Breaking Bourgeois Taboos in Cairo: Ihsan Abdel Quddous’s A Nose and Three Eyes, by Gretchen McCullough Book Reviews [email protected] Mon, 10/14/2024 - 14:18 Five or six years ago, I was reading Ihsan Abdel Quddous (1919–1990) with my Arabic teacher and thought of writing an article about him in English, but I found only one translation on Amazon. I was puzzled. Why had one of the best-known Egyptian novelists gone untranslated? Had leftist Egyptian intellectuals steered Arabists away from him, dubbing him an aristocratic right-winger? Had he been unfairly stereotyped as a novelist who wrote only for teenage girls? Or had he simply been unlucky in the quixotic business of English publication? It was unclear. Because so many of Abdel Quddous’s novels have been made into movies, Egyptians know him by heart. (His film scripts sold like hot cakes in Egyptian cinema.) Abdel Quddous—a prominent journalist, prolific novelist, and editor of the well-known cultural magazine Rose Al-Youssef—was a champion of free expression and the rights of women throughout his life. At last receiving their due, two of his novels were recently published by Hoopoe, the imprint of AUC Press: I Do Not Sleep (2021) and A Nose and Three Eyes (2024). Both were translated by Jonathon Smolin. In A Nose and Three Eyes, first published in Arabic in 1963, Abdel Quddous dissects the relationships between men and women in a conservative society, sparing no one,... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-10-14 19:18:43 UTC ]
Claire Adam has won the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists with her "electrifying" debut Golden Child (Faber). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-18 18:50:22 UTC ]
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News and Events WLT Norman, Okla. (June 11, 2019) – Robert Con Davis-Undiano, Neustadt Professor and executive director of the World Literature Today organization at the University of Oklahoma, this week announced the names of nine writers to be the jury... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-10 16:04:37 UTC ]
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