A chance encounter on a plane throws together Doha, a fashion designer unhappily married to a leading figure in the Mubarak regime, and Ashraf, an academic and leading dissident. The story of their relationship and Doha's self-discovery runs alongside a young Egyptian's search for the mother he never knew, and these intersecting narratives unfold against the background of political protests that culminate in the overthrow of the regime. A moving and at times humorous story, Butterfly Wings is an extended allegory of Egypt's modern experience of authoritarian rule and explores the fractures and challenges of a society at the moment of revolutionary transformation. Mohamed Salmawy's almost prophetic novel was first published in Arabic immediately prior to the events of 25 January 2011, and has been celebrated as 'the novel that predicted the Revolution.
A chance encounter on a plane throws together Doha, a fashion designer unhappily married to a leading figure in the Mubarak regime, and Ashraf, an academic and leading dissident. The story of their relationship and Doha's self-discovery runs alongside a young Egyptian's search for the mother he never knew, and these intersecting narratives unfold against the background of political protests that culminate in the overthrow of the regime. A moving and at times humorous story, Butterfly Wings is an extended allegory of Egypt's modern experience of authoritarian rule and explores the fractures and challenges of a society at the moment of revolutionary transformation. Mohamed Salmawy's almost prophetic novel was first published in Arabic immediately prior to the events of 25 January 2011, and has been celebrated as 'the novel that predicted the Revolution.
An award-winning account of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz’s most controversial novel and the fierce debates that it provoked Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Children of the Alley has been in the spotlight since it was first published in Egypt in 1959. It has been at times banned and at others allowed, sold sometimes under the counter and sometimes openly on the street, often pirated and only recently legally reprinted. It has inspired anxiety among the secular authorities, rage within the religious right, and a drawing of battle lines among Arab intellectuals and writers. It dogged Mahfouz like a curse throughout the remainder of his career, led to his attempted assassination, and sparked a public debate that continues to this day, even after the author’s death in 2006. It is Egypt’s iconic novel, in whose mirror millions have seen themselves, their society, and even the universe, some finding truth, others blasphemy. In this award-winning account, Mohamed Shoair traces the story of Mahfouz’s novel as a cultural and political object, from its first publication to the present via Mahfouz’s award of the Nobel prize for literature in 1988 and the attempt on his life in 1994. He presents the arguments that swirled about the novel and the wide cast of Egyptian figures, from state actors to secular intellectuals and Islamists, who took part in them. He also contextualizes the interactions among the principal characters, interactions that have done much to shape the country’s present. Extensively researched and written in a lucid, accessible style, The Story of the Banned Book is both a gripping work of investigative journalism and a window onto some of the fiercest debates around culture and religion to have taken place in Egyptian society over the past half-century.
The Egyptian press has a large readership and potential influence on public opinion in Egypt and the Arab world. The Egyptian Press and Coverage of Local and International Events analyzes this understudied area. Written in Egypt, the book is formed of five chapters and analyzes in qualitative and quantitative methods close to 300 newspaper and magazine articles. It studies the Egyptian press and investigates the challenges it faces to be compatible with that in the west, and evaluates the renowned book Four Theories of the press and whether today's Egyptian press can fit in one of those theories. It also looks at the concepts of framing and discourse analysis adopted later. The author examines how the Egyptian press framed the Sudanese refugees' riot in Cairo in December 2005 by the top thirteen Egyptian national, independent, and party newspapers. It found that independent and party newspapers enjoy more freedom than national ones in criticizing government and the way police tackled the protest. However, independent newspapers were more vigorous in their criticism than party ones. The author observes that the weekly magazines tended to frame their coverage in a somewhat anti-government slant, accusing authorities and ferry owners of failure and corruption. Finally, the book compares coverage of the Israeli War in Lebanon in July 2006 by Egypt's giant semi-official daily newspaper Al-Ahram with that by two prominent, non-Egyptian pan-Arab dailies Al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat. He finds that while Al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat, which are owned by Saudi businessmen, portrayed Hizbullah in an unfavorable manner, Al-Ahram was somewhat favorable in its coverage of the Lebanese resistance group.
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