Center, on the edge of Bartlett Plaza.

The move was prompted by an interest to serve on-campus customers better and to build upon the bookstore’s strong relationship with the AUC community. Its new, central location gives customers the option to stop in the store quickly or take their time to browse between classes. 

Andrew Humphreys’s Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel (AUC Press, 2012) tells of the country’s luxury hotels during the bygone days when explorers, travelers, and foreign occupying forces mingled in the lavish lobbies and al fresco on the moonlit terraces of these “gilded refuges,” also delighting in high-society dining and dancing, while “wintering on the Nile.” Grand Hotels of Egypt is a very visual book, combining well-documented accounts, extracts, and anecdotes, vintage photography, and full-color illustrations of travel posters, luggage labels, postcards, decorated letterheads, menus, and invitations. 

The AUC Press celebrated this new publication early this month at Cairo's Windsor Hotel.

Barbara Romaine is the runner-up of the 2011 Saif Ghobash‒Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of Specters (AUC Press, 2010), a novel by Radwa Ashour, the highly acclaimed Egyptian scholar and author of more than fifteen books.

Specters tells the story of Egypt since the 1950s through the experiences of two women who are each other’s ghostly doubles. “Fluent and refreshing, Romaine has done a brilliant job,” comments the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature on its official website.

The AUC Press Tahrir Bookstore on the AUC Tahrir Campus is temporarily closed due to the events in the recent days. 

When open, the Tahrir Bookstore is accessible from the Mohamed Mahmoud Street gate of the campus, with a valid photo ID.

Authors Agnieszka Dobrowolska and Jaroslaw Dobrowolski talk about their new book The Sultan’s Fountain: An Imperial Story of Cairo, Istanbul, and Amsterdam (AUC Press, 2011).

This beautifully illustrated volume tells the story of a Turkish sultan and his intriguing sabil-kuttab building with its stunning Dutch tiles.

(To listen to Agnieszka Dobrowolska speaking about the book during a special event held earlier this month at Bayt al-Sinnari for the celebration of its publication, click here).

The AUC Press offices on the Tahrir Campus are open.

AUC Press staff can be reached during regular working hours (8:30 am - 4:30 pm Sunday through Thursday).

The AUC Press Tahrir Bookstore remains temporarily closed.
The Falaki Textbook Store is open from 8:30 am - 4:30 pm daily; closed Friday & Saturday.

Customers wishing to place special book orders should visit or call our Zamalek Bookstore.

For the complete list of AUC Press Bookstores, click here.

To contact the AUC Press, click here.

 January 2012

To download the map to Bayt al-Sinnari, click here.  

For the flyer of the event, click here. 

To read an interview with the authors Agnieszka Dobrowolska and Jaroslaw Dobrowolski of the new book The Sultan’s Fountain: An Imperial Story of Cairo, Istanbul, and Amsterdam (AUC Press, 2011), click here. 

January 2012

January 2012

December 2011

The 20-volume Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Library published in commemoration of this year’s centenary of the Egyptian Nobel laureate’s birth is now available.

This exclusive limited edition is a definitive 8000-page collection presented in 20 hardbound volumes bringing together for the first time all the translated works of Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt’s greatest writer. Sold as a set, the Centennial Library comprises Mahfouz’s 35 novels, including his first, Khufu’s Wisdom, published in 1939, and his last, The Coffeehouse, which appeared in 1988, as well as a new translation of his masterpiece Midaq Alley by award-winning translator Humphrey Davies. The volumes also contain 38 short stories, a selection from Mahfouz’s very short fictions The Dreams, and his Echoes of an Autobiography, personal and reflective commentary on situations and events that shaped his life.

The AUC Press Zamalek Holiday Book Fair will be held from 9 through 12 December 2011, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, at the AUC Zamalek Hostel, located at 16 Mohamed Thakeb Street (off al-Maraashli Street) in Zamalek.

November 2011

November 2011

In his new book, Egypt, the Arabs, and the World: Reflections at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (AUC Press, 2011), Hani Shukrallah, founding editor of Ahram Online, and the executive director of the Heikal Foundation for Arab Journalism, shares his observations on the modern Middle East and the Arab Spring.

In a recent interview he reflects on the 25 January Revolution, the Egyptian youth, the forthcoming elections, and the role of the military.

AUC Press: Why did you choose the quotation from Nabil El-Hilali for your book, and how do you interpret his words? “The Egyptian people are like the Nile, nine months low water and three months the flood”(Nabil El-Hilali, Egyptian revolutionary and lawyer).

HS: We stayed for years, decades wondering when something would happen because something had to happen. Actually when we are speaking about thirty years of Mubarak we are actually speaking about sixty years of the same regime. This regime basically came together in 1954. Enormous changes happened in orientation but the authoritarian institutions are the same. So you have this regime that undergoes changes and you get these moments when you feel something will happen but the flood does not come…. So Nabil El-Hilali was basically saying: “Don’t despair, the flood will come”—in other words, the revolution.


AUC Press: You suggest in your book that the instruments of mobilization used by the youth to raise awareness, organize, and call to action, were almost wholly ‘virtual,’ made up of blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter, and YouTube, etc. Did you underestimate the possibility that social media could trigger and unleash real change?

HS: Definitely! I was beginning to feel that this was becoming an alternative to real activism—you just click a button and you are supporting and fighting for a cause and don’t need to do much more. But what I discovered is that actually this was a way through which people were meeting, engaging in dialogue, meeting in coffee shops, in headquarters of NGOs, and at demonstrations.


AUC Press: Why were social media influential during the January revolution?

HS: There were several things happening: the bankruptcy of the traditional political opposition parties that were basically wiped out or that had lost the confidence of the people or that were confined to their headquarters and offices; and repression that did not allow Egyptians to organize rallies. The new generation coming up found these social media tools handy. Through this virtual space they were able to create a discourse that was very much their own—something quite different from the traditional political map that we have in the country, with left and right, and so on. These Egyptians wanted to be proud of their country, they wanted clean streets, practical things…. They felt embarrassed that Egypt would be number hundred thirty something on that international indicator.


AUC Press: You have been politically active since you were 17 years old. How was a person politically active during your generation?

HS: Our generation was very different. We formed underground organizations, we were active in universities, student and labor movements, protests, etc. My generation is the 60s generation so we came onto a world where young people were everywhere on the streets and so it came naturally, this was the time. We would spend our day outside in the street. We gave Sadat quite a hard time for a few years but then it just fizzled out.


AUC Press: What ultimately brought on the January revolution in Egypt?

HS: There was not a main instigator. There was something subtle that was coming together. I could see the kids organizing demonstrations, getting beaten up and thrown in prison. I could see it happen but I did not grasp the potential. On the contrary actually, I thought were being led by children who have no political experience and who were just fooling around …. That is why in my book I talk about a real mea culpa. I did not see it coming.  But I honestly don’t think one can attribute the Egyptian Arab Spring to one thing. Definitely what was there though is that we seemed to have reached rock bottom, not just in Egypt but across the Arab world. Everything was ugly and again the options that were out there were all equally ugly and grim. I could not be in a position to choose between Mubarak or the Muslim Brotherhood, between oligarchic and military dictatorships or Islamist theocracies…..


AUC Press: You mention in the book that you were removed from your post as editor of Al-Ahram Weekly in July 2005, “upon the insistent demands of the State Security Intelligence Service.” What do you think were some of the topics you wrote about or things that you published that were most disturbing to the State Security apparatus?

HS: I think it was a combination of things, not just my writing but also my being the editor of that newspaper. What happened was that in 2005 I was getting away with a lot and Al-Ahram Weekly was getting away with a lot—no other state newspaper was publishing what we did—because it was in English and I think they realized that because of our audience we needed a wider space for us to have any credibility. We were using this advantage and pushing the margins all the time.

It was not just me, our editorial team was like this as well. But in 2005 what was in our favor actually then turned against us because that was the year of political activism—the whole Kifaya movement, the whole business of succession. At the same time you had George Bush, having made a mess of Iraq, turning his attention to Egypt and saying “Egypt has to democratize” and so the pressure was on. We were getting a lot of reports asking questions like “Does Ayman Nour have a chance of winning?,” “are we witnessing an Egyptian spring?” so really English then became a liability and that is when they got rid of me.


AUC Press: In a previous interview you said that the secular values that drove the January revolution have not really reached the Egyptian provinces. Are you expecting a surprise in the results when Egyptians go to the polls in the coming months?

HS: I am hoping to be surprised. Now there is this growing fear that the Islamists are more powerful than anybody else. The Salafists erupted on the scene, with enormous financing from Saudi Arabia. I heard from a government minister that since the revolution they have given $180 million to Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiya [the Followers of the Sunna of the Prophet Mohamed], what is supposed to be a charity organization but is the big Salafist prayer institution in the country. So this is all very dangerous but I am not pessimistic and I am not that scared. There is a possibility, even a likelihood, that we will have an Islamist presence in government. I don’t think they will form a government of their own. What we are probably looking at is a parliament that is divided into three thirds: a third Islamists, a third with what we call the remnants of the NDP, and a third with the Social Democratic Party and all the rest of the new liberal and left or center parties. I think for years to come we are going to have coalition governments. What one can hope for and what I’d like to be surprised by is that the secularist parties, the new parties of the revolution, would have a bigger share than a third.


AUC Press: You believe that there will not be military rule in Egypt, but what role do you see the military playing after the forthcoming elections?

HS: What is likely to happen is that the military will have some kind of presence in a political post-revolution arrangement. The military will give itself, with the implicit (or not) approval of the political movements in the country, as a sort of reward for not shooting at the demonstrators, something like a national security council. The Egyptian president would not be accountable to that council but would consult and involve it on issues deemed of strategic importance. I think the military is very keen on very specific things that they feel are national security concerns. For example, the Egypt–America relationship: armies function and exist by virtue of arms and I don’t think they would be willing to sacrifice that military relation; and keeping the borders peaceful. One of the aspects of the deal the military made with the Muslim Brotherhood is that the Muslim Brotherhood basically told them “We are not going fool around with Hamas, we are not going to fool around the Israeli–Egyptian Peace Treaty.”  These are the red lines and the military would like to have the power to be able to stop any government from encroaching on these lines.


AUC Press: One recent Al-Ahram editorial describes Egypt as “somewhere between revolution and chaos, between toppling a regime and toppling the entire state.” What is your take on that?

HS: There are a lot of people in the power structure, in the media, everywhere, who actually are Mubarak people and are state security agents. These people have a vested interest, they say the revolution is wonderful. The main state security man on the Al-Ahram staff —very powerful, everybody was afraid of him— was one of the people behind my being fired from Al-Ahram Weekly. During the revolution he was justifying the killing of demonstrators and today he is in the same position—deputy editor of Al-Ahram. Sometimes you will find him writing the banner story of the paper, and of course now he is pro-revolution.

Then there is among the ordinary public a sense that there is a collapse of security. This is the crucial element of the coming elections because you have a rogue police force. Nothing has really been done except that they removed a few of the top echelon. You have a massive apparatus that really was transformed over the thirty years of Mubarak into a lawless militia. They could do anything. Now they are out to subvert the revolution by withdrawing security to get the people to feel and say “We want the police back, with emergency law, with torture, with anything, but bring them back. Save us from the thugs and the criminals.”


AUC Press: Would you say that the demands of the revolution have been met?

HS: No! But it is so paradoxical, a real Egyptian reality, because you look at it one way and you see enormous changes. Mubarak and his whole gang of oligarchs who were gods are now in the docks. We need to have a balance sheet on the human rights situation before and after the revolution. Now it is enormously better but you still have in place the things that could make the whole thing sour. But if you compare the situation with before January 25, now you have the ability to hold peaceful protests, strikes, and demonstrations. The kind and extent of newly seized and newly created public space and political space is massive. If you look at torture and detention, yes we are going to make them accountable for every single case of torture or detention, but in terms of scale, it is negligible compared to before the revolution. Prior to the revolution you had thousands of people being tortured on a daily basis just as routine. Now they don’t do it not because they are any better but because they know people will set fire to the police stations. 

To read more about Hani Shukrallah’s book and buy it, click here.

October 2011

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October 2012

► Tahrir Bookstore & Zamalek Bookstore:
- Closed Sunday, November 6 through Tuesday, November 8.

► New Cairo Bookstore & Falaki Textbook Store
- Closed from Saturday, November 5 through Wednesday, November 9.

All AUC Press Bookstores will open again on Thursday, November 10.

For working hours of all AUC Press Bookstores, click here. 

October 2011

For the news release, click here.

 December 2011

To download the invitation, click here.

To download the event's program, click here.

To read a recent online interview with Sture Allén, click here.

 October 2011

Wiam El-Tamami, previously an AUC Press editorial trainee and currently one of its freelance translation editors, won the 2011 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, an award launched last year to honor the achievements of young translators at the start of their careers.

The 27-year-old Egyptian’s rendering into English of the Arabic short story Layl Qouti (Gothic Night) by Mansoura Ez Eldin, author of Maryam’s Maze (AUC Press, 2007), was one of 92 entries from all around the world. “Wiam not only rose to the challenges of the text, fully comprehending the author’s Arabic, but also produced a beautiful piece of writing,” said prize founder and one of the four 2011 judges, Briony Everroad. “The translation displayed an elegance of style alongside fidelity to the Arabic original, yet the story is wonderfully articulated in the translator’s own voice.”

El-Tamami, who lives in Cairo, completed a BA in English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo in 2004, and later obtained an MA in Writing for Children at the University of Winchester. “I think this [Harvill Secker] award will encourage me to focus more on translating myself,” said the winner in an interview with Granta Magazine, posted on its website along with her translation of Gothic Night.

“Translators tread a tricky tightrope between capturing the full implications of the Arabic while creating an English text that flows smoothly and doesn’t sound overwrought, dated, or downright melodramatic,” noted El-Tamami while explaining the linguistic challenges inherent in Arabic-English translation.

The Secker Young Translators’ Prize award ceremony was held in London last week. Commenting on the selection of Ez Eldin’s writing, El-Tamami said: “The story was a wonderful choice for a translation competition—it presented just enough technical challenges while leaving plenty of room for creative interpretation.”

An editorial trainee at the AUC Press between 2006 and 2007, El-Tamami is now a regular freelance copy-editor for the Press. “Wiam is not only one of our most outstanding editors of translated fiction, she is also a fine judge of the quality of a translation,” said Neil Hewison, AUC Press associate director, editorial programs.

October 2011

The American University in Cairo Press is pleased to announce the publication of its latest book on the 25 January Revolution, The Road to Tahrir: Front Line Images by Six Young Egyptian Photographers (AUC Press, 2011).

In an event held on October 3 on the Nile Lily boat on the Nile, attended by several hundred guests, the publication was celebrated by the AUC Press in the presence of the photographers, Sherif Assaf, Omar Attia, Rehab K. El Dalil, Timothy Kaldas, Zee Mo, and Monir El Shazly, who took part in the book signing.

► To watch the AUC Press YouTube video of Omar Attia speaking during the event, click here.
► To view a photo gallery of the event, click here.

The Road to Tahrir is a unique and moving visual record that illustrates the days of the Egyptian revolution in sequence, from tear gas to tears of joy, covering the demonstrators’ cries of agony and their demand for “Bread, Freedom, and Human Dignity,” a visual testimony stretching chronologically from January 25—the Day of Revolt—to March 19—the day of the Constitutional Referendum.

“Each of us marched daily, armed with faith and hope, waving flags and grasping our cameras, from various parts of the city—Heliopolis, Maadi, Manial, Zamlek—to rally into the main arteries of the square—Abd al-Mun’im Riyad Square, Qasr al-Nil Bridge, Qasr al-Aini Street, Talaat Harb Square—to take part in the making of history in Tahrir Square,” explain Attia and Kaldas in the introduction to their book.

The six photographers who contributed the 150 dramatic images of this historic testimony are all young Egyptian students and professionals, most of whom did not know each other at the time of the revolution.“Here is what we witnessed and what we will never forget,” said Attia, an avid photographer and an AUC business administration graduate.

To read more about the book and buy it, click here.

To read a recent review about the book in The Daily News Egypt by Mariam Hamdy, click here.

 October 2011

The AUC Press will announce the winner of the 2011 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature on December 11, 2011, in El Sawy Cultural Wheel (River Hall), Zamalek, and hold a special Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Round Table Discussion with leading Egyptian writers and literary critics on the topic of “Naguib Mahfouz and Revolutionary Literature.”

The 2011 Medal award comes at a time of momentous and historic events in Egypt, and also coincides with celebrations of the centenary of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz on December 11, 1911.

The event will begin at 5:00 pm. The El Sawy Cultural Wheel is located on 26th of July Street, Zamalek. 

To download the invitation, click here.

To download the program, click here.

December 2011

The AUC Press is pleased to announce that Cairo Scholarship Online (CSO) went live on October 3 within the University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO) platform, sponsored by Oxford University Press, which sells and distributes AUC Press books across North America.

October 2011

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In 1988 Professor Sture Allén of the Nobel Prize organization’s Swedish Academy in Stockholm, the awarding institution for the literature prize, delivered the Award Ceremony Speech for Naguib Mahfouz’s nomination.

In an online interview, Professor Allén, a distinguished computational linguist, Emeritus Professor at the University of Gothenburg, and the author of Nobel Lectures in Literature, speaks about the Nobel Prize and the great Egyptian writer whose centenary is celebrated this year by the AUC Press.

(Professor Allén will be giving a lecture about the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize, and Naguib Mahfouz on October 18 at 5:00 pm, at Oriental Hall, at the AUC Tahrir Campus).


AUC Press: In the 1980s, the Swedish Academy extended the prize to the most worthy writer “whether he be Scandinavian or not.”  Why do you think it was important to broaden the scope to include literature of the whole world?

Professor Sture Allén: As a matter of fact, it was specified already in Alfred Nobel’s will of 1895 that no consideration shall be given to nationality. Among laureates from various parts of the world before the 1980s, in accordance with the testament, there is Tagore, O’Neill, Mistral, Hemingway, Agnon, Asturias, Kawabata, Neruda, White, Singer, and others. Naturally it takes time to establish the survey of world literature which is requiered for the task.


AUC Press: You said in the Award Ceremony Speech that you gave for the Nobel Prize of Naguib Mahfouz, that the Egyptian literature laureate presented themes in “clearly daring ways.” Is this a trait that the Swedish Academy holds in high regard and do you have some examples to illustrate what the Swedish Academy considered daring in Mahfouz’s writing?

Professor Sture Allén: What I said when I addressed the laureate who was sitting in Cairo was: “your rich and complex work invites us to reconsider the fundamental things in life. Themes like the nature of time and love, society and norms, knowledge and faith recur in a variety of situations and are presented in thought-provoking, evocative, and clearly daring ways.”


AUC Press: The prominent translator Denys Johnson-Davies said about Mahfouz that the Egyptian writer “rendered Arabic literature a great service by developing, over the years, a form of language in which many of the archaisms and clichés that had become fashionable were discarded” and that “he dealt with life in a very direct manner.” Do you think the Swedish Academy would share this opinion?

Professor Sture Allén: Based on our reading of translations and expert reports, on the whole yes.


AUC Press: On the other hand, some critics have suggested that “Mahfouz [was] perhaps an obstacle for the development of the Arabic novel” because he was so influential and this prevented other writers, younger ones, from breaking new ground. What is your opinion?

Professor Sture Allén: This way of thinking suggests that Nobel laureates as well as their eminent forerunners in earlier centuries were to be seen as obstructing rather than promoting cultural development. However, it seems that, through the years, there are pioneers overcoming the enemy.


AUC Press: Naguib Mahfouz himself said that it was through the translation of his novels into English by the AUC Press …. “that other publishers became aware of them and requested their translation into other foreign languages, and I believe that these translations were among the foremost reasons for my being awarded the Nobel prize.” How true is that?

Professor Sture Allén: In view of the fact that several thousand languages are spoken on earth, it is important that the œuvre of prominent authors is made accessible in good translations.


AUC Press: What do you think makes Naguib Mahfouz’s writing unique?

Professor Sture Allén: His excellence appears to be the result of his synthesis of classical Arabic tradition, European inspiration, and personal artistry.


AUC Press: Can you talk about your favorite Naguib Mahfouz work?

Professor Sture Allén: Writing a novel coming out as a spiritual history of mankind, which is what is done in The Children of the Alley, is a first-rate achievement.


AUC Press: How would you describe Naguib Mahfouz as a person, based on his writing?

Professor Sture Allén: As a worthy Nobel laureate, dedicated to his versatile literary undertaking.

October 2011

Like every new season, the AUC Press has lined up a wonderful selection of new publications, this fall covering a very diverse range of topics, from Egyptian feminism, al-Qaida fundamentalism, and social networking in the Middle East, to Ancient Nubian Kingdoms, architecture of Upper Egypt, and America’s foreign policy of the 1990s in the region. 

Political, economic, and social issues
Among the fifty-four new books, nearly half address political, economic, and social issues, some naturally directly relating to Egypt’s 25 January uprising, such as The Road to Tahrir: Front Line Images by Six Young Egyptian Photographers by Sherif Assaf, Omar Attia, Rehab K. El Kalil, Timothy Kaldas, Zee Mo, and Monir El-Shazly, and Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir, edited by Samia Mehrez.

Much attention is paid to gender issues with Mapping Arab Women’s Movements: A Century of Transformations from Within, edited by Pernille Arendeldt and Nawar Al-Hassan Golley, Revolutionary Womanhood: Feminisms, Modernity, and the State in Nasser’s Egypt by Laura Bier, Khul‘ Divorce in Egypt by Nadia Sonneveld, Cairo Papers Vol. 31, No. 2, Law as a Tool for Empowering Women within Marital Relations: A Case Study of Paternity Lawsuits in Egypt by Hind Ahmed Zaki, Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Gender-Based Violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by Jamileh Abu-Duhou, and finally Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870-1940 by Wilson Chacko Jacob.

History & Biography
On a more historical note, the themes span from the new updated paperback edition of A History of Egypt: From Earlier Times to the Present by Jason Thompson to Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel by Andrew Humphreys.

Religious Studies
Published this month is the third and final volume of The Popes of Egypt, The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy by Magdi Guirguis and Nelly van Doorn-Harder, Associate Editor by Michael Shelley.

Arabic Literature in Translation
Ten new novels in translation highlight writers from Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia: first and foremost, The Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Library, which includes all the Nobel laureate’s 35 novels, as well as other of his works, and a new edition of Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley translated by award-winning Humphrey Davies. Also included are Brooklyn Heights by Miral al-Tahawy, last year’s winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature, Judgment Day by Rasha al Ameer, I Was Born There, I Was Born Here by the author of I Saw Ramallah Mourid Barghouti, Sarmada by Fadi Azzam, and A Tunisian Tale by Hassouna Mosbahi.

Archaeology & Ancient Egypt
Included in the seven new books on archaeology are such beautifully illustrated volumes as Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile, edited by Marjorie M. Fisher, Peter Lacovara, Salima Ikram, and Sue D’Auria, with photographs by Chester Higgins Jr, and a new handy flexibound edition of The Treasures of the Valley of the Kings: Tombs and Temples of the Theban West Bank in Luxor, edited by Kent R. Weeks, with photographs by Araldo De Luca.

Architecture & the Arts
The focus of the two forthcoming architecture books is on Veiling Architecture: Decoration of Domestic Buildings in Upper Egypt 1672–1950 by Ahmed Abdel-Gawad and The Sultan’s Fountain: An Imperial Story of Cairo, Istanbul, and Amsterdam by Agnieszka Dobrowolska and Jaroslaw Dobrowolski.

Language Studies
For the new academic year and Arabic language students, the AUC Press is also publishing the next volume in the series ‘Arabi Liblib: Egyptian Colloquial Arabic for the Advanced Learner, 3: Idioms and Other Expressions by Kamal Al Ekhnawy and Jamal Ali, and Kalaam Gamiil: An Intensive Course in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, Volume 2 by Abbas Al-Tonsi, Laila Al-Sawi, and Suzanne Massoud.

Travel Literature & Guidebooks
Finally, in this category will be available Lesley Lababidi’s new fully revised edition of Cairo: The Practical Guide as well as a new revised edition of Cairo: The Practical Guide Maps. Added to that are the much awaited Illustrated Guide to the Luxor Museum of Ancient Art and the Nubia Museum of Aswan by Janice Kamrin and The Illustrated Guide to the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo by Bernard O’Kane.

Click here to browse and download the complete Fall 2011 catalog   September 2011

To download the flyer, click here.

September 2011

The AUC Press was saddened to learn of the death of prominent Egyptian writer Khairy Shalaby in the early hours of 9 September 2011.

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Khairy Shalaby was born on January 31, 1938, in a small village near Kafr al-Shaykh in the Nile Delta. He was a visiting professor at the Institute of Dramatic Arts, where he taught the history of contemporary Egyptian theater, and was editor-in-chief of Magallat al-shi'r (Poetry Magazine) and of the Maktabat al-dirasat al-sha'biya (Library of Popular Studies) series of books, published by the Ministry of Culture. He was awarded the National Prize for Literature for 1980-81, and received the Medal for Science and Art for the same year.

He was the author of some 70 books, including novels, short stories, historical tales, and critical studies. Three of his novels have been translated and published by the AUC Press: The Lodging House (Wikalat 'Atiya) (which was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2003), The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets (Rihalat al-turshagi al-halwagi), and earlier this year The Hashish Waiter (Saleh Hesa).

The AUC Press extends its sympathies to Mr. Shalaby's family.

Tributes to Khairy Shalaby in the news: 

Commemorating Khairy Shalaby's life in historical Cairo
Ahram Online, October 4

 Adieu to Khairy Shalaby
Al Masry Al Youm (English Edition), Heba Yousry, September 16

Death paints the last portrait for the life of the writer Khairy Shalaby
Shorouk News, September 16

Demands to write his autobiography: Khairy Shalaby .... Days will not return
Shorouk News, September 16

Egyptian novelist Khairy Shalaby dies at 73
Ahram Online, September 9

September 2011

To download the flyer, click here.

September 2011

This summer’s AUC Press book contest is won by Ahmed Hamed for his description of the book A Photographer on the Hajj: The Travels of Muhammad ‘Ali Effendi Sa‘udi (1904/1908) by Farid Kioumgi and Robert Graham (AUC Press, 2009). Below are three illustrations from the book.

Detailed plan of Holy Mosque in  Mecca, al-Haram al-Makki	The Imam who led the Friday prayer at the Great Mosque in Medina with his eldest son	On the day of the Waqfa, the vigil before the feast of Eid, pilgrims moved to al-Khief Mosque at Mena

Hamed, a friend of the AUC Press, wrote:

“This book is amazing as it shows us the history of the pilgrimage trip at the beginning of the twentieth century from Cairo to Mount Arafat to Medina. It is full of wonderful pictures that we can’t see anymore. It’s not only a book but also a time machine which takes us more than 100 years back in this holy trip through photographs and quotations.”

For this book contest that began on July 12, participants were asked to contribute a short description of an AUC Press book they particularly enjoyed reading.

Hamed, who is also an aficionado of Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al Aswany’s books, will receive a free book of his choice from the following AUC Press publications.

We hope you will join in for the next book contest this fall!

August 2011

The latest in the AUC Press Tahrir Square publications, The Road to Tahrir: Front Line Images by Six Young Egyptian Photographers (AUC Press, 2011)  is now available at all the AUC Press Bookstores.

The six photographers, Sherif Assaf, Omar Attia, Rehab K. El Kalil, Timothy Kaldas, Zee Mo, and Monir El-Shazly, all students and professionals, followed and documented in different parts of Cairo the demonstrations converging on Tahrir, a square now internationally known as an icon of Liberation.

This powerful visual record covers the days of the Egyptian revolution in sequence, from January 25, "The Day of Revolt" to March 19, the day of the Constitutional Referendum.

To read more about The Road to Tahrir and buy it, click here.

Here are just some of the stunning photographs from the book.

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz, the great Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate, born on December 11, 1911, in the old Gamaliya quarter of Cairo.

The AUC Press has always been committed to the translation of Mahfouz’s writing, including all his 35 novels, as well as other works. 
 
To pay tribute to Naguib Mahfouz’s seventy-year career and to mark the milestone centenary of his birth, the AUC Press is publishing this fall the Naguib Mahfouz Centennial Library.

► A one-time-only limited edition.

► 20 hardbound volumes (the books are not available individually in this edition).

► This collection features all thirty-five of his novels, from Khufu's Wisdom, first published in Arabic in 1939, to his last work of extended fiction, The Coffeehouse (1988).

► It also includes three collections of short stories, Echoes of an Autobiography, his exquisite late series of intensely short fictions The Dreams, and the collection of his weekly newspaper columns, Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber. 

To read more about this Centennial Library, click here.

September 2011

Photography is one of his great passions. Since Amr Khadr picked up a camera 10 years ago, his work has been exhibited in Cairo, Rennes, and Paris.

Over the past decade his photographs have also appeared on almost a dozen covers of  AUC Press Arabic in Translation books.

In a recent interview, the Egyptian photographer explained the work behind his cover images.

AUC Press: What do you think the photograph on a book cover should reflect?

Khadr: Very much like the title, the book cover is an exercise of eloquence that strives to capture an essential element of the book; a key idea, an intriguing character, or a dramatic event.


AUC Press: How do you decide where / what to photograph for a book cover?

Khadr: This is largely a question of pertinence and feasibility. For the cover of Papa Sartre for example, the AUC Press asked if I had photographs of Baghdad. I answered no, but explained that many places in Cairo make me think of Baghdad during the war period. The book cover idea then shifted to Sartre and Paris, where part of the events in the book take place. I did do some photography work in Paris although not as extensively as in Cairo, so I proposed a series of images that I shot in the Jolie Môme, a  Parisian café with a 60's look that was frequented by Arab intellectuals. This choice successfully concluded the search for the desired photo.


AUC Press: Do you have the composition already in your head when you start the photo shoot for a book cover?

Khadr: Usually it starts with an initial set of possible ideas or alternatives. I then take a walk in neighborhoods most likely to contain the 'right' combinations of the where and what. Typically, this is followed by a somewhat delicate exercise of coming up with interesting compositions that also eliminate or exclude any problematic details.

For the new edition of the forthcoming Midaq Alley book cover, I knew I had to go to Al-Azhar and that it would be quite difficult to find these days a place that resembled what was depicted in Naguib Mahfouz’s novel. So I concentrated on finding narrow streets (as if leading to and from the alley), then looked for the composition that contained the best details (invoking older days), and then waited patiently for the appropriate people to step into the frame.


AUC Press: How do you create the atmosphere that often emanates from your book cover photographs?

Khadr: A photograph, in my mind, always has to be charged with poetic emotion and have a strong sense of drama. Also, I think that the combination of the image and the title further accentuates both of these aspects.

AUC Press: Do you like the image of a book cover to be very colorful or do you try to get one predominant tone?

Khadr: It is generally believed that a balanced colorful book cover photograph is more likely to attract a reader’s attention. However, personally I have always admired the monotone version that the AUC Press usually uses only on the hard binding under the jacket.


AUC Press: Do you ever discuss book cover ideas with the author?

Khadr: Unfortunately this rarely happens but the AUC Press does seek the opinion of the authors and translators.


AUC Press: Is it more difficult to shoot an image when it is for a book cover?

Khadr: A photograph for a book cover clearly presents certain challenges. Rather than being a regular photograph that one may or may not know how to interpret, the image for the book cover must fit in the realm of the novel. Another challenge is that the image needs to be devoid of any elements that could lead to a legal contention, related either to persons or places.


AUC Press: Which of your AUC Press book covers do you like best?

 Khadr: The photograph of downtown Cairo used for Samia Mehrez’s The Literary Atlas of Cairo is a favorite image. I wanted to come up with an image of Cairo that was the counterpart of the images that capture the vitality, energy and specificity of the great cities around the world in general, and New York City in particular.


AUC Press: Is there one book cover that you found particularly challenging?

Khadr: The covers for the 2 volumes of Literary Cairo were particularly challenging. There are broad and extensive views of a complex city via a multitude of themes and authors, in addition to key elements of space and time! The approach was to come up with images of the city that reflect either the world or the atmosphere that inspired or was provoked by these literary works.


AUC Press: Which café is it on the cover for Naguib Mahfouz’s The Coffeehouse?

Khadr: The photograph used for The Coffeehouse is el-Shams Café (also referred to as the “Angels Café”) that is next to the Tawfikeya market. One evening during winter I stopped by there and noticed various groups of people totally absorbed by their discussions and the board games they were playing. When I read The Coffeehouse, I realized that it was precisely about a group of friends who regularly meet in the same café throughout different phases of their lives. When the occasion presented itself to propose an image for this book, I knew exactly what to look for. The AUC Press agreed with the choice of el-Shams Café but did not like the fact that the photographs were in black and white so I returned to the café to redo them, this time in color. However as it was summer, there was absolutely no one inside the café.  In the end, it was decided that the black and white photographs were more appropriate.

AUC Press: Can you talk about the café that appears on the cover of Khairy Shalaby’s The Hashish Waiter?

Khadr: This is truly a lovely story. This café, with its curious shape and peculiar blue colors, is situated in the Zein el-Abedin neighborhood. I was in awe when I came across it purely by chance. I would have been devastated if the persons running the place would have not accepted that I photograph the café, for some reason or another. It took about two days before daring to try my luck. Fortunately the request went well and I was allowed to take photographs at my own pace. The son of the owner was a truly enigmatic and devilish character. I would always refer to him as the 'blue devil'. Later, when asked by the AUC Press for a cover photo for The Hashish Waiter and I read the novel for the first time, I immediately thought that 'blue devil' was indeed Saleh Heisa (the hashish waiter). As is the case with many of the places one photographs in Cairo, this remarkable place no longer exists!


AUC Press: What is the first thing that catches your eye when you look at a book cover?

Khadr:  Personally, it is definitely the image on the cover, particularly if it is an interesting one. However, in reality, it is probably a combination of title, image, as well as design!

AUC Press: How many years have you been working as a photographer?

Khadr:  I have always loved photography but it was only about 10 years ago that I decided to do photography in addition to drawing and painting. Through painting I developed a particular eye for composition and for the harmony and nuances of shades and colors. My passion for cinema is another source of influence. I always try to make a photograph resemble a still of a scene from an imaginary film.


AUC Press: What type of photography do you prefer?

Khadr: Cityscape is clearly my main theme. The city is an immense theatre of space and time, filled with visually strong and colorful scenes, intriguing characters and dramatic events.

August 2011

The summer hours, including during Ramadan, for the five AUC Press Bookstores are:

Tahrir Bookstore
11:00 am – 5:00 pm daily


Falaki Texbook Store
9:00 am - 4:00 pm daily; closed Friday & Saturday


Zamalek Bookstore
11:00 am – 5:00 pm daily


New Cairo Bookstore
9:00 am – 4:00 pm daily; closed Friday & Saturday


New Cairo Campus Shop
9:00 am – 4:00 pm daily; closed Friday & Saturday


For a complete further details about the AUC Press bookstores, click here.

Vacation is a perfect time to catch up on reading!

The AUC Press proposes the following list of books for your holiday:

Amarna Sunset: Nefertiti, Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and the Egyptian Counter-Reformation by Aidan Dodson 

Cairo: The City Victorious by Max Rodenbeck

The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz, with an introduction by Sabry Hafez, translated by William M. Hutchins, Olive E. Kenny, Lorne M. Kenny, and Angele Botros Samaan

The Calligrapher’s Secret by Rafik Schami, translated by Anthea Bell

Chicago by Alaa Al Aswany, translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab

Edward William Lane, 1801–1876: The Life of the Pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist by Jason Thompson

Egypt 1250 BC: A Traveler’s Companion by Donald P. Ryan

The Essential Naguib Mahfouz: Novels, Short Stories, Autobiography, edited by Denys Johnson-Davies

Farewell to Alexandria: Eleven Short Stories by Harry E. Tzalas, translated by Susan E. Mantouvalou, illustrated by Anna Boghiguian

Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East by Keith Kyle

Traveling through Egypt: From 450 B.C. to the Twentieth Century, edited by Deborah Manley and
Sahar Abdel-Hakim

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany, translated by Humphrey Davies

All these titles are available at the AUC Press Bookstores and can be ordered online at www.aucpress.com.

July 2011

Denys Johnson-Davies has produced more than thirty volumes of translation of modern Arabic literature, including The Essential Tawfiq al-Hakim (AUC Press, 2008), The Essential Yusuf Idris (AUC Press, 2009), and more recently, The Essential Naguib Mahfouz (AUC Press, 2011).

The renowned literary critic and professor of English and comparative literature Edward Said described Denys Johnson-Davies as "the leading Arabic–English translator of our time."

As AUC Press celebrates this year the centennial of Mahfouz's birth, Johnson-Davies, who also translated some of Mahfouz's novels, including Arabian Nights and Days (AUC Press, 1996) and The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (AUC Press, 1997), speaks about his career as a translator and about his friend.

► To watch the interview on the AUC Press YouTube Channel, click here.

 The questions Denys Johnson-Davies was asked during the interview: 

* About translating
How do you decide which / what book you want to translate?
What makes a book worth translating?
What do you like about translating?
Does a translator have a style of translation and can it actually infringe on the author’s original literary style?  Is this part of a good translation?
Why do you think Edward Said called you “the leading Arabic–English translator of our time”?
Do you think there is a lot of talent today among young Arab writers?
Which book have you most enjoyed translating over all these years?
What Arab writer do you most enjoy reading?

* About Naguib Mahfouz
Which of Mahfouz’s writing do you prefer?
You once said about Mahfouz: “Mahfouz also rendered Arabic literature a great service by developing, over the years, a form of language in which many of the archaisms and clichés that had become fashionable were discarded, a language that could serve as an adequate instrument for the writing of fiction in these times.” Can you elaborate on what you mean by “archaisms and clichés”?
What other aspects made Mahfouz such a great writer?
Is there a more contemporary Arab writer that can match Mahfouz’s pen?
How well did you know Naguib Mahfouz and how would you describe him?
How do you think Mahfouz would have reacted to Egypt’s 25 January revolution?
What do you consider a ‘good’ translation?
Is there a final comment that you wish to make about Naguib Mahfouz or translating?

For the complete list of translations by Denys Johnson-Davies, click here.

Denys Johnson-Davies with Naguib Mahfouf

About Denys Johnson-Davies

In 2007, Johnson-Davies received the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Personality of the Year in the Field of Culture. 

He spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England to boarding school at age 12. He studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured about translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World.

He is the author of the forthcoming AUC Press publication Homecoming: Sixty Years of Egyptian Short Stories.

July 2011

Photo by Cherif Abdullah

This year marks the centenary of the birth of the great Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, who was born in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya.  He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.

In the past 25 years, the AUC Press has published English translations of all Mahfouz’s novels, including his world classic Cairo Trilogy, many of his short stories and other writings, and 600 foreign language editions.

His youngest daughter, Faten Mahfouz, speaks about her father, his writing, and his legacy, as AUC Press, which has been providing English translations of Mahfouz’s writing since 1978, celebrates this important milestone year.


Father and daughter

AUC Press: What is it like to be the daughter of Naguib Mahfouz, the great humanist, the Nobel laureate, the famous Egyptian, the internationally-acclaimed novelist?

FMahfouz: For me, he was just a father. I am very glad that he’s been appreciated. He was a famous person but he was also a regular person. We never used to say, my sister and I, that we were the daughters of Naguib Mahfouz. My mother was the same. She would not introduce herself as "the wife of Naguib Mahfouz."


AUC Press: What kind of a father was Naguib Mahfouz?

FMahfouz: He was an ideal father. He was very affectionate. He spent more time with me when he grew older.  When my sister and I were little, it was once a week. We would spend all day Friday together. During vacation, in the summer, we used to go to Alexandria for three months, sometimes more. In the morning, he would meet his friends and in the afternoon we would go out together.

He was different from other parents because of his age. He married late. If we didn’t agree with his opinion, we could discuss our differences. If we couldn’t convince each other, he wouldn’t say this is right or wrong. He was open minded.


AUC Press: What were some of your favorite things that you would do with your father?

FMahfouz: When we were kids, he would tell us stories before we went to bed. We would sit on the couch in the living room and listen to him.

In Alexandria, he and I would go on a walk together while my sister and mother would get ready. We would then all go out to dinner and then to the movies. We loved that very much.


AUC Press: Did either you or your sister wish to follow in your father’s footsteps and become writers?

FMahfouz: My sister used to write when she was in school. She was much better than me. My father tried to encourage us. He told me: “Try to write and I’ll be with you.” But either you have it or you don’t. He was just interested in writing. He would write even if he would not get published. He just wanted to write.


AUC Press: How would you describe your father?

FMahfouz: He was kind, honest, generous, and very caring. He had a great sense of humor. He was also very fair. If I asked him for something, [my sister never did], and he would always get me whatever I asked for, he would get two of them. One for me and one for my sister, even if she said she didn’t want it. He would get her one anyway.

He would never go to bed unless he knew we were all home safe. If we went to parties or weddings and stayed out late, in the morning he would check on us and say: “you were late” but in a nice way. He was not strict. Even if he would criticize something we did, he would say it in a very nice way, and maybe in a funny way so that we would laugh.

He would forgive people no matter what they did. If people tried to fool him, he would realize it but he would not make a fuss of it. That was his nature.


Mahfouz and his writing

AUC Press: Alaa Al Aswany once said about Naguib Mahfouz: “He was the founder of the new Arab novel, and he opened doors for five generations of Arab novelists. He is our father.” In your opinion, what does Mahfouz mean to Egyptians?

FMahfouz: I think it is very difficult to answer that question in his place. It is not for me to say.


AUC Press: What makes your father such a great writer?

FMahfouz: He was very loyal, very honest. He was concerned about the problems of Egyptians. He cared about Egypt. He was patriotic.

AUC Press: Do you have a favorite among your father’s books?

FMahfouz: I did not read all his writings but I like his novels. But maybe because he is my father….

AUC Press: Would your father talk to you about his writing?

FMahfouz: No, no. He wouldn’t talk to anyone until the book he was working on was published, not even to his friends or my mother.

AUC Press: Where did he draw his inspiration for his stories?

FMahfouz: I think it was a combination of things - conversations with people, the newspapers, cafés….

AUC Press: Would he write in the café?

FMahfouz: No, never. Not at all. He never wrote outside the house. He would only sit in the café and read the newspaper. He liked Fishawi because it is located in the heart of old Cairo and because many intellectuals used to go there. Sometimes we used to go with him to Fishawi. It was OK if people just came to greet him and didn’t take notice of us but most people were curious and I don’t like that. We would feel uncomfortable. They irritated me a lot.

AUC Press: What were some of his writing habits?

FMahfouz: He liked to get up early. When he was young, it was 4:00 am. Later, when he got older he would wake up at 7:00 am. He would exercise and then read. He liked to read several books at the same time. After that he would go out to a café, but would always walk there. There he would read the newspaper.

And then when he returned home he would write from 4:00 to 7:00 pm. His study was in the living room but he would never close the door. During the summer though, he never wrote. When my sister and I were in school, he would sit with us while we studied and he would write. We knew he was working so we were quiet. We were not to speak loud and if we played, we had to play outside.

AUC Press: Did you ever celebrate when he finished writing a book?

FMahfouz: No, never. But also, by the time he got married with my mother, he had already written some of his novels. He had more time then.

We didn’t have many people or parties in our house. We only had this one friend Tharwat Abaza, another famous Egyptian writer, who would come by the house anytime he wanted. He would stay for about half an hour when he had to talk to my father about something. We loved him very much. He was like a second father to us.

The centennial

AUC Press: December 11 of this year marks the centennial of Naguib Mahfouz's birth. How do you think your father wants to be remembered?

FMahfouz: Of course he would be happy if people recognized him but I don’t think he would be sad if they didn’t. When we celebrated his birthday, he said a rose was enough. During the last years of his life, especially after the assassination attempt, different friends would come by the house every day for a whole week and invite him out and that would tire him very much. He appreciated it but it was hard on him because of his age.

He deserves to be remembered as a good person and a good novelist but then I can’t be objective because he is my father.

AUC Press: Did you ever talk about the assassination attempt on his life, in 1994?

FMahfouz: No, we never talked about it. It was a very painful memory and we did not want to bring it up. All what we know is what was in newspapers but we never asked him directly. I didn’t like it when journalists asked him for details about that day.

AUC Press: What would Naguib Mahfouz have said about the 25 January revolution?

FMahfouz: I think he would have been happy, like most Egyptians, including all intellectuals. A lot of people had been suffering.

May 2011

In the 100th anniversary year of the birth of Naguib Mahfouz, the AUC Press recently published two more of his novels, along with a selection of the most important works of Egypt’s Nobel literature laureate.

Love in the Rain, written by Mahfouz in 1973, is a vibrant novel of love, bitterness, and betrayal, translated by Nancy Roberts. Set in Cairo in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the book’s protagonists are confronted with existential questions as Mahfouz exposes the hypocrisy of those who condemn any breach in sexual morality while turning a blind eye to violence, corruption, and oppression. “Policemen are demons. They know how to make life hell on earth and they breathe fire into pallid faces,” writes Mahfouz.

Heart of the Night, a classic Mahfouz story first released in Arabic in 1975, now in English, translated by Aida A. Bamia, explores the themes of marriage, spirituality, crime, and social justice. Jaafar Ibrahim Sayyid al-Rawi, the main character, is guided by his motto, “Let life be filled with holy madness to the last breath.” He marries a beautiful Bedouin woman but ultimately pays a high price. “I immediately became aware that I was in the company of a strong, ageless woman, a source of fascination, charm, and defiance. I surrendered to her, clearly revealing my own weakness,” says Mahfouz’s protagonist as he narrates his life story one night to one of the clients of a café in old Cairo.

The Essential Naguib Mahfouz: Novels, Short Stories, Autobiography, edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, offers an essential selection of short stories and extracts from novels such as Midaq Alley and Adrift on the Nile and other writings like his evocative Dreams, to present a cross-section through time of the very best of Mahfouz’s work. “With this publication, it is my hope that readers will be encouraged to take a plunge into modern Arabic literature through a selection of the writings of a man who showed that the same language that had produced a world classic like The Arabian Nights is also capable of making a worthwhile contribution to the literature of today,” writes Johnson-Davis in the book’s introduction.

June 2011

PROGRAM

Cairo Opera House – Open Air Theater
Wednesday, June 22, 2011

► 6:00 pm - Welcoming and Book Signings

Literature:
Khairy Shalaby, The Hashish Waiter
Mona Prince, So You May See

Art:
Sherwet Shafei, Twentieth-Century Egyptian Art: The Private Collection of Sherwet Shafei by Mona Abaza
(AUC Press, 2011)

Politics:
Mia Gröndahl, Tahrir Square: The Heart of the Egyptian Revolution (AUC Press, 2011)
Karima Khalil, Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt's Revolution (AUC Press, 2011)

► 7:30 pm - Interview & Slide Presentation

Mia Gröndahl & Ayman Mohyeldin
Karima Khalil


►  8:00 pm - Life Performance

Ana Masry Band

TO DOWNLOAD THE FLYER, CLICK HERE.

To download this flyer, click here.

The AUC Press is currently holding three unique exhibitions on AUC's Tahrir Campus as part of a Visual Festival that runs until August 31, 2011.  (Valid photo ID required).
To view a photo gallery of the exhibitions, click here.

AUC Future Gallery:
A photography exhibition with large color reproductions from three new AUC Press publications about the Egyptian revolution: Tahrir Square: The Heart of the Egyptian Revolution by Swedish photographer Mia Gröndahl; Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution,  and The Road to Tahrir: Front Line Images by Six Young Egyptian Photographers by Sherif Assaf et al.  (Hours: 10:00 am to 6:00 pm daily except Friday)

Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art :
The first of two collections exhibited concurrently, Celebrating Egypt, features more than 40 mixed media paintings by Margo Veillon.
The second, Still Lifes, also by the late Swiss Egyptian artist, comprises 17 oil and mixed media paintings, never previously seen by the public, from the Permanent Masterpieces Collection. (Hours:  2:00 to 6:00 pm daily except Friday)

AUC Legacy Gallery:
This third exhibition commemorates this year’s centennial of the birth of AUC Press author and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, as well as the AUC Press’s 50th Anniversary.  (Hours:  10:00 am to 6:00 pm daily except Friday)

Tahrir Square Messages from Tahrir The Road to Tahrir	The exhibition in the Future Gallery also includes a display of revolution memorabilia.

During the recent Tahrir Book Fair, a number of AUC Press authors, including Galal Amin, Samia Mehrez, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Ahmed Sedky, Hala El Badry, Bahaa Abdelmegid, Heba Handoussa, M. M. Tawfiq, and moderator Hoda Wasfi, participated in an open discussion about the future of culture and literature about the 25 January  uprising in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

Here is what some of the authors said during that discussion:

Galal Amin, author of the recently published Egypt in the Era of Hosni Mubarak 1981 – 2011 (AUC Press, 2011), The Illusion of Progress in the Arab World: A Critique of Western Misconstructions (AUC Press, 2006), Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?: From the Revolution to the Age of Globalization (AUC Press, 2004), and Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?: Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present (AUC Press, 2000):

“Two important things happened as a result of Egypt’s 23 July Revolution in 1952. It created optimism and gave people hope in the future, but it also brought about a change in the class structure, as 20 to 30% of the population became part of the middle class, thus narrowing the gap between rich and poor. These two factors created new talent and were very good for cultural life, and I think the 25 January Revolution will have the same impact and therefore I am optimistic about cultural revival in this country.”


Samia Mehrez, editor of  The Literary Life of Cairo: One Hundred Years in the Heart of the City (AUC Press, 2011) and The Literary Atlas of Cairo: One Hundred Years on the Streets of the City (AUC Press, 2010), and author of Egypt’s Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (AUC Press, 2010):

“I want to go back to the basic demands of the revolution, which are freedom, change, and social justice, and explore how they might be applied to the cultural field. If we begin with the demand for freedom, one of the problems in the cultural field, when Egyptian cultural producers would cross the red line they were constantly threatened to be prosecuted because of the haphazardness and unpredictability of legislation surrounding freedom of expression. What we need now is more transparency and fewer restrictions. Unfortunately, rather than support freedom of expression, the new cabinet in post-revolutionary Egypt has proposed a new legislation that criminalizes public protest, a proposal that violates the basic constitutional rights of every citizen. This is a serious setback already.

"As for the demand for change, we need to consider structural and institutional change in the cultural field and we need to look at how cultural institutions should be set up in the future. In the past these institutions served the state and not the people. They benefited the elite. Culture should be at the service of the people.

"Finally, the demand for social justice also needs to be integrated into the cultural field. There was a huge difference in pay between the elite of cultural institutions and the rest of the civil servants working within them. Likewise, independent and younger avant garde artists were generally excluded; they could not access the budget.”


Bahaa Abdelmegid, author of two modern Arabic novellas Saint Theresa and Sleeping with Strangers (AUC Press, 2010) and Temple Bar (Merit Publishing House, 2011):

“Any political revolution is always accompanied by a cultural revolution, a cultural agenda. Overthrowing the old regime should be replaced by a new one and intellectuals have to participate in achieving this. Intellectuals safeguard freedom of expression by informing people through writing and enlightening them.

"The 25 January revolution expressed the will of people, their dream for a better life, equal opportunities, and a liberal society. Authors helped in making this possible either by writing or by speaking out.

"I was always aware of my role as a writer and as a university professor, and my characters were aware of the [former] dictatorial regime. In my novella Sleeping With Strangers and novel Temple Bar, my heroes are unhappy, depressed, and always thinking of suicide because they are not understood by their society and because of the lack of freedom they live in. They would always watch demonstrators in the streets but never participated in them. They were like an audience who wished change to happen in order to release them from their personal agony but they stood inactive and finally came the historical moment where all became one.

"We want a liberal society where all parties participate in civil government and civil life. We want cultural freedom, a chance to create, and mix with the whole world.”


Ahmed Sedky, author of Living with Heritage in Cairo: Area Conservation in the Arab–Islamic City (AUC Press, 2009):

“I like to use the metaphor of the earthquake in which the tectonic layers move in order for the Earth to release pressure. Egypt is eternal and everlasting, symbolized by the Earth, and we are the people on its surface. Regardless of the number of casualties like those claimed during the January 25 revolution, such an incident is very healthy. We suffered and shall still have to but certainly this is all healthy for Egypt and its culture after long time during which freedom was halted. 

"We now need to move towards the individual's rights that have been suppressed for long time. Unfortunately we started to see, in less controlled contexts, some individuals impose their own rights and this would lead to nothing but chaos. A vibrant, functioning, and progressive nation cannot be realized without regaining the balance of both the individual's and the nation's rights, but this cannot be achieved at once!

"Now the anti-revolution forces are voraciously attacking and investing in their loyal deeply rooted agents in all institutions where the old regime leaders have bred for decades. But because of the DNA of this country’s great civilization, Egypt shall reach the ultimate balance needed for a prosperous, better life.”

BBC reporter Eva Dadrian visited the Tahrir Book Fair, hosted by the AUC Press at the AUC Tahrir Campus from March 31 to April 4. 

She spoke to AUC Press Associate Director, Sales, Marketing, and Distribution Trevor Naylor, about freedom of expression after Egypt's revolution, the role of the media, and the future of the country's publishing industry.

To read the story on BBC News, click here.

To listen to The Strand radio program on the BBC World Service, click here.

“The idea of the Tahrir Anniversary Calendar actually came from one of our customers so I thought of having a calendar right away, starting from April 2011 to March 2012, which would, 12 months later, celebrate the anniversaries of some of Egypt’s greatest modern moments,” explained Trevor Naylor, AUC Press Associate Director for Sales and Marketing. “Dax’s photos are great and immediate, and so far all our customers love the Tahrir Calendar.”

Dax Roque, bookstore manager at the AUC Press, who has been living in Egypt since 2006, went into Tahrir Square nearly every day of the revolution with his Nikon to capture those historic moments. Twelve of his photographs are now featured in the new AUC Press Tahrir Anniversary Calendar 2011–2012.  

In a recent interview, he shared some of his thoughts about his photography and his eye-witness experience of the revolution. 

Bahgat Korany, editor of The Changing Middle East: A New Look at Regional Dynamics (AUC Press, 2010) and co-editor of The Foreign Policies of Arab States: The Challenge of Globalization (AUC Press, 2008), recently shared his views about the changing political landscape in the Middle East.

AUC Press: Did you expect events to unfold so quickly in Egypt after January 25?

Korany: No, I didn’t even expect the 25th January. I would have liked to be credited for it. CNN made a big issue, saying The Changing Middle East foretold or indicated the events. But the image I like to use is that I was like a geologist who could see the fault lines but couldn’t see what time the earthquake would take place. The timing of the revolt, the magnitude, and the impact, came as a surprise. I would say that even for the guys who were triggering the uprising, as many of the young people told me, they were hoping that at least their demonstration this time would be successful because they have tried so many times before and didn’t have enough people. Even for them it was a surprise. 

AUC Press: In The Changing Middle East, you point out that the 1952 Egyptian revolution by Nasser brought some very significant changes to Egypt: a republic, agrarian reforms, welfare policies, and nationalization. What do you think will be some of the most important changes that will come out of this 2011 revolution and would you say that it was a combination of a sudden change—a revolution—and a cumulative process, like in Egypt's case, a very large and growing unemployed youth population?

Korany: To answer the second part of the question first, it touches on the whole framework of the book. I make the distinction between what I call big bangs, like war, revolution, and milestone events—for example, all of us actually, individually, have that: we get married, have children, travel abroad, have a certain experience; these are visible things, we can’t miss them—and the gradual incremental process of change—again, for example, all of us age with the passage of time and advance in our jobs. I was saying to young people that we should not fall into this trap, that because the incremental process is not visible, we think it is less important. On the contrary, I would say that many of the milestones, many of the big bangs are the accumulation of the incremental, gradual process. All the chapters in the book are about that incremental steady process of change. I wanted to attract attention to it because you can so easily miss it, whereas you cannot miss the big bangs. And the implication is that the big bangs somehow are the result of the accumulated incremental process. It is the crowning of that process.

A big part of the revolution, in Tunisia and in Egypt, is the magnitude of unemployment. All the economic problems have been part of daily life and getting worse and worse and then, at a certain time, it blows up. Take Mohammad Bu Azizi: he was a Tunisian university graduate and he wasn’t even allowed to be a fruit and vegetable peddler so he burned himself. That was a big bang but the process was there that led up to it. So there really is a close interaction between the big bangs and the incremental process. The revolution is certainly a big bang. Now what is going on, the impact of this revolution, is that we are getting rid of the old elite and seeing the rehabilitation of the young people. Many of the old elite used to talk about these “kids” but now the youth is being taken much more seriously. I think there is an increasing consciousness about the internet, Facebook, and all the new media. New values are being installed, like keeping the country clean and doing things properly, and I hope this will continue. 

AUC Press: Do you think the Egyptian revolution and the others in the region would be taking place without the new social media?

Korany: The easy way would be to say that it is a combination but let me break it down because it is an important methodological question. Lots of people say Facebook is the cause. I don’t think so. Facebook has facilitated the mobilization of the people but the causes were there. People were fed up with repression, fed up with increasing corruption, economic problems, and the police security apparatus. Then diffusing the news got the people together and they went into Tahrir Square. So it really is the idea of mobilization through Facebook and the new media in general.

AUC Press: How stable is Egypt today?

Korany: Still unstable! I think the road ahead is quite rocky. We have a very peculiar situation. I will call it revolutionaries without a revolution, in the sense that when you look at history, in the history of revolutions, people go to the street, carry out the revolution, and take power. What we see here is that the revolutionaries who instigated the change are not there. We still have many of the traditional faces. Even the average age of the cabinet ministers has not changed very much. The vice prime minister is above eighty. So the mindset is not the revolutionary mindset and this is very peculiar in the Egyptian situation. I want to emphasize this anomaly. Usually in revolutions, the instigators change the regime and take power immediately. This is what happened in 1952. I think the young people in Tahrir have to get together and either form a coalition or a party. This primary group that carried out the change has to be in charge of managing the change and directing the country.

AUC Press: Can you speculate on who will be elected the next Egyptian president?

First of all the list is not complete. However, the top candidate seems to be Amr Moussa. I am not crazy about him. He is 75 and part of the old system, the old regime. He was the Egyptian foreign minister for ten years. Then he went to the Arab League in 2001. So for ten years he has been with the Arab League. What has he achieved, that is my question. He talks well, he knows how to charm people around him. But as a political scientist, I look at achievements. We are in a region where the majority of the population, above 50 percent, is under 25 years of age and this is one of the points that the book emphasizes—the gap between the youth bulge and the aging leadership. The possible election of Moussa does not narrow this generation gap.

AUC Press: How do you think all the current changes in the political landscape of the Middle East and North Africa will shape the effectiveness and role of the Arab League?

Korany: When you talk to people like Amr Moussa, he says you are asking him too much because he is the secretary general and these guys, the twenty-two members, have the power and are always restricting his power, and that might be true. But he also acts like a civil servant, not like an initiator or an innovator. The Arab League has recently been going through a revolution with the intervention in Libya because they have taken the decision to allow the no-fly zone in one of the member states. I wonder if these revolutions had not taken place if the Arab League would have made that decision because they stick to a really very outdated traditional idea of sovereignty. They are not aware of globalization.

The United Nations, if they had not adopted a new idea of sovereignty, would not have decided to intervene and protect civilians against their rulers. That is the new context that we live in and the Arab League seems to be catching up. But I think their hand has been forced a bit and they realize that some Gulf countries, because of their feuds with Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, have been forcing them. So it is not really a change of mindset yet. I think the Arab League is still traditional and I can’t see that Amr Moussa has done very much to change that aspect. He could have, because he has a certain charisma, a certain popularity, and he is an intelligent man. Instead he kept things going and wasn’t ready to rock the boat.  

The Arab League has tried to modernize itself and be in contact with civil society. They added a new organ. Now they have an Arab parliament, but most of the MPs are appointed by their governments. In political science in this case we refer to GNGOs, which stands for government non-government organizations. So it becomes like a façade, a sort of farce.

The Arab League also has to change the old mindset that there are no problems. In their meetings, if you bring up problems you are perceived negatively, as if you are a spoiler. They like to keep the chat polite and pleasant, but that way we don’t solve anything.

Finally the structure of the institution itself needs a lot of rehauling and this might be the occasion.

AUC Press: In The Changing Middle East, as one of the dilemmas affecting the region’s dynamics you emphasize the “aging governing elites versus the youthfulness of the population.” Do you think a younger government is the main answer to gaining the confidence of the youth? And do you think that the youth in particular, long excluded from the political debate and civic society, is more knowledgeable and empowered today, and if so, how will this influence the outcome of elections and the future Egyptian governing body?

They have been energized and many of them feel rehabilitated. Are they going to be part of the decision making? There is a tendency toward that. Amr Hamzawi has been offered the post of minister of youth but he turned it down. He is probably right. The moment is not right because he will be a minority among the old mindset. Perhaps at some point he will form a political party and then get into elections and go into the political process. Also one of my research assistants has been associated with the vice prime minister to conduct the national dialogue so I think there is an attempt to reach out to the young people and that certainly convinces them that they have a role to play. Many of them measured up to the responsibility.

But to be fair, some of these young people are naïve and idealistic. They don’t have a program of action, are not united, and some are not practical. I mean if you are running a country, you have to manage things. You have to see how the stock exchange will work, how to get money to pay people’s salaries, if the food prices rise how you prevent the Egyptians from starving. These are down-to-earth issues that you have to deal with. You can’t just have your basic principles and say I insist on them. Politics is negotiation and compromise. Some of those young people still don’t have enough experience in political negotiation.

Now going back to the issue of bringing in a younger governing elite, this needs to be the case, and not just to pacify the young people in Midan al-Tahrir but to reflect the situation of the country. I mean if the majority of the population is young, why do we keep the old people and only the old people in power? We need to include and not exclude them as we did before. It is also the responsibility of the older generation to mentor the younger elite.

AUC Press: In what way(s) will the new regional dynamics in the Middle East affect the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Korany: There is pressure now on the Palestinians to unify, that is one thing. I think the Palestinian National Authority is as corrupt as many of the old regimes. There is a cleaning up act that needs to be done there. But also Israel needs a 25th January revolution. It is the biggest military power in the region and they have to reach out to other countries and instead of trying ethnic cleansing with the Palestinians as they did yesterday [March 23, 2011] in the Knesset, they need their revolution there too.

There is a close relationship between Egypt and Israel. I haven’t really collected the statistics but my feeling is that the last two years or so the most received foreign prime minister in Cairo has been Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. In addition to the telephone calls and the informal context that we don’t know about, the secrets, it has gone actually from just being peace, to being partnership, and some people may even talk about collusion. You now have a new Egyptian foreign minister, Nabil El Arabi, who had lots of reservations about Camp David at that time, i.e. 1978. I don’t think Egypt will cancel Camp David but certainly they will demand a revision of the natural gas agreement and that partnership/collusion could diminish. So there would be increasing pressure on Israel from this point of view.

AUC Press: In your concluding remarks in The Foreign Policies of Arab States, co-edited with Ali E. Hillal Dessouki, you said that “Arab ‘deficits’ in good governance are now coupled with a major adaptability deficit to global sea changes” and that as a result “the foreign policies of many states are concerned only with managing immediate problems and concentrate on the extremely short term, even in mastering their assets.” Is this likely to change at all in light of the events that have been unfolding across the region?

Korany: This brings us to problem-solving and mindsets. This will take time. It will change but it will take time. I think some regimes will realize that they can’t carry out business as usual and it has already started in Yemen and probably Syria and Bahrain. They will adapt much more easily under pressure. If the revolution in Tunisia was the trigger, Egypt was the prize. What was important about Tunisia was that it showed how fragile authoritarian regimes are, that they can collapse very quickly. With the revolutions, we did away with the barrier of fear, and civil society started to say “these guys look very strong but in fact they are not so let us revolt against them.” It worked in Egypt and it worked elsewhere. From that point of view, the pressure will continue. But what I am looking for is a change of mindsets, that things are done differently and not just as tactical responses because the regimes are under pressure.

AUC Press: Will the US need to rethink its foreign policy with the changing Middle East?

Korany: I think that the US is indeed pressured to rethink its foreign policy! I would not like to be in the place of US president Obama or the European Union because their agenda has been upset and the situation has changed. The positive aspect is that now the US can talk about politics and they can even help existing regimes make the transition because they can convince them that in the long run it is in their best interest. The US can’t be torn between its principles and its policies, it only can narrow the gap. One thing that has disappeared, and this is good, is that regime stability does not mean political stability. The fact that former president Mubarak was there for thirty years does not mean that there is political stability. It means that there is repression of the people that then blows up at a certain time. These situations are the most favorable for the appearance of extremist Muslim approaches including Al Qaeda.

Bahgat Korany is also a professor in the Department of Political Science at the American University in Cairo and Director of the AUC Forum. He has published nine books, including Social Change, Charisma and International Behavior, his first book, for which he received the Hauchman Prize in International Relations in 1976.

The AUC Press has selected more than one hundred publications in Middle East Studies.

► To download this complete list, click here.

► To see the AUC Press Books for Insight into The New Egypt  click here.
 

The American University in Cairo Press will host the Tahrir Book Fair on the AUC Tahrir Campus from March 31 to April 3, during which one hundred local and foreign exhibitors, including the AUC Press, will be selling books in English, Arabic, and other languages, directly to the public. We hope you will participate in this special event!

If you wish to be an exhibitor during the four-day fair, please send us your application and payment by March 20, 2011.  

► Invitation to the Tahrir Book Fair

► Program of the Tahrir Book Fair

► General Information for Exhibitors about the Tahrir Book Fair

► Why hold the Tahrir Book Fair?

► Exhibitor Application for the Tahrir Book Fair

► Map of AUC Tahrir Campus

►For further information, send an e-mail to tahrirbooks@aucegypt.edu.

Upon popular demand by the visiting public and the many exhibitors from Egypt and abroad, the Tahrir Book Fair on AUC's Downtown Campus is being extended through Monday, April 4, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

The Tahrir Book Fair, hosted by the AUC Press, was inaugurated by H.E. the Minister of Culture, Dr. Emad Abou Ghazi, on Thursday, March 31.

"We are delighted by the enthusiastic turn-out," said AUC Press Director Mark Linz. "But we are even more pleased that we are now extending the Fair through Monday, April 4."

On Thursday, March 31, Egyptian AUC Press authors Galal Amin, Samia Mehrez, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Ahmed Sedky, Hala El Badry, Bahaa Abdelmegid, Heba Handoussa, and M. M. Tawfiq, held an open discussion with moderator Hoda Wasfi on the direction of literature and cuture after Egypt's revolution.

Live music has been sponsored at the Book Fair by the Sawy Culture Wheel in the gardens, featuring bands like Wust el Balad.

On Saturday, April 2, visitors could enjoy special offers and book signings with the authors. A lively book reading with Sarah Gauch and a workshop for children were also included in the program.

"People are very excited about the Fair, they want us to organize the Tahrir Book Fair twice a year," said AUC Press Promotion Manager Nabila Akl. "The visitors love the place, the atmosphere, the activities, and the cheerful organization. Although people were disappointed that the Fair had to close earlier on Friday because of the unrest in Tahrir Square, everyone is now very happy with the extension through Monday afternoon."

To read more about the Tahrir Book Fair, click here.

Download the Tahrir Book Fair program

View the AUC Tahrir Campus map

To download a PDF of the program, click here.

 For a map of the AUC Tahrir Campus, click here.

Especially now that the incompetence and corruption of the former Egyptian government are the target of the people’s revolutionary wrath, everybody wants to understand Cairo—how the more than 20 million Egyptians who inhabit this megalopolis have been coping over the past decades with traffic gridlocks, insufficient public transportation, inadequate higher education, rising unemployment, and scarce affordable housing.

In his comprehensive and accessible new book, Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control (AUC Press, 2010), economist and urban planner David Sims sheds a bright light on the intricacies of Cairo’s urban development and also deconstructs some of the misconceptions about the city he loves. One that he is avid to contest touches on the growth of Cairo’s population. “There is this attempt to lay all of Cairo’s problems on to the very people who are not destroying the city, which is the mass of people who don’t own cars and who are just trying to get along and are perceived to have peasant roots,” explains Sims in a recent interview. “This idea that they form this continued random migration into Cairo is also a myth,” adds Sims, a resident of Cairo for the past three decades. 

To read more, click here.

In light of the historic and sweeping events that have unfolded in Egypt over the past weeks, the AUC Press proposes the following selection of books as recommended reading to better understand the contexts within which the new Egypt is rising.

These AUC Press publications, listed below, range from fiction to politics, economics, and social issues, but also, as importantly, cover history and biography. We hope you find these titles useful and insightful.

Arabic Literature in Translation:  

The Yacoubian Building Alaa Al Aswany Translated by Humphrey Davies	Cairo Swan Song Mekkawi Said Translated by Adam Talib	The Day the Leader Was Killed Naguib Mahfouz Translated by Malak Hashem	Karnak Café Naguib Mahfouz Translated by Roger Allen

Zayni Barakat Gamal al-Ghitani Translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab Foreword by Edward W. Said	Saint Theresa and Sleeping with Strangers Bahaa Abdelmegid Translated by Chip Rossetti	The Zafarani Files Gamal al-Ghitani Translated by  Farouk Abdel Wahab	The Committee Sonallah Ibrahim Translated by Mary St. Germain and Charlene Constable Afterword by Roger Allen

City of Love and Ashes Yusuf Idris Translated by  R. Neil Hewison	Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State, and Society in Modern Egypt Richard Jacquemond Translated by David Tresilian	The Literary Atlas of Cairo: One Hundred Years on the Streets of the City Samia Mehrez	The Literary Life of Cairo: One Hundred Years in the Heart of the City Edited and with an introduction by Samia Mehrez

The Heron Ibrahim Aslan Translated by Elliott Colla	The Hashish Waiter Khairy Shalaby Translated by Adam Talib Forthcoming

 

Politics, Economics, and Social Issues:

On the State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections Alaa Al Aswany Translated by Jonathan Wright	Egypt in the Era of Hosni Mubarak, 1981–2011 Galal Amin Forthcoming	The Arab State and Neo-Liberal Globalization: The Restructuring of State Power in the Middle East Edited by Laura Guazzone and Daniela Pioppi	Beyond the Façade: Political Reform in the Arab World Edited by Marina Ottaway and Julia Choucair-Vizoso

Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East Edited by Diane Singerman and Paul Amar	Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity Edited by Diane Singerman	The Changing Middle East: A New Look at Regional Dynamics Edited by Bahgat Korany	Egypt: The Moment of Change Edited by Rabab El-Mahdi and Philip Marfleet

Egypt, Islam, and Democracy: Critical Essays Saad Eddin Ibrahim With a new postscript by the author	Egypt’s Culture Wars: Politics and Practice Samia Mehrez	Egypt’s Political Economy: Power Relations in Development Nadia Ramsis Farah	The Egyptian Economy: Current Challenges and Future Prospect Edited by Hanaa Kheir-El-Din

Understanding Cairo: The Logic of a City Out of Control David Sims	Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East Asef Bayat	Global Dreams: Class, Gender, and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo Anouk de Koning	Popular Culture in the Arab World: Arts, Politics, and the Media Andrew Hammond

Judges and Political Reform in Egypt Edited by Nathalie Bernard-Maugiron	Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt Samer Shehata	The New Atlas of the Arab World	The Illusion of Progress in the Arab World: A Critique of Western Misconstructions Galal Amin Translated by David Wilmsen

Whatever Happened to the Egyptians?: Changes in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present Galal Amin Illustrations by Golo	Whatever Else Happened to the Egyptians?: From the Revolution to the Age of Globalization Galal Amin Translated by David Wilmsen Illustrations by Samir Abd al-Ghani

 

History and Biography:

Cairo: The City Victorious Max Rodenbeck	A Concise History of the Middle East New Revised Edition Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. Lawrence Davidson	A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present Jason Thompson

The Store of the Egyptian Museum has reopened.

An extensive selection of AUC Press publications from archaeology to modern Arabic literature, including Alaa Al Aswany’s new On The State of Egypt: A Novelist’s Provocative Reflections (AUC Press, 2011) are available in the Store's book section.

The Store is open daily from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and can be directly accessed from a separate entrance adjacent to the Museum.

To view a photo gallery of inside the Cairo Museum Store, click here.

Upon popular demand by the visiting public and the many exhibitors from Egypt and abroad, the Tahrir Book Fair on AUC's Downtown Campus is being extended through Monday, April 4, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

The Tahrir Book Fair, hosted by the AUC Press, was inaugurated by H.E. the Minister of Culture, Dr. Emad Abou Ghazi, on Thursday, March 31.

"We are delighted by the enthusiastic turn-out," said AUC Press Director Mark Linz. "But we are even more pleased that we are now extending the Fair through Monday, April 4."

On Thursday, March 31, Egyptian AUC Press authors Galal Amin, Samia Mehrez, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Ahmed Sedky, Hala El Badry, Bahaa Abdelmegid, Heba Handoussa, and M. M. Tawfiq, held an open discussion with moderator Hoda Wasfi on the direction of literature and cuture after Egypt's revolution.

Live music has been sponsored at the Book Fair by the Sawy Culture Wheel in the gardens, featuring bands like Wust el Balad.

On Saturday, April 2, visitors could enjoy special offers and book signings with the authors. A lively book reading with Sarah Gauch and a workshop for children were also included in the program.

"People are very excited about the Fair, they want us to organize the Tahrir Book Fair twice a year," said AUC Press Promotion Manager Nabila Akl. "The visitors love the place, the atmosphere, the activities, and the cheerful organization. Although people were disappointed that the Fair had to close earlier on Friday because of the unrest in Tahrir Square, everyone is now very happy with the extension through Monday afternoon."

To read more about the Tahrir Book Fair, click here.

Download the Tahrir Book Fair program

View the AUC Tahrir Campus map

See the list of the Tahrir Book Fair exhibitors

Alaa Al Aswany's new book On The State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections, translated by Jonathan Wright and just published by the AUC Press (2011) is now available at the AUC Press Zamalek and New Cairo Bookstores.

In On The State of Egypt, a collection of the weekly newspaper columns previously published in Arabic, now translated into English, the bestselling author of The Yacoubian Building and Chicago takes a close look at current affairs in Egypt. Like in his novels, he addresses poverty, class difference, police brutality, and corruption. He discusses the moral ambiguity of appointed politicians, the suitability of democratic reforms in a Muslim society, and the inherent contradiction in the actions of the religiously observant policeman who tortures or the man who harasses women.

To read more about the book, click here.

For other books by Alaa Al Aswany published by the AUC Press, click here.

Effective February 1, 2011, the publications of the American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press) are now being sold and distributed in the United States and Canada by Oxford University Press, Inc. (OUP-USA).

“We are very excited about our new distribution arrangement with Oxford University Press,” said Mark Linz, AUC Press director. “OUP’s market reach and expertise in how to sell both print and electronic books will allow us to expand our sales and distribution throughout North America. The first book we published when the AUC Press was established in 1960 was an international co-publication with Oxford.  It’s great to be partnering with OUP again.”

Oxford University Press, Inc. (OUP USA) is linked to Oxford University Press in Oxford, England (OUP UK), which is a department of Oxford University and is the oldest and largest continuously operating university press in the world.

“Oxford is pleased to have a university press of such reputation join our distinguished line of distributed presses,” said Colleen Scollans, OUP vice president of global marketing. “The AUC Press’s commitment to excellence in scholarly publishing matches up with Oxford’s mission to further research and disseminate knowledge and scholarship worldwide, and their list of titles complements our own very well.”

To order AUC Press publications through OUP (USA), click here.

In light of the nationwide protests that took place as part of Egypt’s recent revolution, the sudden cancellation of the annual Cairo International Book Fair came as a disappointment to millions of visitors, as well as to the booksellers and publishers that attend the Book Fair from year to year.

The AUC Press strongly believes in the cultural and intellectual significance of the Cairo International Book Fair, and as a result of its cancellation will host at the end of March a Book Fair on the AUC Downtown Campus on Tahrir Square: The Tahrir Book Fair.

Held from March 31 to April 3, it will include thousands of publications by booksellers and publishers from Egypt and abroad, and will also feature author signings, panel seminars, special receptions, and entertainment.

To read about The Tahrir Book Fair in the news, click on the links below:
Trade looks forward with "excitement" in Egypt, The Bookseller.com, February 23, 2011
AUC to host Tahrir Book Fair, Al Ahram Online, February 20, 2011

The American University in Cairo Press is very pleased to announce that Kareem James Abu-Zeid is a runner-up in the 2010 Saif Ghobash - Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, for his translation of the novel Cities without Palms by Tarek Eltayeb, published by the AUC Press in 2009.

“It’s a real honor for me to be selected as one of the runners up, especially since this was the first novel that I have translated,” said Abu-Zeid on being told the result.

The judges of this year’s Banipal Translation Prize were author Margaret Drabble; writer, translator, and professor of comparative literature at Warwick University Susan Bassnett; translator and associate professor in the Department of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown University Elliott Colla; and on behalf of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature Yasir Suleiman, professor of Modern Arabic studies and head of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge.

“Kareem Abu-Zeid’s translation reads fluently, the plainness of the writing reflecting the simplicity of the central character,” said Bassnett.

Cities without Palms is a timely short novel which recounts the journey of a village boy from Sudan who moves to Cairo and then travels to Europe in search of a better life. Tarek Eltayeb describes the trauma of migration and depicts tellingly the sharp contrasts of rural and city life.

“This is a story of our time, told with insight and sympathy, in a simple prose that the translator renders skillfully and unobtrusively into everyday English,” said Drabble. 

The winner of the 2010 Banipal Translation Prize was the leading AUC Press translator Humphrey Davies for his translation of the novel Yalo by Elias Khoury, a captivating tale published by Maclehose Press, described by The Guardian as “curiously mesmerizing.” Davies was also the second 2010 runner-up for his translation of the Arab Booker Award winning novel Sunset Oasis by Bahaa Taher, published by Sceptre.

The Banipal award ceremony will be held on 31 January at King's Place in London, followed by a lecture on the art of literary translation.  

The Saif Ghobash - Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation is awarded annually to the translator of the published English translation of a full-length imaginative and creative work of literary merit translated from the Arabic original. The prize—£3,000—was established in 2005 by Banipal, the magazine of modern Arab Literature in English translation, and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature, and now sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash in memory of his father, the late Saif Ghobash, a man passionate about Arabic literature and other literatures of the world.

Idris Ali, one of Egypt’s leading Nubian writers, passed away last month at the age of 70, following a heart attack. 

Self-taught in literature, Ali attended the Religious Institute of al-Azhar and lived in Libya and Cairo.

He was the author of three short story collections and six novels, including Dongola (AUC Press, 2006) and Poor (AUC Press, 2007), that address life in Nubia, where characters struggle with the challenges of poverty, marginalization, emotional starvation, and squandered opportunities.

Idris fought for the rights of Nubians to better living conditions and compensation for the land taken from them when the High Dam was built in the 1970s.

In a book review of Ali’s novel Poor, Al Ahram Weekly said “[Poor] is never less than intelligent, and many of its sections, especially the flashbacks to the narrator's childhood in Nubia, make for very interesting reading." 

Ali's latest work, The Leader Having a Haircut, caused controversy and was eventually confiscated by Egyptian security and banned from the 2010 Cairo International Book Fair. The short novella describes Egyptian workers in Libya, driven away from their homes to work under inhumane conditions. “They accused him of insulting [Libyan leader] Ghaddafi and said his book contained immoral phrases,” said Gamal Eid, director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, at the time of the ban.

In the recent obituary of Idris Ali in Al Ahram Weekly, Mary Mourad noted: “Although he loved writing and considered it his life's task, he worked as an employee in a construction company that paid him barely enough to make a living, and their sole appreciation for his talent was to offer him a small raise when he received the award of the Best Egyptian Novel in 1999 and shook hands with President Mubarak. His minor pension was never enough and his constant suicide attempts reflected his low moods, especially after the loss of his son.”

The Cairo International Book Fair was cancelled due to the current events in Egypt.  To read more, click here.

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The official opening day for the 43rd Cairo International Book Fair  at the Cairo Conference Center in Nasr City has been changed to January 29. The event will now run until February 8, 2011. 

The new hours will be from 11:00 am to 8:00 pm and on Friday from 2:00 to 8:00 pm.

The AUC Press Naguib Mahfouz Pavilion will be located in Hall 2 where the AUC Press Bookstores will be selling a very wide selection of new general interest books and many recent AUC Press publications.  Visitors to the AUC Press Pavilion will also find textbooks at reduced prices and bargains at up to 60% discount.

On Friday, February 4 and Saturday, February 5, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm, a number of prominent AUC Press authors, including Alaa Al Aswany, Zahi Hawass, Samia Mehrez, Ahmed Sedky, and David Sims, will be signing copies of their books that will be for sale in the AUC Press Naguib Mahfouz Pavilion.

Click here to download the AUC Press invitation.

The new Store of the Egyptian Museum is now open and offers an extensive selection of AUC Press publications, from archaeology publications and Egyptian travel guides, including a official guide that highlights the major objects of the Museum, Inside the Egyptian Museum with Zahi Hawass, to modern Arabic literature and Middle East history and politics.

The Store is open daily from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. 

Customers who are not first visiting the Museum and who wish to shop at the Store can directly access it from a separate entrance adjacent to the Museum.

Visitors to the Museum can also able to browse the extensive display of books and other merchandise for sale in the Store at the end of their visit, before exiting the museum grounds.

Click here to view a photo gallery of the new Store.

Egyptian writer Miral al-Tahawy received on Saturday the 2010 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for her novel Brooklyn Heights during the 15th Award Ceremony held at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center.

Presented by David Arnold, President of the American University in Cairo, the award was decided unanimously by the members of the Award Committee: Samia Mehrez, Hoda Wasfy, Fakhri Saleh, Gaber Asfour, Mohamed Berrada, and Mark Linz, the Director of the AUC Press, which sponsors the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature. The award ceremony at AUC’s Oriental Hall was attended by many writers and other distinguished personalities of Egyptian cultural life, including members of the Mahfouz family.

In their citation for the award, the judges described Brooklyn Heights as “a novel of displacement and exile par excellence,” and went on to say: “Brooklyn Heights is an exceptional account of the relationship between East and West. . . , a humanistic work that represents the individual experience as it intersects with the vastness of a labyrinthine world. . . . It is a text that breaks the silence through an acute understanding of the complexities of time and place, tolerance and intolerance. . . . The author’s heightened sense of attention to detail through character portrayal, language and context, tone and cadence, all contribute to the production of an intensely moving and edifying story.”

The translation of the novel is scheduled to be published in 2011 by AUC Press, simultaneously in Cairo, New York, and London.

To read the recent article that appeared in News@AUC, click here.

The exhibition of Sandro Vannini’s stunning collection of photographs titled Within a Secret Voyage, some of which are selected from A Secret Voyage (World Heritage, 2009, distributed by AUC Press), was inaugurated on Monday in the AUC Future Gallery at AUC’s Downtown Cultural Center.

Sandro Vannini is an internationally-acclaimed professional freelance photographer, born in Rome, whose work has been featured in many magazines and books. He has been working on a project about the Egyptian archaeological heritage since 1997. Click here to view a video of his work on the AUC Press YouTube channel.

A Secret Voyage, a 400-page signed, limited edition by Zahi Hawass, with 166 super-high-resolution images by Vannini, a magnificent, hand-bound, silk-cover and clamshell box, is a captivating journey through the world of the Theban Necropolis, narrated by Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, in which the world-renowned archaeologist chronicles anecdotes and personal stories about his years of experience as an Egyptologist in the field.

Director of photography at Corbis Vanessa Kramer describes the Italian photographer’s work: “Vannini has mastered the art of digital photography, and the result is a brilliant collection of images highlighting Egypt’s cultural contribution to the world.”

The AUC Future Gallery is accessible from Sheikh Rihan Street.  The Within a Secret Voyage exhibition will run until January 13, 2011. The Gallery is open daily from 9:00 to 4:00 pm, except Friday and Saturday.

A collection of large-format photographs by Sandro Vannini, titled A Secret Voyage: A Journey into the Realm of the Pharaohs, from the book A Secret Voyage, is also currently being held at the Egyptian Museum, Room 44, until January 12, 2011.

Michael Cooperson is a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the translator of Khairy Shalaby’s recent modern Arabic novel The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets (AUC Press, 2010). He is also the author of Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma`mun (Cambridge 2000), and translator of Abdelfattah Kilito's The Author and His Doubles: Essays on Classical Arabic Culture (Syracuse 2002).

AUC Press: What is the story of The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets?

MC: The hero, Ibn Shalaby, or Son of Shalaby, bounces from one historical period to another while remaining fixed in space. His visits the founding of Cairo in 969, witnesses the fall of the Fatimid dynasty to the Ayyubids in 1171, and spends a good long time in the Mamluk period as confidant to sultans and emirs. His wristwatch tells him the date according to the Islamic calendar, so he always knows what period he has dropped in on, by he cannot choose when to leave or where to visit.  He spends a lot of time trying to escape whatever predicament he lands in.

AUC Press: Was this modern Arabic novel particularly challenging to translate into English?

MC: Yes.  For one thing, Ibn Shalaby meets a number of historians, who speak in passages taken from their works.  These speeches are full of now-forgotten words, at least some of which seem to be reproduced for their exotic effect rather than in the expectation that modern readers will understand them. A translator can render such words with equally obscure ones in English, and in the few cases when I have found an obscure word that means the same thing as the Arabic, I have used it. But I have generally preferred to translate the historical passages in a slightly archaic but still clear English.

AUC Press: How did you manage to reflect the linguistic effects of colloquial and Modern Standard Arabic that Khairy Shalaby uses intermittently to mark the time travels of his hero?

MC: The passages in colloquial Arabic did pose another kind of problem. The dialect is the everyday spoken language of the country and there is of course nothing inherently funny about it. But it is uncommon to see it written down, especially in books about history. So when the speaker is a fifteenth-century historian, the dialect seems comical, apart from what it actually says. This effect can be reproduced to some extent by using informal English. Yet there are few kinds of informal English not marked as particular to one or another country, ethnicity, age group, and so on. In my translation, some lines of dialogue will doubtless have a strangely American ring, but it is hard to imagine an alternative that would sound any less odd.

Even the Modern Standard Arabic used for ordinary narration poses a problem. Standard Arabic is primarily a written language and is rarely used for spontaneous verbal communication. Translated literally, it often comes across as stilted and unnatural, especially in dialogue. In some cases I have addressed this problem by changing dialogue to indirect discourse. In other cases, I have simply toned down the language, trying to make it as flat and neutral—that is, as much like Modern Standard Arabic—as possible.

AUC Press: How will do Egyptians know the contemporary Egyptian novelist Khairy Shalaby?

MC: Every time I told Egyptian friends that I was working on the translation of Shalaby’s novel, they said that he was one of their favorite writers and it was about time he received more attention.  And it's not just the intellectuals who say so. Several years ago, I visited him to interview him about the book.  On the way, the taxi driver was having trouble finding the address, and asked me who I was going to see.  When I told him, he said, "Why didn't you say you were going to see Ustaz Khairy!" and found the place quickly by asking people in the street.

AUC Press: How closely did you work with the author to clarify passages or words in the Arabic manuscript while working on the translation?

MC: I consulted with him constantly regarding the original texts he was quoting and the typographical errors that appeared in the Arabic text.  His son-in-law, Hatem Hafez, answered literally hundreds of questions as well.  Without their help, I could never have finished the translation.

AUC Press: Are you concerned that a non-Arabic-speaking reader would not fully understand such a novel without some prior knowledge of the historical periods and names referenced in the novel?

MC: The author has described the work as a fantasy, so I suppose one might read it as a sort of surreal tale; it isn't really a historical novel in the strict sense of the word.  The editors at the Press put together a helpful concordance of dates and a glossary of terms and figures, so readers who feel disoriented will have somewhere to turn.  But the book is about disorientation anyway.

AUC Press: Do you think that some Arabic words are simply not translatable into English (for example, because they have so many meanings, because they are ambiguous to begin with, etc.)?

MC: The same is true of words in any two languages.  In any event, one translates whole sentences, not single words.  The problem is usually stress, rhythm, flow, etc., not single words.

AUC Press: What do you consider to be a ‘good’ translation?

MC: There's no end of theory about this.  But I'd have to vote for the one that people actually read.

AUC Press: You teach Arabic at UCLA. How interested are your students in Arabic literature?

MC: Our Arabic language classes are full to bursting.  Relatively few students stick with it long enough to read literary works in the original, but those who do are a truly impressive group.  Adam Talib, who has just translated Makkawi Said's Cairo Swan Song for AUC Press, got his undergraduate degree from UCLA.

To read more about The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets and order it online, click here.


Khairy Shalaby, born in Kafr al-Shaykh in Egypt’s Nile Delta in 1938, has written seventy books, including novels, short stories, historical tales, and critical studies. The Lodging House (translated in English by AUC Press, 2008) was awarded the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature in 2003.

The much-awaited new Store of the Egyptian Museum that is scheduled to open to the public on December 15 will be offering a large selection of AUC Press publications.

Visitors to the Museum will now be able to browse an extensive display of books and other merchandise for sale in the Store at the end of their visit, before exiting the museum grounds. Customers who are not first visiting the Museum and who wish to shop at the Store can directly access it from a separate entrance adjacent to the Museum.

The Museum Store will be open daily from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Equipped with state-of-the-art shelving, high-tech lighting, and modern facilities, the Egyptian Museum Store will offer visitors an impressive array of some 3,000 merchandise items varying from a wider range of gifts and jewelry to over 300 AUC Press books, from archaeology publications and Egyptian travel guides, including a official guide that highlights the major objects of the Museum, Inside the Egyptian Museum with Zahi Hawass, to modern Arabic literature and Middle East history and politics.

“This new Museum Store will be recognized as the most spectacular museum store in this part of the world,” said AUC Press Director Mark Linz.

The 1000-square-meter Museum Store will be managed by the newly established Exhibit Merchandising Egypt, in cooperation with Misr Sound & Light Company and the AUC Press.

“Visitors will find the best quality and the most extensive selection of books and gifts,” said AUC Press Associate Director for Sales & Marketing, Trevor Naylor.

The photography exhibition by Swedish journalist, writer and photographer Mia Gröndahl, inaugurated this week in the AUC Future Gallery of AUC's Downtown Cultural Center, will run until November 30.

The gallery is open from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm daily except Friday and Saturday, and is located in the Sheikh Rihan building, across from Ewart Memorial Hall.

Many of the photographs are from Gröndahl's book Gaza Graffiti: Messages of Love and Politics (AUC Press, 2009).

To read a recent interview with Mia Gröndahl in the latest AUC Press e-newsletter, click here.

To read more about the book and buy it online, click here.

The opening of the art exhibition Life in Egypt by Margo Veillon was held on Tuesday, October 12 at the Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art.

The collection includes 40 mixed media as well as 20 paintings from the Permanent AUC Masterpiece Collection, featuring landscapes and portraits by the late Swiss-Austrian artist who spent her life as a painter in Egypt.

Born in Cairo in 1907, Margo Veillon lived and worked as an artist in Egypt until her death in 2003. The AUC Press has promoted her work for many years in numerous exhibitions and publications, including Margo Veillon: Painting Egypt: The Masterpiece Collection at the American University in Cairo  (AUC Press, 2003) edited by curator Bruno Ronfard, who writes: “Everything is in its place. The mastery is perfect. The balance of colors and forms and the quality of line offer an impression of harmony and distinguish these works that have made the reputation of Margo Veillon.”

Last month, the collection went on display at the residence of the Swiss Ambassador to Egypt, on the occasion of Switzerland’s national day celebration in the presence of over one thousand guests.

“[Margo Veillon] left a very important work,” said H.E. Swiss Ambassador to Egypt, Dominik Furgler during the September event. “We are particularly grateful to AUC that they recently inaugurated the Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art,” he added.

To preserve and advance Margo Veillon’s artistic legacy for future generations in Egypt and abroad, the AUC Press established last year the Margo Veillon Gallery primarily to showcase the late artist’s wide-ranging work but also to present other historic retrospectives of twentieth-century Egyptian art.

The Life in Egypt collection will run at the Margo Veillon Gallery until November 30, 2010. The gallery is open from 2:00 to 8:00 pm on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Click here to download the brochure about Margo Veillon, her work, and publications about her art by the AUC Press.

Lesley Lababidi is the author of numerous AUC Press publications, including Cairo's Street Stories: Exploring the City's Statues, Squares, Bridges, Gardens, and Sidewalk Cafés (AUC Press, 2008) and in particular Cairo: The Family Guide, first published by the AUC Press in 2000.

The new, revised volume of The Family Guide, now in its 10th edition, will be available later this month.

This book offers something for everyone: how to stay active in Cairo, where to find Cairo's green lungs, its bookstores and libraries, which festivals to attend, what to notice and remember about what site and landmark of the capital and outskirts, and even where to take belly dance and other lessons.  

"Cairo: The Family Guide is a reality guidebook; no glossy pictures here," writes Lababidi in her introduction. "Those of you who march to a different beat or just don't know where to begin will find suggestions, encouragement, and unlimited opportunities to explore communities outside your own," added the Cairo resident, who has raised three children in Cairo and has been living in Egypt for 21 years.

To read more about Cairo: The Family Guide by Lesley Lababidi, in collaboration with Lisa Sabbahi, click here. 

Lababidi's books are available at the AUC Press Bookstores and online. 

Click here to view the AUC Press YouTube Channel video in which Lababidi talks about the 10th anniversary of the Family Guide, some of the best-kept secrets of the city, and how to enjoy an outing in the capital with the family.

Richard Jacquemond, professor of modern Arabic literature and language, University of Aix-Marseille, France, will be delivering an Arabic lecture titled, “Translation in the Arab World: Policies and Practice” as part of AUC's In Translation lecture series. 

The event will be held on Wednesday, November 3, 2010, at 6:00 pm, in Oriental Hall at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center.

Jacquemond's doctoral thesis on the modern Egyptian literary field has been published by AUC Press in an updated English translation as Conscience of the Nation: Writers, State and Society in Modern Egypt (AUC Press, 2008), translated by David Tresilian.
He will be signing copies of his book after the lecture.

Jacquemond has spent more than 15 years in Egypt as a student of Arabic language, a program officer at the French cultural mission and a researcher. Since his first stay in Cairo, he has been an active translator of modern Arabic works, mainly Egyptian fiction (15 books published to date).

He is currently working on a new book on the politics and poetics of modern Arabic translation.

The American University in Cairo Press and the Embassy of Sweden in Cairo are hosting on Monday, November 1 at 6:00 pm, a panel discussion entitled "Gaza Today: What's happening inside the closed borders?" with a number of distinguished Swedish and Palestinian journalists, correspondents, and photographers, in  Ewart Memorial Hall at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center. 

An exhibition with photographs by Swedish photographer Mia Gröndahl from her book Gaza Graffiti: Messages of Love and Politics (AUC Press, 2009) will be held in the AUC Future Gallery of the AUC Downtown Cultural Center.

The event will end with a theater performance of The Gaza Mono-Logues, other readings, and songs, by El Warsha Theater Company, in Ewart Memorial Hall.

To download the flyer, click here. To view a selection of photographs from Mia Gröndahl's book Gaza Graffiti, click here.

AUC Press Associate Director for Sales & Marketing Trevor Naylor recommends six essential AUC Press publications to newcomers to Cairo.

Click here to view the video on the AUC Press Youtube channel.

Cairo: The Practical Guide(AUC Press, 2008), compiled by Claire E. Francy, updated and edited by Lesley Lababidi. The new revised edition will be available in October. 

Cairo: The Practical Guide Maps (AUC Press, 2008). The new revised edition will be available in November.

A Pocket Dictionary of the Spoken Arabic of Cairo (AUC Press, 2004) by Virginia Stevens and Maurice Salib.  This book is part of the Special Offers.

Egyptian Cooking and other Middle Eastern Recipes (AUC Press, 2005) by Samia Abdennour.  This book is part of the Special Offers.

Cairo: The City Victorious (AUC Press, 2000) by Max Rodenbeck.

Palace Walk (AUC Press, 1997) by Naguib Mahfouz.

These books are available at the AUC Press Bookstores and can be purchased online on the AUC Press Web site.

Welcome to Cairo! Ahlan wa sahlan fil Qahira!

The American University in Cairo Press’s Fall 2010 Catalog features more than 60 new publications, ranging from Naguib Mahfouz novels, helpful Arabic language study volumes, and timely books on political, economic, and social issues such as the Mubarak presidency and the spiraling urbanization of Egypt’s capital.

The latest AUC Press novels in translation include Naguib Mahfouz’s The Final Hour, translated by Roger Allen, a story about Egypt’s changing times and their effects on one family, and In The Time of Love, translated by Kay Heikkinen, one of the Nobel’s laureate’s most intriguing novels. The Puppet, by acclaimed veteran Libyan author Ibrahim al-Koni, and translated by William M. Hutchins, is a mythic tale of greed and political corruption. The Time-Travels of the Man Who Sold Pickles and Sweets by Khairy Shalaby and translated by Michael Cooperson, recounts the adventures of a man who revisits Egypt’s colorful medieval past through sudden dislocations of time. Finally, Specters by Radwa Ashour, recipient of the Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature, and translated by Barbara Romaine, tells the partly autobiographical story of two women born on the same day, described by Al Ahram Weekly as “a stimulating read”.  

Two important new photography books are just published.  Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine is a thought-provoking book by London-based freelance journalist William Parry that features the graffiti by foreign and Palestinian artists and activists covering Israel’s separation wall; reviewing the book, author Ahdaf Soueif, writes: “By engaging with [the wall] practically and imaginatively William Parry has produced an outstanding example of cultural resistance” . Gardens of Sand: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Egypt, Arabia, Turkey, and the Levant, by Issam Nassar, Patricia Almárcegui, and Clark Worswick, brings together 90 rarely seen photographs of early Middle East landscapes, towns, and monuments.  

Adding to an already extensive backlist of Travel Literature titles, the AUC Press also most recently published Egypt 1250 BC: A Traveler’s Companion, a humorous time-traveler’s guide to sightseeing and survival in Egypt, by Egyptologist and archaeologist Donald P. Ryan. Wonders of the Pyramids: The Sound and Light of Giza and Wonders of Abu Simbel: The Sound and Light of Nubia, both introduced by Zahi Hawass, come as two new editions to this growing illustrated collection on the Sound and Light shows of Egypt, complete with script and color photographs. 

Finally, in the area of Politics, Economics, and Social Issues, Islamic Law and Civil Code: The Law of Property in Egypt, by Richard A. Debs, offers a detailed look at Sharia in modern Egypt, a book described by Columbia University’s Rashid Khalidi as “a great achievement” and by Samuel Hayes of Harvard University Business School as “a thoughtful and well-researched history of Egyptian property law”. Access to Knowledge in Egypt: New Research on Intellectual Property, Innovation, and Development, edited by Nagla Rizk and Lea Shaver, is “a must-read for scholars and practitioners interested in economic development, cultural production, and access to knowledge,” says Susan K. Sell of George Washington University.

All these titles are now available in the AUC Press bookstores.

Samia Mehrez, author of The Literary Atlas of Cairo (AUC Press, 2010) and the forthcoming second volume in the project, The Literary Life of Cairo (AUC Press, 2011), delivered a lecture on “Mapping Cairo: Modern Literary Representations of the City,” on October 13 at AUC's New Cairo Campus. 

To watch the video of the lecture on the AUC YouTube channel, click here.

Samia Mehrez's books are available at the AUC Press Bookstores and can be ordered online. 
 

Click here to view a recent interview with Samia Mehrez on the AUC Press YouTube channel, in which she speaks about The Literary Atlas of Cairo.  

The two modern Arabic novels The Zafarani Files by Gamal al-Ghitani and The Mirage by Naguib Mahfouz, both published and translated into English by the AUC Press in 2009, have been selected as finalists for the American Literary Translators Association’s 2010 National Translation Award (NTA). 

The $5,000 prize is awarded annually for the best book-length translation into English of a work of fiction, poetry, drama, or creative non-fiction. It honors the translator whose work, by virtue of both its quality and its significance, has made the most valuable contribution to literary translation.

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), founded at the University of Texas, is the only organization in the United States dedicated solely to literary translation. Its mission is to bridge cultural communication and understanding among countries and languages through the art and craft of literary translation.

It awarded the 2009 NTA prize to French Women Poets of Nine Centuries by Norman Shapiro. This year’s NTA winner will be announced in the fall during ALTA’s annual conference.

The Zafarani Files, translated by Farouk Abdel Wahab, is a darkly comic novel about an unknown observer who watches the residents of Zafarani Alley, a village tucked into a corner of the city, where intrigue is the main entertainment.  Farouk Abdel Wahab is Ibn Rushd Professorial Lecturer in Arabic at the University of Chicago. He is the translator of other AUC Press modern Arabic novels including Alaa Al Aswany’s bestselling Chicago (2007), and Love in Exile (2002) by Bahaa Taher. With an M.A. in English literature from the University of Cairo and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Minnesota, Abdel Wahab was already awarded the Saif Ghobash – Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for his translation of Khairy Shalaby’s novel The Lodging House. Click here to order The Zafarani Files.

The Mirage, translated by Nancy Roberts, is the autobiographical account of Kamil Ru’ba, a tortured soul who finds himself struggling unduly to cope with life’s challenges. The narrative, full of pathos, draws the reader unwittingly into a vicarious experience of Kamil’s agonies and ecstasies. Nancy Roberts is also the translator of several AUC Press titles including Salwa Bakr’s The Man from Bashmour (2007) for which she received a commendation in the 2008 Saif Ghobash-Banipal Prize for Translation. Click here to order The Mirage.

Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, will give a lecture on "Translating Islam" on Monday, September 27,  at 6:00, in Oriental Hall at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center. 

He is the author of Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (Columbia University Press, 2001), The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006) translated to Arabic and published by Dar al-Adab in 2009, Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago Press, 2007), and La persistance de la question palestinienne ( La Fabrique, 2009).

He is currently working on two books tentatively titled, Islam in Liberalism and Geneaologies of Islam.

Massad is the recipient of the Lionel Trilling Book Award (2008) for his book Desiring Arabs and of the Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (2008). He also writes a column for the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly and the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar.

His books will be available for purchase and signing after the event, courtesy of the AUC Press Downtown Bookstore.

This event is part of a year-long lecture series In Translation headed by AUC's Center for Translation Studies.

To download the flier of the event, click here.

The Complete AUC Press Fall 2010 Catalog is now available.  Click here to download and browse. 

 For the previous Spring 2010 catalog, click here.

Desert Plants of Egypt’s Wadi El Gemal National Park by Tamer Mahmoud, just published by the AUC Press, promises to be an invaluable companion not just for scientists and anthropologists, but also for nature lovers and desert trotters alike.

This 180-page guide offers a thorough site description of the 4,770 km² Wadi El Gemal National Park in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, maps of the park, and 350 color photographs of plant life, representing all seasons and habitat types.

Every Wadi El Gemal plant listed in the book’s directory is arranged in alphabetical order by Latin name, accompanied by its family name, common English and / or local name, description, importance and use,  distribution within the park, photographs of different stages of the plant’s life, as well as a map of the park marking locations where the plant grows.

User-friendly and knapsack-size, Desert Plants also includes a glossary of flora terminology, the plant families and species identified in the park, and a comprehensive reference.

"The book provides botanical descriptions, notes on uses, ecological features, and distribution maps for 117 plant species out of 140 recorded in Wadi El Gemal National Park,” notes leading Egyptian ecologist Dr. Mohamed Kassas, in the preface. “The text is succinct and informative and the photographs invaluable.”

Author Tamer Mahmoud, who holds a B.Sc. in microbiology from Suez Canal University, has been a park ranger of the Wadi El Gemal National Park since 2003. Over the years he has taken seven thousand photographs of the park’s vegetation, examined its ecological features and flora, and recorded the use of land and plants by the Ababda tribes, the main indigenous inhabitants of the park today.

“It took me about three years of field and office work to complete this book, including 165 field trips,” said the 35-year-old ranger, who also established the park’s herbarium and arboretum nursery. “We talked with the inhabitants about their relationship with the plants and learned which ones were of real significance to them.” Because as Mahmoud points out, “the intimate contact between those living in the area, and especially the real desert dwellers, surprised me even more: the vegetation of Wadi El Gemal National Park and the socioeconomic relationship between plants and those who occupy the area deserve documentation, conservation, and publicity.”

To read more about Desert Plants of Egypt’s Wadi El Gemal National Park and order it online, click here.

Mahdi Issa al-Saqr’s modern Arabic novel East Winds, West Winds is set in his hometown, Basra, among the oil wells of the Southern Iraqi region. It draws on the late author’s own experiences as a translator with the Basra Petroleum Company and as a personnel superintendent of the Marine Transportation Company.

“East Winds, West Winds, published in Cairo in 1998, is a strongly autobiographical novel about an aspiring writer working as a translator for a British company in the oil fields near Basra during the 1950s,” writes the British newspaper The Independent, in a review of the book, praising the English translation by Paul Starkey published this year by the AUC Press.

“Paul Starkey's elegant and lucid translation does justice to Al-Saqr's absorbing and subtle portrait of British colonialism in action. It shows the muted aspirations of the post-war generation of educated Iraqis with emotional and sociological acuity,” says Alev Adil in the July 30 review.

Translator Paul Starkey is head of the Arabic Department at the University of Durham, England. He has published widely in the field of modern Arabic literature and was co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (1998). He is the translator of Edwar al-Kharrat’s Stones of Bobello (AUC Press, 2005) and Mansoura Ez Eldin’s Maryam’s Maze (AUC Press, 2007).

To read the complete book review of al-Saqr’s East Winds, West Winds in The Independent, click here.

To order the book online, click here.

If French photographer Xavier Roy had to choose another title for his recent illustrated book he would have called it Egypt Face to Face so as to really accentuate what he calls the “extraordinary symbiosis between Egypt’s past and present” that captivated his eye while photographing the country.

In his new book Re:viewing Egypt: Image and Echo, published this month by the AUC Press, Roy seeks to capture this very coexistence by skillfully juxtaposing the world of the living with that of the dead, repeatedly contrasting stolen moments from today’s daily life with bits and fragments of the country’s once illustrious past.

Roy may focus his lens on a boy running in a bucolic countryside and then zoom in on a weathered antiquity half buried in the sand, or snap a shot of a dog stretching in front of a pyramid and then of an elongated afternoon shadow of a felucca on the Nile bank….

His 145 astonishing black-and-white photographs are accompanied by a profoundly contemplative introduction by Gamal al-Ghitani, in which the acclaimed Egyptian writer reflects on the country’s duality of origin and shadow, while praising Roy for capturing “the essence of the spirit of Egypt.”

In a recent interview, Xavier Roy talked more about his passion for photography, and for Egypt.

AUC Press: Gamal al-Ghitani, in his essay, talks about the “duality,” the “infinite,” and the “gradation” associated with the elements of Egyptian reality. Is this what touched you about Egypt and what you try to convey in your images?

XR: When I read the text of Gamal al-Ghitani, I was happily surprised and proud that such a famous Egyptian author would translate into words the feelings that I had myself experienced.  It reassured me about my vision of Egypt as a foreigner.  It is true that in this wonderful country I have the very strong impression of an eternal rebirth, that everything that disappears is continually reborn, like the phoenix from its ashes....  I hope that my photographs express the emotions I felt while taking them.

AUC Press: What emotions were these?

XR: Depending on what I was photographing, they could vary from tenderness to melancholy, or to joy…. When I have the impression that I took a “beautiful” photograph, it takes my breath away.

AUC Press: Would it be fair to say that there is an intentional visual “echo” in your photographs, either through the dialogue created by the composition in the image itself or through the arrangement of the images in the book layout?

XR: It is only when I saw my whole work that it became obvious. This "echo", this contrast, is the image of Egypt.

AUC Press: How do you ‘construct’ the duality or the contrast in your photographs? Do you take one photograph and then go look for the ‘echo’, either waiting for it to just happen or actually setting it up?

XR: No, I never did set up the photographs. I must say that strangely enough and contrary to all the other countries I photographed (Cuba, Brazil, France, Morocco, Madagascar ....), I just had to put the photographs of Egypt together and the duality in the pictures was in evidence.

AUC Press: Is this duality or resonance specific to Egypt or is this how you see the world as a photographer, made of contrasts, combinations, reflections?

XR: Generally when I take my pictures I never think about how they are going to be shown in a book. I capture them with my head, my eyes, and my heart.... It is only at the end of my work that I can have a global impression and the end result is different for every country that I photograph.

AUC Press: Which ‘echo’ catches your eye first when you look through the viewfinder of your camera – the light, the form, the texture, the subject?

XR: The four echoes at the same instant.

AUC Press: How would you describe your favorite photograph in this book?

XR: I have many favorite photographs but the one that moves me the most is the one of the little girl with a scarf on page 123: her very big eyes are full of shyness but at the same time there is curiosity, hope and tenderness.

AUC Press: Why do you think the book title Re:viewing Egypt is fitting for this collection of photographs?

XR: Because books about Egypt usually only show the ancient Egypt, as if contemporary Egypt was not so interesting. Often photographers are only interested in its glorious history.

AUC Press: You have photographed in many parts of the world. What is particular about taking photographs in Egypt?

XR: Everything is fascinating in Egypt. It is a paradise for photographers!

AUC Press: What do you prefer about black-and-white photography?

XR: Color is for me anecdotic because it distorts my photographic vision. Photos don't show reality: they are an adaptation, or a translation of reality made by the photographer. Black-and-white brings me pureness, it is more intimate and it emphasizes the lines, the composition and the attitudes. Black-and-white enables me to go to the essential: it is a different language than color.           

AUC Press: Would you say your work is influenced by photographers such as Henri Cartier–Bresson?

XR: No, I admire him very much, but I would say that André Kertesz was my master: he gave me the desire to become a photographer.

AUC Press: How did you to decide to move from a successful career in marketing to becoming a full-time photographer?

XR: I always liked art. When I worked for the music company Vogue I always took photos whenever I could.... Today, more than a hobby, photography is a passion.

To view some of the photographs from Re:viewing Egypt: Image and Echo, click here.

To read more about the book and order it, click here.

Ahmed Sedky is the author of Living with Heritage in Cairo: Area Conservation in the Arab Islamic City, published by the AUC Press (2009).

“Because Sedky understands the effect of the urban environment on the community, he also understands the effect of the community on the urban environment,” wrote Al Masry Al Youm in their book review “Conservation conflicts.”

Ahmed Sedky, who holds a PhD in area conservation from Heriot-Watt University, recently discussed the meaning of area conservation in the Arab Islamic City and the criteria for assessing area conservation in Cairo, and other key issues he addresses in his book.

To view the video on the AUC Press YouTube channel, click here.

To read more about the book and order it online, click here.

You can also watch a previous interview with Ahmed Sedky speaking about his book, in Arabic:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2zZ_3AIJ0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIU0KbXroX0&feature=related

Click on the links below to hear Ahmed Sedky in a television interview also in Arabic, calling for the charter for area conservation for Cairo:

The Arabic Literature (in English) blogger, Marcia Lynx Qualey, literary critic, writer and reader based in Cairo, Egypt, posts some suggestions for summer reading,  including recommendations by AUC Press translators Humphrey Davies, Aida Bamia, Shakir Mustafa, and Neil Hewison. 

Many of the books on the reading lists are published by the AUC Press. 

Click on the link and Take the Arabic Summer Reading Challenge (and Win)

Samia Mehrez says putting the idea into a book coincided with the move of the American University in Cairo from "throbbing downtown Cairo" to New Cairo, a transition that took place in 2008. "I am a Cairo girl and the heart of Cairo is full of memories," said the AUC professor of Arabic literature and author of The Literary Atlas of Cairo: One Hundred Years on The Streets of the City (AUC Press 2010), her latest book, during a recent interview, who refers to the Egyptian capital as "Cairo, Mothers of Cities." 

In the introduction to her book, Mehrez writes: "Through a careful selection and juxtaposition of reconstructions and representations of the city of Cairo in Arab literary works throughout the twentieth century, The Literary Atlas of Cairo provides a literary topography of the sociocultural, political, and urban history of the city by bringing together some one hundred works of Egyptian and Arab writers who represent several generations of men and women, Muslims, Copts, and Jews, citizens and lovers of the globalized metropolis, writing in Arabic, English, or French about the city of Cairo."

The book includes 56 extracts (all in English) from the works of Alaa Al Aswany, Albert Cossery, Gamal al-Ghitani, Hamdi Abu Golayyel, Mona Prince, Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, and Yusuf Idris, to name a few. 

To watch the interview on the AUC Press YouTube channel, click here.

To read a recent review of Samia Mehrez's other new book, Egypt’s Culture Wars,  click here.

The new summer opening hours of the AUC Press Bookstores are as follows,
(effective Sunday, June 6, 2010):

Downtown Bookstore
Daily: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Friday: 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Sheikh Rihan Street, corner of Tahrir Square, tel. (20-2) 2797 5929

New Cairo Bookstore
Sunday – Thursday: 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
New Cairo Campus, AUC Park and Square, tel. (20-2) 2615 1303

Zamalek Bookstore
Daily: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Friday: 2:00 pm – 6:00 pm
AUC Residence, 16 Mohamed Thakeb Street, Zamalek, tel. (20-2) 2739 7045

Falaki Textbook Store
Sunday – Thursday: 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Falaki Academic Center, tel. (20-2) 2797 6933

New Cairo Campus Shop
Sunday-Thursday: 9:00 am – 4:00pm
New Cairo Campus, Bartlett Plaza, tel. (20-2-) 2615 4188  

“The range in this book is fantastic,” explains AUC Press Senior Development Editor Randi Danforth, who edited Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage, a 300-page illustrated volume recently published by the American Research Center in Egypt and distributed by the AUC Press. “You are looking at Egypt from 4500BC to the 19th century, all in this one book,” adds Danforth. “And this is really just a taste of what has yet to be discovered in Egypt.”

The book’s articles, contributed by 35 scholars and experts, including some AUC Press authors, cover fifty documentation and conservation projects, completed under the direction of ARCE between 1995 and 2005, attesting to the country’s extensive and immensely diverse heritage, from prehistoric Egypt to historic Cairo.

Commenting on the different nationalities and staff involved in these projects, Danforth says: “This was not a paternalistic situation. Yes, there were Italian conservators, Dutch photographers, Polish architects, American archaeologists… working on these projects, but the number of Egyptians also involved was vast. It was all done as a co-venture with the Supreme Council of Antiquities,” explains Danforth, who holds a degree in archaeology from Yale University.

Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage is dedicated to the late (Chjp) Robert K. Vincent, former Cultural Heritage Manager at ARCE. “It was his idea to collect all these articles into a book. His involvement, his leadership, and his mentoring were key. This book is his legacy,” says Danforth.

To edit the fifty essays Randi Danforth heeded the advice of Gerry D. Scott III, the current ARCE director: “Editing all these scholars will be like herding cats,” he told her four years ago, when they first started working on the book. “Sometimes the authors were hard to pin down. But most of the time they were very motivated to contribute their work to this important collected volume,” recalls Danforth. 

Today Scott attributes the end result to Danforth’s “painstaking diligence.” “I have a pathological intolerance for mistakes in print,” explains Danforth, who also contributed two articles to the volume.

AUC Press authors in the book include Jaroslaw Dobrowolski, who writes about the exquisite, restored Greco-Roman mosaics in Alexandria’s Villa of the Birds, scorched by fire in the late third century. “Birds were popular themes on Egyptian mosaics. While some of these on the villa’s floor are depicted just as they might be seen on the banks of the Nile, the mosaic also reveals artistic ties with distant centers; for example, the motif of two birds drinking from a cup was clearly borrowed from the Pergamon milieu,” writes the Polish scholar, who relied on data from the project’s final report.

AUC Press author Agnieszka Dobrowolska documents the structural interventions on the Ottoman-style Muhammad Ali Pasha sabil that was on the verge of collapse when the conservation project started in 1998 and in its heyday was a public landmark that distributed free water to the thirsty, an act of charity deeply rooted in Islam.

Bernard O’Kane, also an AUC Press author, records endangered yet unpublished inscriptions from Cairo’s Islamic monuments that predate 1800, carefully photographed (11,000 exposed images), transcribed, and translated during the course of the project. Noting that Cairo has over four hundred monuments worthy of protection, many rapidly deteriorating because of the 1992 earthquake and rising water table, O’Kane warns: “Water has been moving gradually upward through the porous limestone of the buildings, depositing salts that crystallize on the exterior of the stone and cause it to become friable.”

Nicholas Warner contributes a unique new cartography for Cairo, tracing the evolution of Historic Cairo as an urban complex by using views, maps, and architectural renderings to construct a visual genealogy of the city. “It is rare to find a historic structure in Cairo today that has not undergone significant remodeling over the past century,” writes the architect and AUC Press author.

One particularly interesting feature of Preserving Egypt’s Cultural Heritage is the last of the five broad thematic chapters of the book, solely devoted to Cultural Heritage Management. “It was part of the book’s mission. This chapter is to encourage the good management of the sites so that once they have been restored they don’t fall into disrepair,” stresses Danforth. “It is death to a monument if you just conserve it and then close it up. The key words are adaptive re-use,” she says emphatically. “Some can stay just as beautifully conserved monuments that will have a revenue stream from ticket sales while others could house visitors' centers such as the Quseir Fort, or even cafés or bookstores.”

Several examples of site management projects established by ARCE are featured in the book, such as the preservation of the Red Sea coast Quseir Fort, founded in 1571, altered during the Napoleonic occupation of 1799-1801, and today re-used as a visitor’s center. “After the mid-nineteenth century, it diminished in importance and slowly decayed, used by the Egyptian coast guard until 1975,” writes Danforth in her Quseir Fort essay, using data from the final project report. 

In the book’s foreword, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Supreme Council of Antiquities, praises the importance of the ARCE projects and their contribution to the conservation and preservation of Egypt’s cultural heritage: “ARCE plays the most essential role of any foreign scientific institution in Cairo.” But Hawass also makes reference to ARCE’s cultural heritage management initiatives, and more specifically to its Museum Management Program: “The current program is helping our staff at the [Egyptian] museum understand the meaning of caring properly for the objects in their charge,” he writes.

This caring and passion for the preservation of Egypt’s heritage is echoed in the words of the late Robert Vincent who, in the introduction to this volume, notes: “The people who were driven by a sense of mission and duty, who believed that these old stones were worth saving, can see documented in this book the transformation of their ideas from concept to reality.” 

To read more about the book and order it online, click here.

An exhibition of sixty watercolor paintings and mixed media works from the Summertime collection by the late Margo Veillon (1907−2003) is currently on display for the first time, in The Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center. Summertime will run until July 15.

Summertime includes watercolor landscapes and still life, painted by the artist between 1962 and 1983, depicting the Nile, the Egyptian countryside, the desert, Nubia, and flowers from the verdant gardens of Maadi.

“Margo Veillon is the painter who painted Egypt, the workers, the fellahin,” said prominent Al Ahram art critic Makran Henein. “She liked the local life. This love is rare in Egypt,” he added.

Born in Cairo, Margo Veillon lived and worked as an artist in Egypt for nearly a century. She spent much of her artistic career capturing the verve and movement of daily life in the Egyptian countryside, but also explored the Nile and the surrounding deserts through Nubia and into Sudan and Ethiopia. A prolific artist during her lifetime, Margo Veillon produced over seven thousand pieces of art, including oil paintings and watercolors, sketches in charcoal and pastel, prints, etchings, mosaics, murals, sculptures, and photographs. She held 78 exhibitions in Egypt and Europe, starting in Cairo in 1928—the last opened at AUC on her 96th birthday in February 2003.

“She created a genuine relation between Egypt and her brushes, especially in her watercolors,” explained Henein. “She painted her watercolors as an expressionist, full of emotion, that gave life to her work,” he added.

Inaugurated last November to preserve and exhibit the permanent collection of Margo Veillon, the gallery featured for its official opening celebration a selection from the permanent masterpiece collection of the late artist’s paintings, and a comprehensive retrospective of her Nocturnes and Fantasies. The gallery, operated by the AUC Press, also showcases historic retrospectives of twentieth-century Egyptian art, such as Jehan Sadat’s Landscapes of the Heart 1986−2009, exhibited in May.

When: The gallery is open daily from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, except Friday.

Where: The Margo Veillon Gallery is located in the landmark Sheikh Rihan palace building of the AUC Downtown Cultural Center and can be accessed from Sheikh Rihan Street.  Click here for the map.     

To download the map to the AUC Press Downtown Bookstore and Bargain Book Pavilion, click here.

One could say that Magda Mehdawy, co-author of The Pharaoh’s Kitchen, a book just published by the AUC Press, knows more than a thing or two about Egyptian gastronomy—ancient as well as modern. Her books, including My Egyptian Grandmother’s Kitchen (AUC Press, 2006), for the original Arabic edition of which she was awarded the Al-Ahram Appreciation Prize in 2004, reveal the extent of her knowledge and interest on the topic.

Specialized in the Greek-Roman period, she uses her archaeology degree from the University of Alexandria to study the origins of the local cooking traditions. The Pharaoh’s Kitchen tells readers and gourmets how to cook and eat like the ancient Egyptians.

We caught up with Mehdawy, who is also the two-time winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award, Best in the World (2007 and 2008), to talk about her latest recipes, which date back to pharaonic times and which are also found in today’s Egyptian kitchens.

How did the idea for this new book The Pharaoh’s Kitchen come about?
I have already worked on other books about Egyptian cuisine. However the idea for this particular one came as a result of extensive research done in cooperation with co-author Amr Hussein, an Egyptologist, in an attempt to trace the origins of our modern Egyptian food back to the ancient Egyptians. 

What kind of research material did you rely on to gather the recipes in this book?
We went through original Egyptian texts, old photographs, and literature and we also relied on tomb reliefs that provided us with examples of the food offered in the tombs, the funeral meals that were buried with the dead as real meals or just as grains, and the offerings that the ancient Egyptians would commonly give to the gods in temples, depicted on the walls. All of these references helped us to determine most of the food types that were used in ancient Egyptian times and that are still in use today. 

Were the recipes already carefully described or did you have to create some of them based on the ingredients collected from your research?
Some of the recipes were already available, others had to be reconstructed. The recipes in the book are divided into two sections: old recipes from Greek and Roman times, dating from the first century, originally in Latin and now translated into English, and the recipes from the pharaonic days that still exist in Upper Egypt today. We traveled to various parts of Upper Egypt to collect the recipes directly from the people. We pinpointed the food items and methods of cooking that are still being used now and identified those ingredients that have been added over time, as for example tomato, lemon, and rice, that did not exist in the original recipes.

Is today’s Egyptian cooking still very similar to that of the ancient Egyptians?
Some of the recipes in the book that were used in ancient Egypt can still be found in Upper Egypt, where most of the ingredients and spices are the same, whereas in the Delta the food has been affected by other cultures and is totally different.

What are some of the foods that were served on special occasions by ancient Egyptians, and that you find in modern Egyptian celebrations or traditional feasts?
Funeral feasts for the dead are still being held today, when families visit the tombs and graveyards of the deceased and offer them food such as loaves of bread, pies and fresh fruits.
Qoras el Rahma, which can be translated as Mercy Pies, a type of bread, is still offered to the dead now. The ancient Egyptians also celebrated the feast of harvest, what is now known as Sham El Nessim which was and still is famous for its variety of foods like lettuce, green chickpeas, salted lupine and fenugreek, salted fish, and colored eggs.

Who did most of the cooking during the time of the pharaohs and who does it nowadays?
During ancient times in the small households it was mainly the housewives who did the cooking, but in higher society the servants and cooks did it, and this is true today.

Which is your favorite recipe in The Pharaoh’s Kitchen and why?
The milk meat casserole with rice or cracked wheat, since it is easy to cook and very tasty. You can use meat cubes or different types of poultry like duck, goose, or pigeon, adding milk and cream.

How is fast food affecting Egyptian cooking?
As in other parts of the world, Egyptian food has been affected by fast food, which has started to take the place of the ordinary food. However, the value of our old-fashioned foods has become evident. By returning to our native foods and preparing our meals at home ourselves, we will be able to avoid unhealthy, artificial ingredients, and ensure quality and cleanliness.

Why are you so interested in Egyptian cuisine?
I am motivated by two reasons: because of my field of study in archeology, I am interested in food as part of the culture and history of Egypt. I believe that the documentation of the Egyptian cuisine will save it from being lost. I am the first one to approach this field with this specialized approach. But I also want to spread Egyptian cuisine around the world.

To read more about The Pharaoh’s Kitchen and order the book, click here.   

To read about her previous book, My Egyptian Grandmother’s Kitchen (AUC Press, 2006), click here.

This year, the American University in Cairo Press will hold its Annual Book, Art, & Music Festival, in celebration of AUC Press authors and new publications, on the historic al-Mu‘izz Street of Islamic Cairo, on Sunday, May 30, at 6:30 pm.

The event will include music, a tannura performance, and an exhibition of photographs from recent illustrated AUC Press publications. The Madrasa and Mausoleum of Sultan Qalawun, the Mausoleum of Sultan Barquq, and the Textile Museum will be open for guided tours.

“We like to host this particular event at different historic sites around Cairo because the AUC Press publications are all about highlighting the very culture and heritage of Egypt,” said Nabila Akl, AUC Press Promotion Manager.

During this month’s event, the AUC Press will be featuring many of its new books, in the presence of a number of authors: The Akhenaten Colossi of Karnak by Lise Manniche; The Arabian Horse of Egypt by Nasr Marei; Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan: An AUC Press Guide by Michael Haag; Coptic Identity and Ayyubid Politics in Egypt by Kurt Werthmuller; The Coptic Papacy in Islamic Egypt by Mark N. Swanson; Drumbeat by Mohamed El-Bisatie, translated by Peter Daniel; For Better, For Worse by Hanan Kholoussy, Edward William Lane 1801–1876 by Jason Thompson; Egypt: An AUC Press Guide by Michael Haag; Egypt’s Culture Wars by Samia Mehrez; Inside the Egyptian Museum by Zahi Hawass; The Literary Atlas of Cairo by Samia Mehrez; The Nile Cruise, photographs by Sherif Sonbol, text by Jenny Jobbins; The Pharaoh’s Kitchen by Magda Mehdawy and Amr Hussein; The River Nile in the Post-Colonial Age, edited by Terje Tvedt; Saint Theresa and Sleeping with Strangers by Bahaa Abdelmegid, translated by Chip Rossetti; The Scents of Marie-Claire by Habib Selmi, translated by Fadwa Al Qasem, Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt by Samer Shehata; and Wonders of Egypt by Giorgio Ferrero, with a foreword by Zahi Hawass.

“This event is also an important occasion for the AUC Press to pay tribute to its authors and to their latest books,” added Akl.

In previous years, historic venues for the AUC Press Annual Book, Art, & Music Festival included the Baron’s Palace in Heliopolis, the Citadel in Islamic Cairo, and Farouk’s Corner in Helwan.

For further details of the upcoming AUC Press Annual Book, Art, & Music Festival, including a map of al-Mu'izz Street in Fatimid Cairo, click here.

It is not imperative that I write every day because there is false and the true writing, like the false and the true muse,” says Bahaa Abdelmegid, whose two novellas, Saint Theresa and Sleeping with Strangers have just been published by the AUC Press.  

But when he writes, Abdelmegid allows his creative impulse to run free. “I put everything down on paper and only then do I edit because I want to be in different moods,” explains the forty-three-year-old Egyptian writer.  

Saint Theresa, one of his first novellas to be translated into English, is intentionally constructed on the confessions of the author’s characters, using their names as titles that divide the narrative into short chapters. “The little chapters are like testaments,” explains Abdelmegid. “It’s like in the Bible…. I used a narrative technique of biblical structure. Everybody has his own way to tell us their story,” adds the writer, who also utilizes emblematic titles such “Prayer of the Candles,” “A Wailing Wall,” “Hymn of the Sands,” and “The Apparition of the Virgin” for certain important passages.

“I have a religious background. My grandfather was an imam. He died while kneeling in the mosque during prayer,” he adds.

Sawsan is a young single Muslim woman from Shubra who enrolls in university and falls in love with a dangerous Marxist named Salim. Her Christian neighbor and childhood friend Budur marries Girgis, a struggling humble tailor and then falls in love with her husband’s prosperous Jewish Greek-Egyptian employer Luka.  

Abdelmegid makes his characters coexist, testing their religious tolerance as they face temptation, love, and jealousy. “All religions have differences and similarities. It is not a matter of religion, it is a matter of how you deal with the different religions,” explains Abdelmegid.

Although this novella is not autobiographical, the author, who is also from Shubra, feels attached to his characters. “I am still living with them. I can’t separate myself from them. Budur and Sawsan are still with me.”

“I made women who are mentally very active, in a society where they are not allowed to be active, which is why they are introspective,” explains Abdelmegid. In his creative world, the female characters are strong-willed and determined, striving to improve their plight either through work or education. Sawsan writes in her notebook: “I aspire to a world where your clothes, your identity, and your class aren’t boxed in. I want to live in a world where I can mention my place of birth without arousing any kind of prejudice against me.”

Abdelmegid even goes as far as calling himself a feminist. “The woman is always responsible even when it is the man that deviates. I am attacking this kind of hypocrisy. Too much burden is put on women,” he adds.

Yet in Saint Theresa it is the woman who is unfaithful to her husband. “Budur is a victim of her poverty,” says Abdelmegid, justifying the behavior of his female character.  

Saint Therasa was first published in Arabic in 2001, and was originally written as a 250-page novel. “I worked on it day and night at the same time as my dissertation,” explains the author who holds a PhD in English literature from Ain Shams University, where he currently teaches.

“I believe every word counts in a story,” says Abdelmegid. “Prose is like poetry. Every word should have a beat, a rhythm.”  

In Saint Theresa, Abdelmegid plays with symbolism. Water is a recurring theme – whether the shores of Alexandria or the lake of Fayoum, at times beautiful, as times threatening, perhaps unconsciously reflecting the author’s deep personal fascination and angst. “I almost drowned in Ismailiya when I was a child,” says Abdelmegid, before adding: “Water is a symbol of purity, of life, of death."

The second novella, Sleeping with Strangers is also based on confessions. Basim, a confused, dishonest, womanizing young Egyptian, is drawn to the “land of opportunity,” only to end up in an American prison on various charges before eventually deported back to his native Egypt. Nader, a generous, romantic, aspiring writer in love with Basim’s neglected wife, tries to change the course of his cousin’s life, reminding him “that the American people have no power, just like us Arabs: they chase after their daily bread and a peaceful life for themselves.”

As with Budur, the author defends his male character. “Basim is not guilty,” explains Abdelmegid. “He is a victim of his father’s sins. He is seeking freedom. The US for him is like a dream, although freedom is relative,” adds the writer who studied in Vermont on a Fulbright scholarship, and later at Trinity College in Dublin.  

“Basim is the ego and Nader his alter ego, or perhaps it’s the other way around,” explains the writer. “There is more hinting than telling in the story,” he says, noting that some things are deliberately left unexplained and unsaid. Yet Sleeping with Strangers is meant as a journey for his characters to know themselves. When the novella first appeared in Arabic in 2005 and Abdelmegid dedicated copies to his readers, he signed: “I hope that by reading Sleeping with Strangers you reach human bonds instead of alienation.”    

Abdelmegid, who is also a lecturer of English literature at Alexandria and Beni Suef universities, still finds time to write. He is currently working on his fourth novel. His preliminary drafts are always done on paper. “The pen is kind to me. It is attached to my heart. With the pen, there is time for improvisation. The typed word on the other hand looks published, somehow irreversible.”

To order the book online, click here.

The American University in Cairo Press will celebrate the publication of The Arabian Horse of Egypt, a spectacular new title with striking photographs by Nasr Marei, at the Marei Albadeia Stud Farm in Mansouria, on Saturday, May 8.

Published by the AUC Press, The Arabian Horse in Egypt, with a foreword by HRH Princess Alia Bint Al Hussein, and an introduction by Cynthia Culbertson, is the first major publication to address with such authority and expertise the history and lineage of this special breed, considered a treasure of Egyptian heritage.

The 100 color photographs illustrate beautifully the elegance, agility, grace, pride, and power of the Egyptian Arabian purebred horse. Today the breeding programs in Egypt are the root source for the finest Arabian horses, attracting fervent enthusiasts from all corners of the world. Nasr Marei, not only a passionate photographer, is himself the third-generation owner of a stud farm in Giza, Egypt, raised among horses, with fifty years of breeding experience, as well as the co-founder and vice-chairman of the Egyptian Arabian Horse Breeders Association.

“My lifestyle is such that I have made the horses my family and have attempted to create the best possible world for us where they can thrive, and I can be part of their daily lives,” writes Nasr Marei in the book’s preface, noting his family’s Albadeia stud farm has bred over five hundred horses to date. “The Arabian horse is an example of survival in the harshest of environments,” he adds, stressing the importance of preserving the identity and integrity of the bloodline and valuable characteristics such as strength, courage, charisma, spirit, and endurance.

In the foreword, HRH Princess Alia Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, a world-renowned Arabian horse breeder, show judge, and director of the Royal Stables of Jordan for the Preservation of the Arabian Horse, says:“Nasr Marei’s sincere appreciation of the essential qualities of his subjects—beauty, free spirit, intelligence, and humor—is underlined here by the manner in which he has chosen to portray them: at rest, at play, and expressing themselves as only the unique Arabian horse can.”

The Arabian Horse of Egypt features an introduction by Cynthia Culbertson, an internationally-recognized Arabian horse historian. She traces the development of the Arabian horse, the world’s oldest breed, from the age of the pharaohs, the rise of Islam, and the time of the Mamluks, to today’s stud farms, and discusses the qualities of the ideal Arabian horse, the confirmation of the horse, and the bond between the mare and her foal. “To appreciate these magnificent animals fully it is important to understand their fascinating history and significant cultural legacy,” she writes.

To order The Arabian Horse of Egypt now, click here.

Click here to view some of the book’s splendid photographs.

For invitations to the Saturday event, contact Nabila Akl, akl@aucegypt.edu or tel. 2797 6896 / 6893.

Visitors to Cairo’s Egyptian Museum can now discover the countless rare objects on display using the new official guide Inside the Egyptian Museum with Zahi Hawass, by Zahi Hawass, with photographs by Sandro Vannini. 

The Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, the first museum in the world purposely built to house and protect antiquities, holds the world’s greatest  collection of Egyptian treasures—tens of thousands of stunning and fascinating objects dating from Predynastic times right through to the Greek and Roman Periods. In order to guide visitors, who may feel overwhelmed by the vast number of objects and the size of the museum, to the unmissable highlights of this great storehouse, Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, and today the world’s best-known Egyptologist, offers his very own selection of exhibits to see.

The 300-page full color illustrated volume, with magnificent color photographs by veteran photographer Sandro Vannini, begins with a fascinating introduction about the history of the museum itself, its construction in 1897 by an Italian company, and the transfer of five thousand boxes of Egyptian artifacts from various storage areas to the new museum. “This is one of the most important museums in the world and contains the largest collection of pharaonic artifacts anywhere,” writes Zahi Hawass, who was appointed head of Egypt’s antiquities service in 2002.

“For the past few years, I have been working to bring the Egyptian Museum into the twenty-first century and into the hearts and minds of people from around the world,” he adds. 

Among his two hundred favorite objects in the museum is the 4,500 year-old diorite statue of Khafre, the Fourth Dynasty king. “Although the statue looks to be of one person—King Khafre—it is, in fact, a triad,” explains Hawass. “The king is Osiris in death, while the falcon at the back of his head is Horus; the throne upon which the king sits is the hieroglyphic symbol of Isis,” he adds. “I like to walk around this statue and see the hawk on the back of Khafre’s head and imagine that it is taking him up to the sky. I also think about the artist who carved the king’s face and the muscles of the body.”

The visit on the ground floor starts in the Predynastic Room with the replica of the Rosetta Stone, with its three scripts—demotic, hieroglyphic, and Greek—deciphered by Champollion in 1822, and ends with a wooden coffin studded with stunning inlay of hieroglyphs in colored glass displaying the name and titles of Petosiris, the early Ptolemaic Period High Priest of Thoth.

On the upper floor, Hawass gives a brief history of the royal mummies and introduces the visitor to more of his favorite artifacts, like the golden finger stalls and sandals of Psusennes I from Tanis. From the Jewelry Room, his selection includes a gold and amethyst girdle of Mereret, modeled with panther heads that protect the wearer from harm, and four exquisite turquoise, lapis lazuli, amethyst, and gold bracelets from the tomb of King Djer, from the First Dynasty, that are believed to have belonged to a princess.

Inside the Egyptian Museum with Zahi Hawass will also soon be available in French, German, and Italian editions.

International author Ahdaf Soueif will be giving a lecture on "The Author as Translator" on April 28 at 6:00 pm in Oriental Hall, at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center. 

Following her talk, she will be be signing her books at the AUC Press Downtown Bookstore on Wednesday, April 28. 

Ahdaf Soueif is the author of many books including The Map of Love, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, 1999.
The London Review of Books said about her book: "Half-romance and half a gently nationalist defence of Egypt - Soueif never raises her voice."

To mark World Book Day, the biggest annual international celebration of books, reading, and publishing, initiated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the American University in Cairo Press is offering again one free book on any purchase made in its Downtown Bookstore, on Friday, April 23.

For their free copy, visitors will be able to choose from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and Denys Johnson-Davies’s Under the Naked Sky.

Located on the corner of Sheikh Rihan Street, the Downtown Bookstore, Coffee Corner, and Garden Terrace will be open from 2:00 to 8:00 pm.

On this special occasion, various just-published AUC Press titles will be available in the bookstore, including six modern  Arabic novels, translated into English: Bahaa Abdelmegid's two novellas, Saint Therasa and Sleeping with Strangers, Mohamed El-Bisatie's Drumbeat, Habib Selmi's The Scents of Marie-Claire, Mahdi Issa al-Saqr's East Winds, West Winds, and Alaa Al Aswany's Chicago now in a new paperback edition. 

History enthusiasts will find the comprehensive new biography of Edward William Lane, 1801−1876: The Life of the Pioneering Egyptologist and Orientalist, by Jason Thompson, author also of A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present (AUC Press, 2008). 

For lovers of the arts, the AUC Press has just published The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema by Malek Khouri, already described by some critics as the first informative and critical analysis of the entire filmography of Chahine. 

In the field of Politics, Economics, and Social Issues, readers can now also find Samia Mehrez's Egypt's Culture Wars, which looks at the raging debates in the arts in Egypt; For Better, For Worse: The Marriage Crisis that Made Modern Egypt by Hanan Khouloussy, which examines twentieth-century matrimony and society; The River Nile in the Post-Colonial Age, important research that analyses the modern development and politics of the Nile Basin, edited by Terje Tvedt; and Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt, an insider study of the worker identity in Egyptian industry by Samer Shehata.

As every year, the AUC Press marks World Book Day on April 23, the birthday of William Shakespeare and other prominent writers.

For more information, click here.

Regrettably, the AUC Press team is unable to attend the 2010 London Book Fair due to the flight delays into the UK.

If you have any queries related to The American University in Cairo Press, please do not hesitate contact us directly:

Mark Linz
Director
Tel: +202 2797 6888
linz@aucegypt.edu

Trevor Naylor
Associate Director, Sales & Marketing
Tel: +202 2797 5759
trevornaylor@aucegypt.edu

Nancy A. Messieh
Assistant Rights Manager
Tel: +202 2797 6398
nancyam@aucegypt.edu

For orders and queries on UK and Europe Distribution please click here.

The American University in Cairo Press celebrated the new 400-page signed, limited edition of A Secret Voyage, by Zahi Hawass, with photographs by Sandro Vannini, in Gouna on April 16.

A Secret Voyage, a magnificent, hand-bound, silk-cover edition of only 750 signed copies, is a captivating journey through the world of the Theban Necropolis, narrated by Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, in which the world-renowned archaeologist chronicles anecdotes and personal stories about his years of experience as an Egyptologist in the field. (Limited edition, Hardcover in clamshell box, LE22,500).

“The Valley of the Kings has more magic and mystery than any other pharaonic site in Egypt,” writes Zahi Hawass, in the introductory chapter about his connection with the west bank of the Nile and the mortuary temples.

Over the course of his career, Zahi Hawass has made many remarkable discoveries, such as the tombs of the pyramids builders at Giza, the Valley of the Golden Mummies, and the mummy of Queen Hatshepsut. He also revealed the mystery of Tutankhamun’s death and identified the mummies of the young king’s family.

“My stories have entered the hearts of people all over the world,” writes the Egyptian archaeologist, who was chosen by Time magazine, in 2006, as one of the world’s 100 most influential people.

The very entertaining narrative of A Secret Voyage, on themes such as love, beauty, celebration, work, foes, life along the river, and the afterlife of the ancient Egyptians, is beautifully illustrated by stunning, extremely high-resolution images by Sandro Vannini.

After spending “long hours of observation, sometimes in total solitude,” often in restricted and remote sites across Egypt, and using cutting edge digital techniques and specially designed lighting, the Italian photographer brings to life breathtaking details from unique perspectives, of countless rare treasures, unseen and closed to the world—whether the intricate weave of a wooden funerary chair, the superb craftsmanship of a royal earring, the bold brush strokes of a tomb painting, or the refinement of a gold shrine engraving.

“Vannini has mastered the art of digital photography, and the result is a brilliant collection of images highlighting Egypt’s cultural contribution to the world,” said Vanessa Kramer, director of photography at Corbis. “Clients will recognize this work as a new standard in Egyptian photography.”

The book was already launched in Cairo on March 15, in the Gold Room at Manial Palace. 

Zahi Hawass and Sandro Vannini collaborated last year on another important Egyptology book, Life in Paradise: The Noble Tombs of Thebes, one of the highlights of the AUC Press fall 2009 publications.

Zahi Hawass is the author of many other AUC Press publications, including The Royal Tombs of Egypt: The Art of Thebes Revealed (2007), King Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb (2007), Secrets from the Sand: My Search for Egypt’s Past (2003), The Great Book of Ancient Egypt: In the Realm of the Pharaohs (2006), and The Valley of the Golden Mummies (2000).

The AUC Press is the exclusive distributor in Egypt of A Secret Voyage. To read more about the book and buy it, click here.

 April 2010

Visitors to the AUC Press Downtown Bookstore can now browse the Spring 2010 catalog publications while enjoying the bookstore’s coffee corner and garden terrace. 

 The coffee corner sells an assortment of hot and cold beverages, fresh coffee, tea, cookies, and pastries.

 The AUC Press Bookstore is open from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm Saturday through Thursday, and from 2:00 to 8:00 pm on Friday.  

 All AUC Press publications can be bought at the AUC Press Downtown Bookstore, or ordered online through the AUC Press website.   

The AUC Press Downtown Bookstore
Entrance from Sheikh Rihan Street
Corner of Tahrir Square
Tel: (+202) 2797 5929
www.aucpress.com 

Munira Al-Sahi, a young unmarried Saudi woman with wide “bewitching eyes”, appears in the very first page of the novel, Munira’s Bottle. Author Yousef Al-Mohaimeed introduces the reader early on to the “scandalous calamity” that his main character finds herself in, telling of the old bottle in which Munira keeps her written secrets on ornamented pieces of paper, as he weaves around her an intricate web of human relations filled with deception, magic, honor, radicalism, and revenge.

In a recent interview, Yousef Al-Mohaimeed talked about what inspired him to write his second novel novel, Munira’s Bottle, translated by Anthony Calderbank, and published last month by the AUC Press. 

“Honor and revenge is very common in every country, but more so in the Arab world,” said Al-Mohaimeed.  

"It is the conflict within Saudi society, brought about through change, that created people like Munira and her family," explained Al-Mohaimeed. “Fifty years ago, life was very simple, there were few options. But now modern life has caused conflict between religious extremists and those who accept change.”

With suggestive descriptions of promiscuity, of women promised marriage, seduced, and then deceived, of fervent religious male family members who feel responsible to uphold their women’s honor and insure their morality, this novel touches on many sensitive issues. “A lot of themes are controversial in Saudi Arabia,” explained the Saudi native. “This conservative society sees themes such as love, sex, and religion as offensive.”

But Al-Mohaimeed says he does not worry too much about censorship. “To be honest, the censors understand more than the society,” noted the 46-year-old author from Riyadh. “The censors are actually receiving requests from members of the community, especially religious fanatics, to have books banned,” he added. “Some extremists stormed a bookshop in Riyadh and took all copies of Munira’s Bottle.”

His first novel, Wolves of the Crescent Moon, first published by the AUC Press in 2007, and now available in paperback (AUC Press, 2010), is about hope and redemption. Told in an elegantly constructed narrative, the novel connects the lives of three damaged peoplean old Bedouin man, an orphan, and a eunuch.

“After I finished my novel Wolves of the Crescent Moon, I started to think about women who were suffering from discrimination by the community, and how they are overly controlled,” explained Al-Mohaimeed. “The challenge was to write from a woman’s voice, especially one from a closed society.”

In his critical portrait of Saudi society, marred by the oppression of women and religious fanaticism, and set against the backdrop of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and the first Gulf War, Al-Mohaimeed unveils the story of Munira, deceived by her male nemesis, who wreaks revenge for an insult to his character and manhood. But Al-Mohaimeed also tells the stories of other Saudi women, either victims or perpetrators of crimes, characters pained and tormented, trapped in cocoons of silence and fear, in a patriarchal society regulated by a strict moral code.

“I write about what happens in the Saudi society because I know it better than myself,” explained the author. In Saudi Arabia, both of Al-Mohaimeed’s novels sold well. Four editions so far have been published of Munira’s Bottle. “I think that this novel has helped me become better known in Saudi Arabia and in the Arab world,” said Al-Mohaimeed, who is also drawing international attention.

For world-renowned journalist and author Annie Proulx, winner of many distinguished literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Saudi novelist is “a rising star in international literature.” Proulx described Munira’s Bottle as a “rich and skillfully crafted story of a dysfunctional Saudi Arabian family.”

“One of its strengths lies in its edgy characters: Munira, a sultry, self-centered, sexually repressed woman; Ibn al-Dahhal, the bold imposter who deceives and betrays her; and Muhammad, her perpetually angry and righteous brother, a catalyst who forces the events,” writes Proulx.

Putting this praise into perspective, Al-Mohaimeed said: “I think it is magnificent that the author of The Shipping News writes such things about a young writer from Saudi Arabia. It gives me a sense of responsibility.”  
His latest novel, Pigeons Don't Fly in Buraydah (not yet translated into English) about the so-called Committee for Virtue, which stalks young unmarried couples in Riyadh, is banned in Saudi Arabia.

Proulx also praises Al-Mohaimeed’s writing as an “opening door into Arab lives and minds” a door he seems comfortable leaving open.
“I think we learned a lot about the Japanese, their lives and their minds, through writers like Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Haruki Murakami. We also know more about Indian culture from Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Aravind Adiga. I hope that I can describe the lives of Arabs that I see and live with, to all readers around the world.”

Al-Mohaimeed is currently working on a new novel. “It talks about the events at the beginning of the century in the Arabian Peninsula.”

To read the first three chapters of Munira’s Bottle, click here.

To order the book online, click here.

In the splendid Gold Room of Cairo’s Manial Palace, the AUC Press launched earlier this month the magnificent, hand-bound, silk-cover edition of A Secret Voyage, a monumental new book of only 750 copies, by Zahi Hawass and photographer Sandro Vannini, in the presence of ambassadors and prominent personalities, including Egypt's former minister of foreign affairs, Ahmed Maher.

During the event, guests could browse the numbered LE22,000 volume, on display, along with an exhibition of a selection of the book’s photographs.

"This book was the idea of Sandro Vannini," said Zahi Hawass following a brief introduction by Mark Link, director of the AUC Press. "It would not have been possible without his beautiful photographs, that are in my opinion, better than the things you see inside the actual tombs," added Hawass.

As the title of this large 400-page book suggests, A Secret Voyage is an exclusive journey through the captivating world of the Theban Necropolis. Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, chronicles anecdotes and personal stories about his years of experience in the field, during which he made many remarkable discoveries, including the mystery of Tutankhamun’s death.

“The Valley of the Kings has more magic and mystery than any other pharaonic site in Egypt,” writes Hawass, in the introductory chapter about his connection with the west bank of the Nile and the mortuary temples.

Through his highly entertaining narrative, combined with translated pharaonic poems, Hawass takes the reader into the world of love, beauty, celebration, work, conflict, riverbank life, and the netherworld of the ancient Egyptians.In parallel, Italian photographer Sandro Vannini brings to life these themes through stunning super-high-resolution images. He uses cutting-edge digital techniques and specially designed lighting to photograph 166 images that are meticulous details taken from unique perspectives of countless rare treasures—an intricate weave of a wooden funerary chair, the superb craftsmanship of royal earrings, the bold brush strokes of a tomb painting, or the refinement of a gold shrine engraving—unseen or long closed to the world but now unveiled through the photographer’s “long hours of observation, sometimes in total solitude” and unique access to restricted sites across Egypt.

"This book was made with the idea to illustrate a secret voyage inside the ancient Egyptian culture," explained Vannini during the book launch. "Zahi gave me the possibility to do a wonderful job but at the same time it is good for the country because the more the media are interested in this book, the more people abroad are speaking about Egyptian culture," he added.

Where Vannini evokes the refinement of the ancient Egyptians’ craftsmanship with a close-up of an exquisite blue kohl holder from the New Kingdom, Hawass describes the beauty regimes of ancient Egyptian women, who used eye liner, powder, beauty masks, and “ancient breath mints” made of fragrant plants, and wore “tight dresses of white linen.”

Hawass also recalls some of the “beautiful true” love stories of his ancestors, from the legendary ones—Cleopatra and her lover Mark Anthony, Nefertiti and her husband Akhenaten, to the less known ones—Queen Tiy, “a woman of common origins” married to King Amenhotep III, who inscribed scarabs on their tombs telling of their marriage.

“How did someone in ancient Egypt go about winning the heart of their beloved?” asks Hawass. “Magic and the assistance of the gods could be powerful tools in the quest of love,” explains the Egyptologist who was chosen by Time magazine, in 2006, as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. “Ladies and men also wrote spells on amulets to make their lovers come near.”

But A Secret Voyage looks well beyond devotion and everlasting beauty. It also portrays ancient Egyptians, in their daily life, at work, fishing, cultivating the land, working metals, developing other industries, in a time when “each week consisted of nine days and the tenth was a vacation,” when foreign lands were called khaswt— “places lacking in civilization, places of chaos,” and when “celebrations included music and dance performances as well as plenty of food and drink.”

The book closes with the afterlife and the faces of the past.

The ancient Egyptians had many names for the next world—the ‘west’ or the ‘underworld’, writes Hawass. “They believed in an afterlife based around resurrection and immortality following judgment. Therefore, they could well be the first people in the world to believe in punishment and reward in the afterlife.”

This “beautiful place ruled by justice and truth in which the deceased could relax among trees, water, and fields” that Hawass describes is illustrated by moving images such as a fragment of a tomb painting with Osiris, the king of the land of the dead, holding the ankh, the symbol of life, that he used to guarantee the continuation of the afterlife of the deceased.

“Vannini has mastered the art of digital photography, and the result is a brilliant collection of images highlighting Egypt’s cultural contribution to the world,” said Vanessa Kramer, director of photography at Corbis. “Clients will recognize this work as a new standard in Egyptian photography.”

Zahi Hawass and Sandro Vannini collaborated last year on another important Egyptology book, Life in Paradise: The Noble Tombs of Thebes, one of the highlights of the AUC Press fall 2009 publications.

The AUC Press is the exclusive distributor in Egypt of A Secret Voyage.

To view a video of the book launch at the Manial Palace, go to the AUC Press Facebook.

To view photographs of the event, click here.

April 2010

This month the American University in Cairo Press celebrated Jehan Sadat’s first art exhibition, Landscapes of the Heart 1986−2009, in the Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art, at the AUC Downtown Cultural Center. 

Prominent personalities attending the March 7 opening included Mrs. Sadat herself, the former First Lady of Egypt, Farah Diba Pahlavi, the former Empress of Iran, and the ambassadors of Belgium, Canada, Japan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey to Egypt. Among the guests of Cairo’s cultural community were Nabil Elarabi, former member of the International Law Commission of the United Nations, al-Akhbar satirist Ahmed Ragab, cartoonist and journalist Moustafa Hussein, art critic Farid Fadel, and longstanding AUC Press friends, including Naam El Baz, Nazli Shakhbandar, and Loulou Khalifa.

“We are here to celebrate these wonderful paintings of Jehan Sadat and to introduce this secret treasure to the world,” said Mark Linz, director of the AUC Press, to the large crowd gathered in the gallery for the red ribbon cutting ceremony.

The fifty-one acrylic paintings of Jehan Sadat, on exhibit in the Margo Veillon Gallery until the end of March, depict mostly landscapes, some inspired directly from Mit Abul Kum, the village in the Nile Delta that is the birthplace of her late husband and former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Other themes include traditional Egyptian village and river scenes, feluccas, and camel caravans, and mountain, waterfall, and lake scenes of North America. 

“I feel that these paintings are almost a philosophical introspective about Jehan Sadat’s time in both worlds, in Egypt and in the United States, where she is talking about the past in color and in form, like a visual need,” said Egyptian artist Farid Fadel, on the opening night.

The utopian tranquility and serenity of the artwork mirror Jehan Sadat’s attachment to her home country and her deep conviction in fostering peace, as reflected in her latest book My Hope for Peace, published by the AUC Press in March 2009.

A number of paintings were sold on the opening night. “For me, this is Egypt,” said Brigitte Saman, describing Island Village, the painting she bought showing a rural scene of the Delta. “Jehan Sadat has painted with her heart, there is a lot of honesty in her work,” added Saman, an avid collector of Egyptian art and a resident of Cairo for the past fifteen years.

Landscapes of the Heart is the second exhibition to be held in the Margo Veillon Gallery of Modern Egyptian Art since it was inaugurated last November.

The gallery preserves and exhibits the permanent collection of Margo Veillon and showcases historic retrospectives of twentieth-century Egyptian art, by artists whose artwork either appears in an AUC Press publication, or who have published books with the AUC Press, like Jehan Sadat.

Located on Sheikh Rihan Street, in the historic Sheikh Rihan palace building of the AUC Downtown Cultural Center, the Margo Veillon gallery is open daily from 4:00 to 8:00 pm.

Click here to view images of the grand opening of the Jehan Sadat art exhibition.

Click here to view a video of the opening.

The AUC Press held a special gala dinner in the historic Oriental Hall earlier this month, to mark its milestone 50th Anniversary. Prominent figures attending the high-profile event included Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni, Cairo Governor Abdel Azim Wazir, US ambassador to Egypt, Margaret Scobey, and members of the AUC Board of Trustees, including Ahmed Zewail, Nobel laureate and member of the US president council of advisors on science and technology.

Among the other distinguished guests were Zahi Hawass, author and secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, award-winning Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany, internationally acclaimed Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, and a select group of AUC Press authors and friends from Cairo’s cultural community.

A number of speakers were invited to talk about the AUC Press, on the occasion of its jubilee celebration, starting with Alaa Al Aswany, three of whose books are published by the AUC Press (The Yacoubian Building, 2004; Chicago, 2007; and Friendly Fire, 2009).  

“The great lesson of literature is that it teaches us that we can be different in color, in culture, and in religion, but that we are basically all human beings, with the same feelings, the same thoughts, and the same heart,” said Al Aswany. “I think this concept is essential to understand what the AUC Press has done, making it possible for many Arabic novels to be read in other parts of the world. The AUC Press has given Arab writers the opportunity to have their work translated,” he added, before explaining his own personal relation with the AUC Press.

“In my case, the AUC Press really changed my life,” said Al Aswany. “During the 90s, I wrote three books and I tried to have them published in Egypt but I failed,” he added. “When I wrote my fourth book, The Yacoubian Building in 2002, the AUC Press decided to publish the English version of it. That was the beginning of my huge international success,” he explained.  “I have received many prestigious awards, I have been appreciated by many of the leading literary critics, and my books have been on bestselling lists in many western countries, but I would say that this great success is not all mine, it is ours, it is AUC Press’s success and my success,” concluded Al Aswany.

Mark Linz then briefly introduced the next speaker, Zahi Hawass, whom he described as “a star archaeologist and a very good friend.” Hawass has published eighteen books with the AUC Press, over the past fifteen years. “I think all of this success comes because of this gentleman,” said Hawass, pointing to the AUC Press director.

Among the other highlights of the evening was a reading by Omar Sharif from Alaa Al Aswany’s Friendly Fire. “I am a great admirer of his work,” said the celebrated actor about his author friend. “He is a very sarcastic man and a very humorous man,” warned Sharif, before reading Games, a short story about an obese schoolboy who succumbs to the demeaning mockeries and insults of his bullying classmates.   

After the reading, Egypt’s virtuoso pianist Ramzi Yassa was invited to play some Chopin compositions.

Later in the evening, Mark Linz gave a broad overview of the mission, growth, and accomplishments of the AUC Press since it was first created in 1960. “We wanted to develop a large and diversified publishing program that would also reach a wide audience,” said Linz, who first joined the AUC Press in 1983, and then returned again in 1995. “A book is not published until it is sold, so we opened our first bookstore downtown, today 25 years old,” he noted, adding that the AUC Press now operates four other bookstores throughout Cairo.  

AUC’s president David Arnold also addressed the hundred guests, reflecting on the impact that the AUC Press continues to have on the American University in Cairo: “I think the AUC Press is a tremendous asset to the university. It really enables us to fulfill our scholarly mission in the production and dissemination particularly of academic publications, which in the Middle East is vitally important.”

“The AUC Press also helps fulfill our mission of bridging cultures between east and west,” added Arnold, “particularly in translation, which has done so much to open up access to the appreciation of Arabic literature.”

To showcase its backlist of more than 1,000 publications and highlight its 50 years of publishing experience that today make the AUC Press the leading English-language publisher in the region, a selection of publications was on display including K.A.C. Creswell’s seminal A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts, and Crafts of Islam (1961).

Finally, awards were presented to three distinguished friends of the AUC Press: Richard F. Pedersen, AUC President at the time of the Press's great expansion in the1980s; George  Scanlon, author of one of the first books published by the AUC Press, A Muslim Manual of War (1960); and Aleya Serour, author and former AUC Press associate director, who worked at the AUC Press for more than forty years. “These have been the most hectic and the most enjoyable years of my life,” said Serour.

To view photographs of the event, click here.

Numbers actually weren’t his thing. He also didn’t like sitting at a desk. That was during the days when Sherif Sonbol worked as an insurance underwriter for some years, after studying commerce at Cairo University and in London, and before changing careers.

Today Sonbol is a veteran photographer at Al Ahram and head of the photography section at the Cairo Opera House. He was also worked on various AUC Press publications, including Egyptian Palaces, The Churches of Egypt, Mulid!, and the forthcoming The Nile Cruise: An Illustrated Journey, which will be available end of May.

Looking back on the patience, coordination, and organization needed to complete the illustrations for The Churches of Egypt, Sonbol says: “All the benches inside the churches needed to be cleared out, we could only shoot with the doors open in order to benefit from the daylight, and we had to find ways to deal with the loads of tourists visiting the sites.”   

He would call himself an impulsive photographer. “If I see a shot I like, I always take it, I don’t think twice,” he says. Only after he’s taken the initial shot does he then try to improve it.  

Some shots, as for The Churches of Egypt, require much preparation. “It depends on what I am photographing,” he says. “Sometimes a shot could take all day to set up.” 

Gaining access to the churches, even with the necessary permits and paperwork, was also not always straightforward. “The guards at the sites are simple people from Upper Egypt, good Christians looking for jobs, but they can’t read. And when I showed up, with my beard, they would not want to let me into the sites thinking, I was perhaps a fanatic Muslim,” explains Sonbol, smiling his way through a scenario he seems familiar with.

“A good shot is one that grabs your attention,” says Sonbol. On the cover of his forthcoming book, The Nile Cruise, dedicated to Giovanna Montalbetti, is the temple of Philae. The bright fuchsia of the blooming bougainvillaea reflect in the Nile, wrinkled slightly by small ripples in the waters. “Your eye usually gravitates toward the brightest part of the photograph,” he adds pointing at the luminosity of the floral vines on the book cover.

He insists that this book would not have been possible without the relentless assistance and coordination of Montalbetti, who not only frequently stopped the flow of tourists for the moment of a photograph but also scouted the best shooting locations at the various sites. "She is the main character in this book," he explains, stressing the big difference it made to have such a reliable and efficient assistant working with hm.

“Light is everything,” he continues, noting that there are different types of ‘good’ light that a photographer can work with: hard light, back light, side light, soft light, harsh light, and window light. “Flat light is what you don’t want because you don’t see shadows or depth,” he says.

“Architecture is very hard to shoot,” explains Sonbol. “Finding the right angle, getting the lines straight so that the building you are photographing does not look like it is falling…,” he adds, explaining that sometimes he carries around a level that he places on his camera.

The Nile Cruise, which was six years in the making, was his book idea. “You cannot do a Nile cruise without this book because it has secret places,” explains Sonbol. “It shows carvings and angles that are in no other books,” he adds, describing a photograph of a detail from the Ramesseum temple, on the West bank, showing the hand of God drawing images with a brush.

Sonbol then alludes to another example, referring to the Column Hall in Karnak: “My picture of it in this book is the only one that can show the actual size, the volume, the dimensions of the entire hall."

Most of the photographs for this book were shot in the middle of summer, in the heat of the day. “The stone carvings on the walls of the temples were shot when the sun fell from right above, when the light is only good for half an hour, but this is what makes them stand out in the photographs.”

It also meant photographing objects protected behind dirty glass reflections and bracing bus loads of tourists at some of the sites. “Some of the tombs have very narrow halls, lots of visitors, and no light,” explains Sonbol, who used very slow film, adding further complication to the arleady difficult conditions.

“This is an art book, not a history book. Books made by normal people might be more appreciated by tourists than books make by Egyptologists,” adds Sonbol, stressing that he also does not want to mislead the visitor with his photographs.

“I never deliver an image that doesn’t actually exist and I don’t enhance the color of my photographs very much, so that they look quite close to the real thing.”  

After all his years of experience, Sonbol is careful in talking about his work. “I never ever felt that I am a good photographer,” he says. Yet his photographs have been exhibited on multiple occasions, including at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and in New York, at Lincoln Center, the New York Times praising his "brilliant" photography in a review. 

He also does not believe much in studying other photographers’ work. “You end up imitating them and it interferes with you creating your own style,” he says.

When asked why he cares about photography, he answers with his characteristic wry humor: “It is easy. You push a button.”  But on a more serious note, he then adds: “If I wasn’t doing this work, I would have died a long time ago.”

April 2010

December 5 - 10, 2009

December 11, 2009

Tuesday, November 17, 2009, 5 pm

Sunday, 22 November 2009

Click above for more details on the program and on how to apply...

The AUC Press celebrates Sarite Sander's The Eternal Light of Egypt: A Photographic Journey.

The AUC Press, the Friends of the Manial Palace, and the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo celebrate Islamic art and architecture at Qubbat Afandina in Cairo’s Northern Cemetery.

AUC Press author Bahaa Taher wins the first International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the ‘Arabic Booker’) for his novel Sunset Oasis.

“A growing number of readers worldwide have the opportunity to discover Arabic literature translated into English thanks to the American University in Cairo Press, the leading English-language publisher in the region.”
—Arab News (January 2008)

Special AUC Press exhibit
Textbooks at reduced prices
New general interest books
Bargains at up to 80% discount
Nasr City Fair Grounds
January 24 — February 4, 2008
10 am to 7 pm

Don't miss it! Your favorite authors will autograph your favorite books
Saturday, January 26, 2008
10 am to 6 pm (RSVP Nabila Akl: 2797 6896 / 6893)

The AUC Press hosted a special centenary event honoring Swiss artist Margo Veillon (1907–2003) at the Cairo Opera House on Sunday, February 4, 2007.

On April 22, the AUC Press celebrated the publication of  by the internationally known Egyptian jewelry designer Azza Fahmy.

Farouk Abdel Wahab’s translation of Khairy Shalaby’s The Lodging House (AUC Press, 2006) will be awarded the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation

The American University in Cairo Press will announce the winner of the 2007 Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature on December 11, 2007.

Naguib Mahfouz
1911–2006

His Life and Work 

Naguib Mahfouz was born on December 11, 1911, in the old Gamaliya quarter of Cairo, the youngest of seven children in a family of five boys and two girls. Although he had many siblings, Mahfouz felt like an only child because the next youngest brother was ten years older than him. He mourned his lack of normal sibling bonds, which is reflected in the portrayal of fraternal relationships in much of his work. But his childhood was a happy one—the family was stable and loving, with religion playing a very important role in their life—and there are many signs of Mahfouz’s affection for his early childhood in his work.

He spent his first nine or ten years in Gamaliya, which plays an important role in his earlier, realistic novels such as Midaq Alley and The Cairo Trilogy, and figures symbolically in later books like Children of the Alley and The Harafish. The alley of his childhood is a kind of microcosm of Egyptian society in his works. The family house, also, seems to have inspired Mahfouz and serves as the model for the Abd al-Jawad family house in The Cairo Trilogy. Mahfouz recalls the various rooms and secret places in these novels, including the roof, which becomes a scene for family gatherings and the meetings of lovers.