Word: egyptian
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...Such high praise may be a little premature: Mahfouz founded modern Arabic literature and wrote almost 50 novels over half a century. But Al Aswany - who continues to work on the side as a dentist in Cairo - does share the legendary author's talent for constructing simple stories about Egyptian life that convey universal truths in defense of human dignity. His writing tackles the most pressing issues facing Egyptian society today, from dictatorship and corruption to economic inequality and Islamic extremism. "The greatest role of literature is its human message," said the gregarious, barrel-chested author at the recent launch...
...hour pep talk from the master. Rejecting the Arab vogue for postmodernism, Al Aswany has stayed true to the Mahfouz tradition of social realism. And like Mahfouz, he has a gift for writing literary page turners that are endlessly discussed by café intellectuals while also being accessible to Egyptians who normally have more time for Al-Ahly, their favorite football team. "He is read everywhere," says Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury, editor of Al-Mulhaq, the Arab world's leading literary supplement. "The importance of Al Aswany is that he reinvented the popular Egyptian novel, which had died. Literature cannot...
...actual sympathy, for Islamic extremists, and has written explicitly about issues like homosexuality and abortion that had long been taboo in Arabic literature. One of the main characters in Yacoubian, for example, is the gay editor of a Cairo newspaper, who uses money to seduce a married Egyptian soldier desperate to feed his family. In Chicago, a female character visits a sex shop and there's a lengthy discussion of the merits of vibrators...
...contemporary Egypt. The saga of the inhabitants of a downtown Cairo apartment building, it examines the historical, social and political vicissitudes that Al Aswany believes have left the country in a state of physical and moral ruin. One character, Zaki Bey, is the scion of an aristocratic clan, an Egyptian Romeo who uses his Yacoubian Building office for lecherous assignations, oblivious to the crumbling edifice around him. At the lower end of the social order are characters who reside in shacks on the building's rooftop; Taha is the earnest son of the building's doorman, and Busayna...
...knows, it might work. At some level someone in Egypt is complicit in smuggling weapons into Gaza. Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition party, still looks at Hamas as its Palestinian branch. Iran and Hizballah have been soliciting Egypt's cooperation in more help for Gaza. Will Egyptian President Mubarak be able to hold the line, keep a lid on Gaza, when Israel itself...