A chance encounter on a plane throws together Doha, a fashion designer unhappily married to a leading figure in the Mubarak regime, and Ashraf, an academic and leading dissident. The story of their relationship and Doha’s self-discovery runs alongside a young Egyptian’s search for the mother he never knew, and these intersecting narratives unfold against the background of political protests that culminate in the overthrow of the regime. A moving and at times humorous story, Butterfly Wings is an extended allegory of Egypt’s modern experience of authoritarian rule and explores the fractures and challenges of a society at the moment of revolutionary transformation. Mohamed Salmawy’s almost prophetic novel was first published in Arabic immediately prior to the events of 25 January 2011, and has been celebrated as ‘the novel that predicted the Revolution.’ First published in Arabic in 2011 by al-Dar al-Misriya al-Libnaniya as Ajnihat al-farasha.
Butterfly Wings
An Egyptian Novel
Mohamed Salmawy
Translated by
Raphael Cohen
176 pp.
12.5X20cm
ISBN 9789774166426
For sale worldwide
10.99
Raphael Cohen
Also available by this author
Naguib Mahfouz at Sidi Gaber
Reflections of a Nobel Laureate, 1994–2001
From conversations with Mohamed SalmawyIn one of his regular columns in Al-Ahram Weekly, Naguib Mahfouz at the age of 89 wrote of his feeling of having reached the penultimate station of his life, and noted how it reminded him of his annual journey from Cairo to Alexandria: at Sidi Gaber Station he begins to prepare his luggage, ready to get off the train, because the next station is the final one. This celebratory volume, published on the occasion of the Nobel laureate’s 90th birthday, brings together a selection of the more personal, reflective pieces that have appeared over the past seven years. They reveal a writer concerned as always with the human condition, with his own thought processes, and with the craft of writing, offering rare insights into the way a great writer thinks and works. The range and quality of writing is even more remarkable when one remembers that since a nearly fatal knife attack in 1994, the injuries Mahfouz sustained, combined with his failing eyesight, have made it almost impossible for him to write. But as a man who has devoted his life to the written word, Mahfouz now prepares his weekly articles through conversations with his friend Mohamed Salmawy, who has selected and gathered the pieces in this collection. Mahfouz fans and anyone interested in learning more about the life, times, and thoughts of one of the major figures of modern Arabic literature will find this volume an essential addition to their bookshelf.
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Hardbound
160 pp.13.5X21cm
16.99
The Last Station
Naguib Mahfouz Looking Back
Mohamed SalmawyTranslated byAndy Smart
Nadia Fouda-Smart
In July 2006, at the age of 94, Naguib Mahfouz, the grand old man of Egyptian novels and winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1988, was admitted to hospital after an apparently minor fall sustained in his home in Cairo. Among the few friends allowed regular visits to Mahfouz’s hospital bedside was the writer Mohamed Salmawy, former colleague at Al-Ahram newspaper and, following the failed assassination attempt in 1994 when Mahfouz had lost the full use of his right hand, an assistant in recording Mahfouz’s late creative output. The Last Station, Mohamed Salmawy’s intimate journal of Naguib Mahfouz’s final weeks, sparkles with reminiscences of joyful times together and significant events from the great writer’s life. Even for those less familiar with the writings of Naguib Mahfouz, it portrays the closeness of two writers from different generations and celebrates the life of an incomparable artist.
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Hardbound
120 pp.15X23cm
16.95
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