Napoleon, Wittgenstein and the Egyptian Novel

Thanks to the Complete Review for this dazzler: Youssef Rakha channels the spirit of Wittgenstein for Tractato Franco-Arabicus, a playful and informative Al-Ahram review of Sonallah Ibrahim's recent novels about Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, Amrikanli (Dar Al-Mustaqbal, 2003) and its sequel Al-Qaanoun Al-Faransi (The French Law, Dar Al-Mustaqbal, 2009). In a fit of Wittgensteinian melancholy, Rakha concludes that whereof the postcolonial novel cannot speak, thereof it must remain silent:

3.5. The Turban and the Hat ends with the image of Dr Shukri waking up at 5 am to prepare for his return to the homeland -- only to find that copy of the conference programme on which he had written his address for Celine to have on the floor outside the door to his room.

3.5.1. "I picked it up to find a line in pencil beneath my address... 'My response is precisely that you are a naive, backward human being.' I put the programme in my handbag and proceeded to the lift with heavy steps."

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4. An Arab novel about the Egyptian Campaign cannot go beyond that image.

AUC Press: A Tribute

A rare publisher dedicated to translating the best of Arabic contemporary writing into English, the American University in Cairo Press is profiled in Al-Ahram Weekly by Gamal Nkrumah. AUC Director Mark Linz comments that:

As the AUC Press approaches its 50th anniversary in 2010, it has, over the past 24 years and especially over the last 12, found renewed talent and energy as it has become the major translator of contemporary Arab literature.

And it's working well for them:

We sold more books [at Cairo] this year than this time last year. Our colleagues in Europe and North America are moaning and groaning because of the global economic meltdown.

As Nkrumah comments:

There is an upsurge of interest in Arabic literature and the AUC Press is in a perfect position to take full advantage of this old-new phenomenon.

Chicago's King of the Castle

The Complete Review have just put up a piece on Cell Block Five (although the Arabic title is The Fifth Castle - a Philip K. Dick reference?), a Kafka-esque prison novel first published in English this year by Arabia. It's a novel by the distinguished Iraqi novelist Fadhil al-Azzawi, a member of the controversial 'Kirkuk Group' of radical poets in the 1960s, and founder of Shi'r poetry magazine. He left Iraq in the 1970s (shortly after writing the novel) and has since lived in Germany. A novel about a neutral, unbreakable hero who finds himself trapped in the labyrinthine twists of Iraqi politics, it sounds like potential bedside reading for President-Elect Barack Obama.

And for a strong sense of the contemporary urban Middle East, he could delve into Al-Ahram's round-up of novels about contemporary Cairo. He may, of course, be familiar with the most recent -- Alaa al-Aswany's Chicago, named for the city where Obama began his political career and where he accepted the presidency last night. A lucky co-incidence, maybe, but we hope it's one that bodes well for the future of Arab-American relations.