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Yahya Taher Abdullah
Yahya Taher Abdullah (Arabic: يحيى الطاهر عبد الله) (1942–1981) was an Egyptian writer. Biography Abdullah born in Karnak in 1942. He grew up in Upper Egypt, but moved to Cairo in 1964. One of the first to recognize his talents was the writer and editor Edwar al-Kharrat who arranged a monthly stipend for him. Nonetheless, Abdullah lived a meagre existence. He gained renown in literary circles for live readings of his stories, and published several novellas and short story collections. He had no formal literary training, but was widely regarded as one of the top young Egyptian writers of the 1960s. Abdullah was one of the contributors of the avant-garde literary magazine ''Galerie 68'' which was launched in 1968. He died in a car crash in the Western Desert on 9 April 1981. In his memoirs, the translator Denys Johnson-Davies describes his acquaintanceship with Abdullah and his struggle to publish the author's short stories in English. That first collection, even ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egyptians
Egyptians ( arz, المَصرِيُون, translit=al-Maṣriyyūn, ; arz, المَصرِيِين, translit=al-Maṣriyyīn, ; cop, ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, remenkhēmi) are an ethnic group native to the Nile, Nile Valley in Egypt. Egyptian identity is closely tied to Geography of Egypt, geography. The population is concentrated in the Nile Valley, a small strip of cultivable land stretching from the Cataracts of the Nile, First Cataract to the Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean and enclosed by desert both to the Eastern Desert, east and to the Western Desert (North Africa), west. This unique geography has been the basis of the DNA history of Egypt, development of Egyptian society since Ancient Egypt, antiquity. The daily language of the Egyptians is a continuum of the local variety of Arabic, varieties of Arabic; the most famous dialect is known as Egyptian Arabic or ''Masri''. Additionally, a sizable minority of Egyptians living in Upper Egypt speak Sa'idi Arabic, a mix bet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karnak
The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (, which was originally derived from ar, خورنق ''Khurnaq'' "fortified village"), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BCE) in the Middle Kingdom (around 2000–1700 BCE) and continued into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305–30 BCE), although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian ''Ipet-isut'' ("The Most Selected of Places") and the main place of worship of the 18th Dynastic Theban Triad, with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes, and in 1979 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List along with the rest of the city. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, north of Luxor. Overview The complex is a vast open site an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south. In ancient Egypt, Upper Egypt was known as ''tꜣ šmꜣw'', literally "the Land of Reeds" or "the Sedgeland". It is believed to have been united by the rulers of the supposed Thinite Confederacy who absorbed their rival city states during the Naqada III period (c. 3200–3000 BC), and its subsequent unification with Lower Egypt ushered in the Early Dynastic period. Upper and Lower Egypt became intertwined in the symbolism of pharaonic sovereignty such as the Pschent double crown. Upper Egypt remained as a historical region even after the classical period. Geography Upper Egypt is between the Cataracts of the Nile beyond modern-day Aswan, downriver (northward) to the area of El-Ayait, which places modern-day Cairo in Lower Egypt. The northern (d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metropolitan area, with a population of 21.9 million, is the 12th-largest in the world by population. Cairo is associated with ancient Egypt, as the Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis are located in its geographical area. Located near the Nile Delta, the city first developed as Fustat, a settlement founded after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 next to an existing ancient Roman fortress, Babylon. Under the Fatimid dynasty a new city, ''al-Qāhirah'', was founded nearby in 969. It later superseded Fustat as the main urban centre during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods (12th–16th centuries). Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life, and is titled "the city of a thousand m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwar Al-Kharrat
Edwar al-Kharrat ( ar, إدوار الخراط; 16 March 1926 – 1 December 2015) was an Egyptian novelist, writer and critic. Early life He was born in Alexandria to a Coptic Christian family. He studied law at Alexandria University and worked briefly in banking and insurance. He was also actively engaged in left-wing politics and spent two years in jail from 1948 to 1950. He moved to Cairo in the mid-1950s where he worked for a time as a translator at the Romanian embassy. Writing Al-Kharrat has been described as "one of Egypt's most influential fiction writers" and "one of the most important writers in the Arab world". He was a leading figure among the group of Egyptian writers known as the Sixties Generation, and founded and edited the literary journal ''Galerie 68'', considered to be the mouthpiece of that generation. In this role, al-Kharrat promoted and disseminated the works of such writers as Sonallah Ibrahim, Bahaa Taher, Ibrahim Aslan, Yahya Taher Abdullah, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 64 . It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.Kostelanetz, Richard, ''A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes'', Routledge, May 13, 2013 The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the '' [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galerie 68
''Galerie 68'' was an avant-garde literary magazine which was headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. The magazine existed in the period 1968–1971 with a one-year interruption and produced a total of eight issues. History and profile ''Galerie 68'' was founded in Cairo by a group of ten Egyptian artists, including Ahmed Morsi and Edwar Al Kharrat. The other figures linked to the magazine were Bahaa Taher, Sonallah Ibrahim, Ibrahim Aslan and Yahya Taher Abdullah. The first issue was dated May–June 1968. Morsi was the editor-in-chief in the early issues, but later assumed the role of artistic editor and supervisor. It frequently featured short stories, and each issue was controlled by the Ministry of Culture. Ahmed Morsi reports that two ministers, Tharwat Okasha and Badr Al Din Abu Ghazi, were very flexible and tolerant about the content of the magazine. However, later the license of the magazine was revoked by the ministry in 1970. Although the publication resumed, it folded in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Western Desert (Egypt)
The Western Desert of Egypt is an area of the Sahara that lies west of the river Nile, up to the Libyan border, and south from the Mediterranean Sea to the border with Sudan. It is named in contrast to the Eastern Desert which extends east from the Nile to the Red Sea. The Western Desert is mostly rocky desert, though an area of sandy desert, known as the Great Sand Sea, lies to the west against the Libyan border. The desert covers an area of which is two-thirds of the land area of the country. Its highest elevation is in the Gilf Kebir plateau to the far south-west of the country, on the Egypt-Sudan-Libya border. The Western Desert is barren and uninhabited save for a chain of oases which extend in an arc from Siwa, in the north-west, to Kharga in the south. It has been the scene of conflict in modern times, particularly during the Second World War. Administratively the Western Desert is divided between various governorates; in the north and west, the Matrouh Governorate adm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denys Johnson-Davies
Denys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (also known as Abdul Wadud) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, ''inter alia,'' several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer. Johnson-Davies, referred to as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time" by Edward Said, translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He was also interested in Islamic studies and was co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He wrote a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, ''Fate of a Prisoner'', which was published in 1999. Born in 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada of English parentage, Johnson-Davies spent his childhood i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AUC Press
The American University in Cairo Press (AUCP, AUC Press) is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East. The largest translator of Arabic literature in the world, AUC Press has a reputation for carefully selecting and translating the best writing being produced in the language today. They are the publisher of the Nobel prize winning Egyptian novelist, Naguib Mahfouz. History The American University in Cairo Press was founded in 1960. It is an independent publisher with close ties to the American University in Cairo (AUC). Its offices are in the heart of the Egyptian capital, overlooking the historic downtown landmark, Tahrir Square. Its first publications in 1961 were K.A.C. Creswell’s ''A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam'', (AUC Press, 1961), Otto F.A. Meinardus’s ''Monks and Monasteries of the Egyptian Deserts'' (AUC Press, 1961), Edward B. Savage's ''The Rose and the Vine: A Study of the Evolution of the Tristan and Isolt Tale i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samah Selim
Samah Selim is an Egyptian scholar and translator of Arabic literature. She studied English literature at Barnard College, and obtained her PhD from Columbia University in 1997. At present she is an associate professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She has also taught at Columbia, Princeton and Aix-en-Provence universities. Selim is the author of ''The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985'' (2004). She won the 2009 Banipal Prize for her translation of Yahya Taher Abdullah's ''The Collar and the Bracelet''. She has also translated ''Neighborhood and Boulevard: Reading through the Modern Arab City'' by the Lebanese writer Khaled Ziadeh, and ''Memories of a Meltdown: An Egyptian Between Moscow and Chernobyl'' by Mohamed Makhzangi. Future releases include a translation of Miral al-Tahawy's ''Brooklyn Heights'' (end of 2011). In 2011, Selim won the Arkansas Arab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banipal Prize
The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator (or translators) for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine ''Banipal'' which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK (which runs a number of similar literary translation prizes), and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009, the prize money amounted to £3000. Winners and nominees = winner 2006 * Humphrey Davies: ''Gate of the Sun'' by Elias Khoury * Hala Halim: ''Clamor of the Lake'' by Mohamed el-Bisatie *Paul Starkey: ''Stones of Bobello'' by Edwar al-Kharrat Judges: Moris Farhi, Maya Jaggi, Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
