Studies in Coptic Culture
Transmission and Interaction
Edited by Mariam AyadCoptic contributions to the formative theological debates of Christianity have long been recognized. Less well known are other, equally valuable, Coptic contributions to the transmission and preservation of technical and scientific knowledge, and a full understanding of how Egypt’s Copts survived and interacted with the country’s majority population over the centuries. Studies in Coptic Culture attempts to examine these issues from divergent perspectives. Through the careful examination of select case studies that range in date from the earliest phases of Coptic culture to the present day, twelve international scholars address issues of cultural transmission, cross-cultural perception, representation, and inter-faith interaction. Their approaches are as varied as their individual disciplines, covering literary criticism, textual studies, and comparative literature as well as art historical, archaeo-botanical, and historical research methods. The divergent perspectives and methods presented in this volume will provide a fuller picture of what it meant to be Coptic in centuries past and prompt further research and scholarship into these subjects.
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17 September 2016
Hardbound
288 pp.24 illustrations
15X23cm
50
Resurrection in Alexandria
The Painted Greco–Roman Tombs of Kom al-Shuqafa
Anne-Marie Guimier-SorbetsAndré Pelle
Mervat Seif el-Din
Introduction by Jean-Yves Empereur
Translated by Colin Clement
In the Greco-Roman catacombs of Alexandria, uniquely decorated tombs from the time when religious boundaries blurred and syncretistic beliefs flourished have long been known. But it was only in 1993 that researchers discovered faint traces of paintings on walls previously thought to be blank, or underneath other painted scenes: the hidden scenes could be partly made out and photographed using ultraviolet light. Then in 2012, new computer technology was used to reveal the lost images—and colors—even more clearly. Here the team present, examine, and interpret what they found, teasing meaning and intent from the alternating scenes of Greek and Egyptian mythology, as employed by the citizens of a multicultural Alexandria at the beginning of the second century CE, in pursuit of a happy afterlife.
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15 July 2017
Hardbound
172 pp.200 illus. color and b/w
24X24cm
35.00
Entrepreneurship in the Arab World
Ten Case Studies
El-Khazindar Business Research and Case CenterThis collection of case studies showcases the experiences of ten intriguing entrepreneurial ventures from emerging markets in the Arab world (Egypt, the UAE, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia). Readers will gain an in-depth insight on a variety of localized strategic, managerial, marketing, and innovative approaches and practices, which create unique challenges and opportunities in a region undergoing rapid political, social, and economic transformations. The unique case studies address different stages within the exciting entrepreneurial cycle, from start-up to growth, sustainability, and international expansion. This casebook is a valuable resource for anyone wanting to know more about launching and sustaining a business within developing Arab economies, as well as being an effective teaching tool for disciplines related to new venture management and entrepreneurship.
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22 July 2016
Hardbound
172 pp.15X23cm
29.95
The Church in the Square: Negotiations of Religion and Revolution at an Evangelical Church in Cairo
Cairo Papers Vol. 33, No. 3
Anna Jeannine DowellIn the wake of the 25 January 2011 popular uprisings, youth and leaders from the Kasr el Dobara Evangelical Church, the largest Protestant congregation in the Middle East, situated just behind Tahrir Square embarked on new, unpredictable political projects. This ethnography seeks to elucidate the ways that youth and leaders utilized religious imagery and discourse and relational networks in order to carve out a place in the Egyptian public sphere regarding public religion, national belonging, and the ideal citizen.
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9 July 2015
Paperback
112 pp.14.2X21.6cm
14.95
Khan al-Khalili
A Novel
Naguib MahfouzTranslated byRoger Allen
The time is 1942, the Second World War is at its height, and the Africa Campaign is raging along the northern coast of Egypt as far as El Alamein. Against this backdrop of international upheaval, this novel tells the story of the Akifs, a middle-class family that has taken refuge in Cairo’s historic and bustling Khan al-Khalili neighborhood. Believing that the German forces will never bomb such a famously religious part of the city, they seek safety among the crowded alleyways, busy cafés, and ancient mosques of the Khan, adjacent to the area where Mahfouz himself spent much of his young life. Through the eyes of Ahmad, the eldest Akif son and the novel’s central character, Mahfouz presents a richly textured vision of the Khan, drawing on his own memories to assemble a lively cast of characters whose world is framed by the sights, smells, and flavors of his childhood home. As Ahmad, a minor civil servant who has sacrificed both education and personal ambition in order to support his family, interacts with the people and traditions of Khan al-Khalili, a debate emerges that pits old against new, history against modernity, and faith against secularism. Addressing one of the fundamental questions of the modern era, Mahfouz asks whether, like the German bombs that threaten Khan al-Khalili daily, progress must necessarily be accompanied by the destruction of the past.
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9 July 2015
Paperback
312 pp.14.5X22.5cm
11.99
Tales from Dayrut
Short Stories
Mohamed MustagabTranslated by Humphrey Davies
This collection of fourteen connected stories and a novella, From the Secret History of Numan Abdel Hafez, takes us deep into Upper Egypt and the village of Dayrut al-Sharif, in which Mohamed Mustagab was born. To depict a world renowned for its poverty, ignorance, vendettas, and implacable code of honor, Mustagab deploys the black humor and Swiftian sarcasm of the insider who knows his society only too well. When the stillness of a day’s end is shattered by a single gunshot, poignant beauty merges seamlessly into horror, and when a police officer seeking to unravel a murder finds himself with more body parts than he knows what to do with, violence tips as easily into farce. In counterpoint, the author’s often surrealist imagination explores the mysteries of a landscape where seductive women haunt dusty paths and a man may find himself crushed like a worm beneath another’s foot. Elsewhere, the horizons of ‘my village’ expand to include other countries (the author worked in the Arabian Peninsula for a number of years), where equally disastrous consequences follow on folly and self-delusion. Previously almost unknown in English, Mustagab’s voice is both original and disturbing.
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9 July 2015
Paperback
214 pp.12X19.5cm
9.99
Subjects of Empires/Citizens of States
Yemenis in Djibouti and Ethiopia
Samson A. BezabehAlthough the Horn of Africa was historically one of the earliest destinations for Yemeni migrants, it has been overlooked by scholars, who have otherwise meticulously documented the Yemeni presence in the Indian Ocean region. Subjects of Empires/Citizens of States draws on rich ethnographic and historical research to examine the interaction of the Yemeni diaspora with states and empires in Djibouti and Ethiopia from the early twentieth century, when European powers began to colonize the region. In doing so, it aims to counter a dominant perspective in Indian Ocean studies that regards migrants across the region as by-products of personal networks and local oceanic systems, which according to most scholarship led to cosmopolitan spaces and hybrid cultures. Samson Bezabeh argues that far from being free from the restrictions of state and empire, these migrant communities were constrained, and their agency structured, by their interactions with the institutions and relations of states and empires in the region. Elegantly combining theoretical readings with extensive empirical findings, this study documents a largely forgotten period in the history of Yemeni migration as well as contributing to the wider debates on class, citizenship, and ethnicity in relation to diaspora groups. It will appeal to specialists in Middle East studies and to those who study the Indian Ocean and Horn of Africa regions, as well as to migration and diaspora studies scholars, nongovernmental organizations, and policy makers concerned with the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region.
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22 April 2016
Hardbound
272 pp.6 b/w images
15X23cm
35
The Naguib Mahfouz Reader
Edited by
Denys Johnson-DaviesNaguib Mahfouz, the first and only writer of Arabic to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature, wrote prolifically from the 1930s until shortly before his death in 2006, in a variety of genres: novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, a regular weekly newspaper column, and in later life his intensely brief and evocative Dreams. His Cairo Trilogy achieved the status of a world classic, and the Swedish Academy of Letters in awarding him the 1988 Nobel prize for literature noted that Mahfouz “through works rich in nuance—now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous—has formed an Arabic narrative art that applies to all mankind.” Here Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as “the leading Arabic–English translator of our time,” makes an essential selection of short stories and extracts from novels and other writings, to present a cross-section through time of the very best of the work of Egypt’s Nobel literature laureate.
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22 April 2016
Paperback
352 pp.15X23cm
12.99
Mortal Designs
A Novel
Reem BassiouneyTranslated byMelanie Magidow
Captain Murad is busy planning for the Afterlife. He dreams of a grand, sunlit mausoleum on the banks of the Nile. To realize his pharaonic folly, the retired captain kindles an unlikely romance between Hazem, a feckless architect longing for immortality, and Asma, an impoverished single mother who strives for a better life for her children. As Murad’s tomb rises on the riverbank, so Hazem and Asma fall in love. A contemporary Egyptian romance of rare grace and wit, played out by characters trapped in their attitudes toward class and gender.
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22 April 2016
Paperback
248 pp.13X20.5cm
11.50
Monarchs of the Nile
New Revised Edition
Aidan DodsonFor over three thousand years, the ancient Egyptian monarchy lasted in a recognizable form, with the king as its central figure, the supreme head of the administrative, religious, political, and military state. Not merely a worldly leader, he was the chief link between the human and the divine, himself the physical offspring of a divine god. Monarchs of the Nile is a vivid and engaging account of the lives and times of some of the more significant occupants of the Egyptian throne, from the unification of the country around 3000 BC to the extinction of native rule just under three millennia later. Some, such as Thutmose III, had a major impact on their time, and were remembered by their own people until the very civilization collapsed. Others, such as Tutankhamun, were soon forgotten by the Egyptians themselves, only to burst into popular culture thousands of years after their deaths, as a result of the labors of modern archaeologists. Still more remain unknown outside the small circle of professional archaeologists, but led lives that call out for wider dissemination. Drawing on two further decades of research since Monarchs of the Nile was first published in 1995, Aidan Dodson provides a mix of all three categories, bringing together in highly readable form a compelling view of Egyptian kings and all their range of achievements.
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22 April 2016
Paperback
248 pp.68 b/w illus. and 3 maps
15X23cm
16.95
Sustainability and Innovation
The Next Global Industrial Revolution
Salah M. El-HaggarForeword byLisa Anderson
One of the most urgent problems facing the world today is environmental sustainability. Current practices of pollution control, waste treatment, and environmental protection are not only hugely expensive and a burden on development but also unsustainable in the long run for their steady depletion of the world’s natural resources. Any solutions must have proven economic benefits, be technologically viable, and meet prevailing environmental and social perspectives. The main objective of this new set of studies is to describe methods that help to protect the environment and conserve natural resources. This can be achieved by applying the ‘cradle-to-cradle’ concept, which aims to use materials in closed cyclic loops without generating any type of waste or pollution. The authors provide the reader with an introduction to basic concepts of sustainable development, describe the mechanisms and benefits of related technologies, and suggest potential uses on a practical level by examining innovations developed in the mechanical engineering laboratories of the American University in Cairo. Particular focus is placed on innovation as a vital means of attaining sustainability. A timely contribution to the debate on environmentally sustainable practices, this book will be indispensable to environmentalists, scientists, economists, engineers, development specialists, and policy-makers, as well as being of interest to the lay reader.
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4 March 2016
Hardbound
352 pp.15X23cm
29.95
Committed to Disillusion
Activist Writers in Egypt from the 1950s to the 1980s
David DiMeoCan a writer help to bring about a more just society? This question was at the heart of the movement of al-adab al-multazim, or committed literature, which claimed to dominate Arab writing in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1960s, however, leading Egyptian writers had retreated into disillusionment, producing agonized works that challenged the key assumptions of socially engaged writing. Rather than a rejection of the idea, however, these works offered reinterpretation of committed writing that helped set the stage for activist writers of the present. David DiMeo focuses on the work of three leading writers whose socially committed fiction was adapted to the disenchantment and discontent of the late twentieth century: Naguib Mahfouz, Yusuf Idris, and Sonallah Ibrahim. Despite their disappointments with the direction of Egyptian society in the decades following the 1952 revolution, they kept the spirit of committed literature alive through a deeply introspective examination of the relationship between the writer, the public, and political power. Reaching back to the roots of this literary movement, DiMeo examines the development of committed literature from its European antecedents to its peak of influence in the 1950s, and contrasts the committed works with those of disillusionment that followed. Committed to Disillusion is vital reading for scholars and students of Arabic literature and the modern history and politics of the Middle East.
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8 October 2016
Hardbound
272 pp.15X23cm
35
The Scarecrow
Ibrahim al-KoniTranslated byWilliam M. Hutchins
The Scarecrow is the final volume of Ibrahim al-Koni’s desert trilogy, which chronicles the founding, flourishing, and decline of a Saharan oasis. Fittingly, this continuation of a tale of greed and corruption opens with a meeting of the conspirators who assassinated the community’s leader at the end of the previous novel, The Puppet. They punished him for opposing the use of gold in business transactions—a symptom of a critical break with their nomadic past—and now they must search for a leader who shares their fetishistic love of gold. A desert retreat inspires the group to select a leader at random, but their choice, it appears, is not entirely human. This interloper from the spirit world proves a self-righteous despot, whose intolerance of humanity presages disaster for an oasis besieged by an international alliance. Though al-Koni has repeatedly stressed that he is not a political author, readers may see parallels not only to a former Libyan ruler but to other tyrants—past and present—who appear as hollow as a scarecrow.
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30 October 2015
Paperback
128 pp.15X23cm
12.99
A Dog with No Tail
Hamdi Abu GolayyelTranslated byRobin Moger
In a world with no meaning, meaning is an act . . . This is a story about building things up and knocking them down. Here are the campfire tales of Egypt’s dispossessed and disillusioned, the anti-Arabian Nights. Our narrator, a rural immigrant from the Bedouin villages of the Fayoum, an aspiring novelist and construction laborer of the lowest order, leads us down a fractured path of reminiscence in his quest for purpose and identity in a world where the old orders and traditions are powerless to help. Bawdy and wistful, tragicomic and bitter, his stories loop and repeat, crackling with the frictive energy of colliding worlds and linguistic registers. These are the tales of Cairo’s new Bedouin, men not settled by the state but permanently uprooted by it. Like their lives, their stories are dislocated and unplotted, mapping out their quest for meaning in the very act of placing brick on brick and word on word.
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30 October 2015
Paperback
160 pp.15X23cm
10.99
Christianity and Monasticism in Middle Egypt
Minya and Asyut
Edited by Gawdat GabraHany Takla
Christianity and monasticism have long flourished along the Nile in Middle Egypt, the region stretching from al-Bahnasa (Oxyrhynchus) to Dayr al-Ganadla. The contributors to this volume, international specialists in Coptology from around the world, examine various aspects of Coptic civilization in Middle Egypt over the past two millennia. The studies explore Coptic art and archaeology, architecture, language, and literature. The artistic heritage of monastic sites in the region is highlighted, attesting to their important legacies.
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30 October 2015
Hardbound
416 pp.90 b/w illus.
15X23cm
39.95
Cairo Swan Song
Mekkawi SaidTranslated byAdam Talib
Cairo, Mother of the World, embraces millions—but some of her children make their home in the streets, junked up and living in the shadows of wealth and among the monuments that the tourists flock to see. Mustafa, a former student radical who never believed in the slogans, sets out to tell their story, but he has to rely on the help of his American girlfriend, Marcia, who he is not sure he can trust. Meanwhile, his former leftist friends are now all either capitalists or Islamists. Alienated from a corrupt and corrupting society, Mustafa watches as the Cairo he cherishes crumbles around him. The men and women of the city struggle to find lovers worthy of their love and causes worthy of their sacrifice in a country that no longer deserves their loyalty. The children of the streets wait for the adults to take notice. And the foreigners can always leave.
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30 October 2015
Paperback
304 pp.15X23cm
12.99
Cities without Palms
Tarek EltayebTranslated byKareem James Palmer-Zeid
In a desperate attempt to save his mother and two sisters from famine and disease, a young man leaves his native village in Sudan and sets out alone to seek work in the city. This is the beginning of Hamza’s long journey. Hunger and destitution lead him ever farther from his home: first from Sudan to Egypt, where the lack of work forces him to join a band of smugglers, and finally from Egypt to Europe—Italy, France, Holland—where he experiences first-hand the harsh world of migrant laborers and the bitter realities of life as an illegal immigrant. Tarek Eltayeb’s first novel offers an uncompromising depiction of poverty in both the developed and the developing world. With its simple yet elegant style, Cities without Palms tells of a tragic human life punctuated by moments of true joy.
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30 October 2015
Paperback
100 pp.12.5X20cm
10.99
Zar
Spirit Possession, Music, and Healing Rituals in Egypt
Hager El HadidiZar is both a possessing spirit and a set of reconciliation rites between the spirits and their human hosts: living in a parallel yet invisible world, the capricious spirits manifest their anger by causing ailments for their hosts, which require ritual reconciliation, a private sacrificial rite practiced routinely by the afflicted devotees. Originally spread from Ethiopia to the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf through the nineteenth-century slave trade, in Egypt zar has incorporated elements from popular Islamic Sufi practices, including devotion to Christian and Muslim saints. The ceremonies initiate devotees—the majority of whom are Muslim women—into a community centered on a cult leader, a membership that provides them with moral orientation, social support, and a sense of belonging. Practicing zar rituals, dancing to zar songs, and experiencing trance restore their well-being, which had been compromised by gender asymmetry and globalization. This new ethnographic study of zar in Egypt is based on the author’s two years of multi-sited fieldwork and firsthand knowledge as a participant, and her collection and analysis of more than three hundred zar songs, allowing her to access levels of meaning that had previously been overlooked. The result is a comprehensive and accessible exposition of the history, culture, and waning practice of zar in a modernizing world.
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21 January 2017
Hardbound
176 pp.13 color photographs
15X23cm
24.95
Islam and Modernity
Key Issues and Debates
Edited by Muhammad Khalid MasudArmando Salvatore
Martin van Bruinessen
Recent events have focused attention on the perceived differences and tensions between the Muslim world and the modern west. As a major strand of western public discourse has it, Islam appears resistant to internal development and remains inherently pre-modern. However, Muslim societies have experienced most of the same structural changes that have impacted upon all societies, developments accompanied by a wide range of social movements and by complex and varied religious and ideological debates. Key issues are selected here to give readers an understanding of the complexity of the issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including social change and the transformation of political and religious institutions, gender politics, changing legal regimes, devotional practices and forms of religious association, shifts in religious authority, and modern developments in Muslim religious thought. Contributors: Martin van Bruinessen, Deniz Kandiyoti, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Ebrahim Moosa, Armando Salvatore, Abdulkader Tayob, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Sami Zubaida. “No other book captures current debates with such effectiveness.” —Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College
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Paperback
320 pp.15.6X23.4cm
16.95
The Last of the Angels
An Iraqi Novel
Fadhil al-AzzawiTranslated byWilliam M. Hutchins
Set in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk during the 1950s, The Last of the Angels tells the slyly humorous tale of three strikingly different people in one small neighborhood. During a labor strike against the British-run Iraq Petroleum Company, Hameed Nylon becomes a labor organizer and later a revolutionary, like his hero, Mao Tse-Tung. His brother-in-law, the sheep butcher Khidir Musa, travels to the Soviet Union to find his long-lost brothers, and returns home to great acclaim (and personal fortune) in an airship. Meanwhile, a young boy named Burhan Abdullah discovers an old chest in the attic of his family’s house that lets him talk to angels. By turns satiric, picaresque, and apocalyptic, The Last of the Angels paints a loving, panoramic, and elegiac portrait of Kirkuk in the final years of Iraq’s monarchy. But as the grim reality of modern Iraqi history catches up with the novel’s events, we come to learn the depth and complexity of Hameed Nylon, Khidir Musa, and Burhan Abdullah, and al-Azzawi’s comic novel becomes a moving tale of growing up in a dangerous world.
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Paperback
288 pp.15X23cm
12.99