On the State of Egypt: What Made the Revolution Inevitable - Softcover

Aswany, Alaa Al

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307946983 ISBN 13: 9780307946980

Publisher: Vintage, 2011

Synopsis

“Alaa Al Aswany is among the best writers in the Middle East today, a suitable heir to the mantle worn by Naguib Mahfouz, his great predecessor.” –Jay Parini, The Guardian (UK)
 
From one of Egypt’s most acclaimed novelists, here is a vivid chronicle of Egyptian society, with penetrating analysis of all the most urgent issues—economic stagnation, police brutality, poverty, the harassment of women and of the Christian minority, to name a few—that led to the stunning overthrow of the Mubarak government. Al-Aswany addresses himself to all the questions being asked within Egypt and beyond: who will be the next president, and how will he be chosen in a land where heretofore only simpletons, opportunists and stooges involved themselves with elections? What role will the Muslim Brotherhood play? How can democratic reforms be effected among a people used to such contradictions as the religiously observant policeman who commits torture? In a candid and controversial assessment of both the potential and limitations that will determine his country’s future, Al-Aswany reveals why the revolt that surprised the world was destined to happen.
 
“[The] star of a new generation of Egyptian novelists.” –The Independent (UK)

About this title

About the Author:

Alaa Al Aswany is the author of The Yacoubian Building, which was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2006 and was the bestselling novel in the Arab world for more than five years; Chicago, named by Newsday as the best translated novel of 2006; The Automobile Club of Egypt; and the story collection Friendly Fire. He has received numerous awards internationally, including the Bashrahil Prize for the Arabic novel, the Kavafis Award from Greece and the Premio Grinzane Cavour from Italy. He was recently named by the London Times as one of the 50 best authors to have been translated into English over the last 50 years.

Jonathan Wright is a British journalist and translator. He joined Reuters news agency in 1980 and was based in the Middle East for three decades in his capacity as a correspondent. He has been translating books from the Arabic since 2008, beginning with Taxi by Khaled al-Khamissi. His translations have since won the 2013 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation and the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Review:

Al Aswany is a world writer, making Egyptian concerns into human ones and beautifully illuminating our always extraordinary and sometimes sad and baffling world. * * The Times * * Alaa Al Aswany, the author of The Yacoubian Building, is the novelist who best captured the bubbling frustrations of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt. * * Financial Times * * Al Aswany masterfully deciphers the forces behind social polarization over class, gender, race, religion, and politics ... refusing simple answers and tidy conclusions. * * Booklist * * The pieces that follow are written with Orwellian pungency and clarity, emotional detachment and anger eloquently sublimated. . . What emerges is a portrait of what it's like to live through a nightmare, then to wake up in a sweat and discover it's over. * * Sunday Herald * * On The State of Egypt is surely as close as a novelist can get to formulating a rapid response to the shifting sands of history. . . These are not abstract writing exercises; they are integral to the intellectual life of a nation in flux. * * Financial Times * * On the State of Egypt is...a good example of [Al Aswany's] forceful, single-minded view - as well as a showcase of some of the author's other qualities as a columnist: humour, bluntness and optimism. ... The arguments are not subtle or, indeed, complex, but they are often striking and persuasive. * * National * * On the State of Egypt is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand the social conditions that made the revolution inevitable. -- Edward King * * Sunday Times * * [Al Aswany's] account of the recent events in Egypt act as a primer to the whys and wherefores, and also as a gripping first-hand account from someone who took his own place in Tahrir Square. -- Michael Conaghan * * Belfast Telegraph * * The book . . . provides a valuable picture of the growing disquiet in through Egypt through the eyes of one of its public intellectuals. -- Dick O'Brien * * Sunday Business Post * * Delivered with compassion, insight and sardonic humour ... a new chapter in Egypt's story has begun, and Alaa Al Aswany will be there to write it. * * Skinny * * Aswany is the authentic voice of Egyptian liberalism. -- Gideon Rachman * * Financial Times * * Why bother to read a collection of newspaper articles, especially when they turn on fast-moving events in a country where reality's face changes all the time? First, these come from Egypt, focus and fulcrum of the Arab transformation, and touch on trends and movements that resonate around the region, and the world. Second, they spring from the conscience and imagination of a witness to upheaval who combines first-rate observation with firm principles and an unerring moral compass. Last, and best, that writer is Alaa Al Aswany, a peerless teller of personal stories that reveal a general truth, and one incapable - as admirers of The Yacoubian Building, Chicago or Friendly Fire will know - of a dull or timid paragraph. -- Boyd Tonkin * * Independent * * A reasonable and thoughtful critic. * * Sunday Business Post * *

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0307946983
• ISBN 13: 9780307946980
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208