On the State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections (A Tahrir Studies Edition) - Hardcover

Al Aswany, Alaa; Wright, Jonathan

3.66

263 ratings by Goodreads

9789774164613: On the State of Egypt: A Novelist's Provocative Reflections (A Tahrir Studies Edition)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 977416461X ISBN 13: 9789774164613

Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press, 2011

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The bestselling author of he Yacaoubian Building and hicago turns his attention to current affairs in Egypt.

In the novels and short stories of Alaa Al Aswany, characters struggle with class differences, police brutality, poverty, sexual harassment, and political corruption; now, in a new collection of the weekly newspaper columns previously published in Arabic, Al Aswany considers these same issues that torment modern Egyptian society. He has a great deal to say about one of the most pressing questions on everyone's mind: who will be the next president of Egypt, and how will he be elected? He discusses the moral ambiguity of appointed politicians, the suitability of democratic reforms in a Muslim society, and the inherent contradiction in the actions of the religiously observant policeman who tortures or the man who harasses women. Critical, controversial, and straightforward, Al Aswany asks his government to serve the people, and the people to demand what they deserve.

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About the Author:

Alaa Al Aswany was born in 1957. A dentist by profession, Al Aswany is the author of the bestselling novel The Yacaoubian Building(AUC Press, 2005), Chicago (AUC Press, 2007), and the novella and short story collection Friendly Fire (AUC Press 2009).

Jonathan Wright is the translator of Judgment Day by Rasha al Ameer (AUC Press, 2011).

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 * *

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