The Book of Cairo (Reading the City): A City in Short Fiction - Softcover

Hassan Abdel Mawgoud; Eman Abdelrahim; Nael Eltoukhy; Areej Gamal; Hatem Hafez; Nahla Karam; Hend Ja'far; Mohamed Kheir; Ahmed Naji; Mohamed Salah Al-Azab

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910974250 ISBN 13: 9781910974254

Publisher: Comma Press, 2019

Synopsis

A police officer tortures one last suspect in the most important assignment of his career: to find the ultimate Truth... A woman confesses her love to a reclusive, masked man in a video rental shop... A disgraced doctor confronts a man whose job it is to create rumours that spread across Cairo... Founded over a thousand years ago under the sign of Mars "the victorious", Cairo has long been a welcoming destination for explorers and tourists, drawn by traces of the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis. More recently, the Egyptian capital has become a city determined to forget. Since 2013, the events of the Arab Spring have been gradually erased from its official history. The present is now contested as writers are imprisoned, publishing houses raided, and independent news sites shut down. With a new Administrative Capital being built in the desert east of Cairo, the city s future is also unclear. Here ten new voices offer tentative glimpses into Cairene life, at a time when writing directly about Egypt s greatest challenges is often too dangerous. With intimate views of life, tinged with satire, surrealism, and humour, these stories guide us through the slums and suburbs, bars and backstreets of a city haunted by an unspoken past. Translated by Adam Talib, Raphael Cohen, Basma Ghalayini, Thoraya El-Rayyes, Raph Cormack, Andrew Leber, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Elisabeth Jaquette, Kareem James Abu-Zeid & Yasmine Seale.

About this title

Review:

'The themes reach far and wide, from identity crises to social hierarchies... The city lives and breathes on the pages of this book.' --Storgy

'An appreciation grows through the reading of this book - appreciation for its people, its place on the global scale, and its ability to work as a culture that often seems like a Frankenstein's monster of inharmonious pieces.' --Books and Bao

'In The Book of Cairo, you'll find no Pyramids. No doe-eyed camels and no majestic Nile. Here you'll find gender politics, idiot bureaucrats and corrupt officials, but in the main, these stories are about the ways, active and passive, that a pall of oppression gets broken down, assimilated, absorbed and expelled. "Forget what you know - this is Cairo", ten compelling new voices are saying. And through some delicious storytelling, they deserve your time.' --Bookmunch

About the Author:

Raph Cormack is a translator, editor and author with a PhD in modern Arabic literature. He has worked as a translator for Egyptian playwright Ali Salem as well as running his own Arabic translation blog which has featured work by Mohammed Taymur, Ahmed al-Kashif, and Mohammed Ahmed Mahjoub, among others. He has previously co-edited The Book of Khartoum.

About this edition

• Publisher: Comma Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1910974250
• ISBN 13: 9781910974254
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112
• Editor: Raph Cormack