Bøger udgivet af The American University in Cairo Press

Hawa is a child of the grinding hardship of a Palestinian refugee camp. She has had to survive the camp itself, as well as the humiliation and destruction of an abusive family life. But now, later in life, something most unexpected has happened: she has fallen in love. Velvet unfolds over a day in Hawa's life, as she makes plans for a new beginning that may take her out of the camp.

Palestinian-Armenian Ivana eloped with a British doctor in the 1940s, in the midst of the Nakba, and emigrated to England. Over half a century later, her daughter Julie has been tasked with her dying wish: to take her ashes back to their old home in Acre.

A thrilling mystery that brings together the supernatural, a passionate love affair, and a family tragedy.

Aspiring photographer Dunya Noor discovers early on that her curious spirit, rebellious nature, and very curly hair are a recipe for disaster in 1980s Syria.

A whole new approach to seeing one of the world's great cities

In a fictional Gulf country, with its gleaming glass towers and imported greenery, the routine of day-to-day life is suddenly interrupted when the national football team qualifies for the World Cup. The Emir issues an edict ordering all native Emiratis to travel to France to support the team, leaving the country to the care of its imported labor.

Exploring themes of change, the role of culture in society, memory and writing in a text that switches midway from the third to the first person and combines narrative fiction with literary criticism, philosophical musings and quotation, Like a Summer Never to be Repeated is among the most innovative works of modern Arabic literature.

The Nobel laureate puts Egypt's leaders on trial

Suzie Mohammad Galal, born in the Egyptian city of Suez during the War of Attrition in the late 1960s, is a woman of inner conflicts who traverses the boundaries of ethnicity and religion. Her whole life is intricately tied to the wars and political events taking place in Egypt.

A comic novel from the award-winning author of The Lodging House

In a small town in the Nile Delta lives Houda the deaf and mute butcher's apprentice. Revealing the town's private stories through public sign language, Houda articulates the unspoken and the forbidden, to unsettle the apparent quietude of rural society. But his desire threatens to scandalize the town and rock its codes of public behavior.

Set on the eve of the January 1977 bread riots against IMF austerity programs and privatization that nearly brought down President Anwar Sadat, this title catches Egypt in the mid-stream of its modern history, as seen through the prism of a long winter night in the Cairo neighborhood of Kit Kat.

A collection of fourteen connected stories and a novella, that takes us deep into Upper Egypt and the village of Dayrut al-Sharif. To depict a world renowned for its poverty, ignorance, vendettas, and implacable code of honor, it deploys the black humor and Swiftian sarcasm of the insider who knows his society only too well.

A confessional novel that begins on an unbearably hot August afternoon in downtown Cairo, where the Nubian narrator has just decided, once and for all, to end his life. He seeks to expunge his failed life in the Nile: the river that had been the lifeblood of his country for millennia, and that - with Egypt's new dam - now drowns Nubia.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Ranked by The Arab Writers Union as 8th in its list of the 100 best Arabic novels

Tells the story of four generations of the same family living in an old house in the Bab al-Shaykh district of Baghdad. In this book, their private conflicts and passions are set against the wider drama of events leading up to the overthrow of prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim and the rise of the Baath party in Iraq.

A young student's dreams for a better future are shattered after he assaults one of his instructors for discriminating against him. From then on, he begins his descent into the underworld.

Exposing the dark underbelly of ideology, and delving into the idea of the 'necessary evils' of social upheaval, "Karnak Cafe" remains one of the Nobel laureate's most pointedly critical works, as relevant and incisive today as it was when it was first published in 1971.

The importance of Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 to 1989) to the emergence of a modern Arabic literature is second only to that of Naguib Mahfouz. If the latter put the novel among the genres of writing that are now an accepted part of literary production in the Arab world today, Tawfiq al-Hakim is recognized as the undisputed creator of a literature of the theater. In this volume, Tawfiq al-Hakim's fame as a playwright is given prominence. Of the more than seventy plays he wrote, The Sultan's Dilemma, dealing with a historical subject in an appealingly light-hearted manner, is perhaps the best known; it appears in the extended edition of Norton's World Masterpieces and was broadcast on the old Home Service of the BBC. The other full-length play included here, The Tree Climber, is one that reveals al-Hakim's openness to outside influences in this case, the absurdist mode of writing. Of the two one-act plays in this collection, The Donkey Market shows his deftness at turning a traditional folk tale into a hilarious stage comedy. Tawfiq al-Hakim produced several of the earliest examples of the novel in Arabic; included in this volume is an extract from his best known work in that genre, the delightful Diary of a Country Prosecutor, in which he draws on his own experience as a public prosecutor in the Egyptian countryside. Three of the many short stories he published are also included, as well as an extract from The Prison of Life, an autobiography in which Tawfiq al-Hakim writes with commendable frankness about himself. Contents: Introduction by Denys Johnson-Davies, The Sultan's Dilemma (full-length play), The Tree Climber (full-length play), The Donkey Market (one-act play), The Song of Death (one-act play), Diary of a Country Prosecutor (extract from the novel), Miracles for Sale (short story), The Prison of Life (extract from the autobiography), Azrael the Barber (short story), Satan Triumphs (short story).

An unknown observer is watching the residents of a small, closely-knit neighborhood in Cairo's old city, making notes. The college graduate, the street vendors, the political prisoner, the cafe owner, the taxi driver, the beautiful green-eyed young wife with the troll of a husband all are subjects of surveillance. The watcher's reports flow seamlessly into a narrative about Zafarani Alley, a village tucked into a corner of the city, where intrigue is the main entertainment, and everyone has a secret. Suspicion, superstition, and a wicked humor prevail in this darkly comedic novel. Drawing upon the experience of his own childhood growing up in al-Hussein, where the fictional Zafarani Alley is located, Gamal al-Ghitani has created a world richly populated with characters and situations that possess authenticity behind their veils of satire.

Displaced by the sectarian violence in the city, Maha and her husband are taken in by a distant cousin, Youssef. As the growing turmoil around them seeps into their household, a rare argument breaks out between the elderly Youssef and his young guest. Born into sanctions and war, Maha knows nothing of Iraq's good years that Youssef holds dear. Set over a single day, The Baghdad Eucharist is an intimate story of love, memory, and anguish in one Christian family.

A Life of Palaces and Exile from Istanbul to Cairo