The American University in Cairo Press, founded in 1960, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2010. In half a century, the Press has grown from producing one or two books a year in the 1960s to its position today as the leading English-language publisher of the Middle East, with an annual publication program of up to 100 new books, and a backlist catalog offering of over 1,000 publications. To celebrate 50 years of excellence in publishing, Aleya Serour has drawn together extracts from some of the milestones among the fertile and diverse output of the AUC Press over five decades. Here is history, from Kent Weeks on ancient Thebes to Galal Amin on modern Egyptian society; culture, from Bernard O’Kane on early Mamluk decorative arts to Azza Fahmy on jewelry for spirit appeasement; and the best of Arabic literature in translation, from Taha Hussein and Naguib Mahfouz to Alaa Al Aswany and Ahmed Alaidy. . . . And much more, giving a rounded picture of the cultural contribution of one of the major players in Middle East publishing. Click here to download the free PDF.
Writing Egypt
History, Literature, and Culture
Edited by
Aleya Serour
384 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774163784
For sale worldwide
Related products
Alexandria
City of Memory
Michael HaagIn the decades before Nasser’s seizure of power and the Suez crisis, Alexandria was a magnet for the wealthy, the gifted, and the glamorous from around the world. The whole city looked seaward, its port one of the busiest in the Mediterranean, its spirit ecumenical, its life luxuriant and sensual. Alexandria was barely an Egyptian city, and the Egyptians who live there now inhabit the gently crumbling remains of a foreign world, whose palatial villas, Venetian apartments, art-nouveau cafes, Moorish hotels, and cinemas conceived in thirties deco, are haunted by a departed cast. “I lived a great, extravagant, and colorful life in wartime Alexandria,” recalled Lawrence Durrell, whose Alexandria Quartet is one of the greatest protraits of a city in modern literature. Michael Haag, who has lived in Alexandria, and has known Durrell and others who lived there during its cosmopolitan heyday, has retraced their footsteps to present an absorbing account of the places and the people of this most remarkable of cities. ‘’Michael Haag mixes memory and biography, politics and cultural studies in clear and seamless prose.’’—The New York Review of Books
...read more
Hardbound
352 pp.80 b/w illus.
19X23.5cm
24.95
Cairo
The City Victorious
Max RodenbeckAfter 5,000 years of continuous habitation, Cairo remains the greatest metropolis in its quarter of the globe. The seat of pharaohs and sultans, the prize of conquerors from Alexander to Napoleon, the city has never stopped reinventing itself. ‘The Victorious’ is what the Arabs called Cairo, and the indomitable spirit of the place still merits the name. Max Rodenbeck’s richly textured biography combines a sweeping timescale with a keen eye for telling detail. It traces the life of Cairo from birth—the ancient Egyptians believed Creation itself took place there—through the heights of medieval splendor, and on to the present day. Modern Cairo is a place of stark contrasts. Skyscrapers abut ancient tombs and genteel colonial mansions. Pulled between the cultural poles of Paris and Mecca, the city’s population struggles under a double load as they cope with the burden of an incomparably rich past as well as the challenges of the future. Cairo: The City Victorious is a cultural excavation of one of the world’s great cities. Fusing the excitement of travel with the stimulation of history, it is an epic, resonant work.
...read more
Paperback
413 pp.13X19.5cm
12.95
American Travelers on the Nile
Early U.S. Visitors to Egypt, 1774–1839
Andrew OliverThe Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Göttingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travelers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, traveling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Naval officers off ships of the Mediterranean squadron visited Cairo to see the pyramids. Two groups went on business, one importing steam-powered rice and cotton mills from New York, the other exporting giraffes from the Kalahari Desert for wild animal shows in New York. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travelers themselves.
...read more
Hardbound
424 pp.34 color illus.
15X23cm
29.95
Dividing the Nile
Egypt’s Economic Nationalists in the Sudan 1918–56
David E. MillsMost scholarship has attributed Sudanese independence in 1956 to British dominance of the Condominium, historical animosity toward Egypt, or the emergence of Sudanese nationalism. Dividing the Nile counters that Egyptian entrepreneurs failed to develop a united economy or shared economic interests, guaranteeing Egypt’s ‘loss’ of the Sudan. It argues that British dominance of the Condominium may have stymied initial Egyptian efforts, but that after the First World War Egypt became increasingly interested in and capable of economic ventures in the Sudan. However, early Egyptian financial assistance and the seemingly successful resolution of Nile waters disputes actually divided the regions, while later concerted efforts to promote commerce and acquire Sudanese lands failed dismally. Egyptian nationalists simply missed opportunities of aligning their economic future with that of their Sudanese brethren, resulting in a divided Nile valley. Dividing the Nile will appeal to historians, social scientists, and international relations theorists, among those interested in Nile valley developments, but its focused economic analysis will also contribute to broader scholarship on nationalism and nationalist theory.
...read more
Hardbound
376 pp.15X23cm
39.95