Books published by The American University in Cairo Press

The manifold challenges and constraints of leading American liberal arts universities based outside the United States

Morocco is a country that has been much invaded, much traveled though, and much written about in many languages. Positioned at the entrance to Africa--or the entrance to Europe--it has seen deep cultural cross-fertilization and the emergence of a very distinct culture at the threshold of two worlds. Its history is exciting and colorful; its ancient cities extraordinary in their preservation; and its people magnetic. It has drawn travelers and writers for many centuries, and continues to do so today, with the result that there exists a rich seam of description and sometimes quizzical (but generally very fond) appreciation, which Martin Rose, a long-time resident of the country, has been able to mine for this fascinating anthology.

A celebration of the history of religious life in the early Egyptian capital, in text and pictures

An autobiographical account of a journey into extremism. It opens a window onto the mind of an extremist who turns out to be disarmingly like many other clever adolescents. It provides a vital key to the understanding of a world that is both a source of fear and a magnet of curiosity for the West.

Spring, 1990. After years of searching in vain, a stranger passes a scrap of paper to Zina. It's from Aziz: the man who vanished the day after their wedding almost two decades ago. It propels Zina on a final quest for a secret desert jail in southern Morocco, where her husband crouches in despair, dreaming of his former life. Youssef Fadel pays powerful testament to a terrible period in Morocco's history, known as 'the Years of Cinders and Lead,' and masterfully evokes the suffering inflicted on those who supported the failed coup against King Hassan II in 1972.

Suzie Mohammad Galal, born in the Egyptian city of Suez during the War of Attrition in the late 1960s, is a woman of inner conflicts who traverses the boundaries of ethnicity and religion. Her whole life is intricately tied to the wars and political events taking place in Egypt.

Exploring themes of change, the role of culture in society, memory and writing in a text that switches midway from the third to the first person and combines narrative fiction with literary criticism, philosophical musings and quotation, Like a Summer Never to be Repeated is among the most innovative works of modern Arabic literature.

In a fictional Gulf country, with its gleaming glass towers and imported greenery, the routine of day-to-day life is suddenly interrupted when the national football team qualifies for the World Cup. The Emir issues an edict ordering all native Emiratis to travel to France to support the team, leaving the country to the care of its imported labor.

A compelling revisionist study of diaspora and migration in the Indian Ocean region

Enclosed by the Suez Canal and bordering Gaza and Israel, Egypt's rugged Sinai Peninsula has been the cornerstone of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accords, yet its internal politics and security have remained largely under media blackout. While the international press descended on the capital Cairo in January 2011, Sinai's armed rebellion was ignored. The regime lost control of the peninsula in a matter of days and, since then, unprecedented chaos has reigned and the Islamist insurgency has gathered pace. In this crucial analysis, Mohannad Sabry argues that Egypt's shortsighted security approach has continually proven to be a failure. Decades of flawed policies have exacerbated immense social and economic problems, and maintained a superficial stability under which arms trafficking, the smuggling tunnels, and militancy could silently thrive-and finally prevail following the overthrow of Mubarak. Sinai is vital reading for scholars, journalists, policy makers, and all those concerned by the plunge of one of the Middle East's most critical regions into turmoil.

Critical multidisciplinary research on entrepreneurship in Egypt

An Istanbul Anthology takes us on a nostalgic journey through the city with travelers' accounts of the sights, smells, and sounds of Istanbul's bazaars and coffeehouses, its grand palaces and gardens, crumbling buildings, and ancient churches and mosques, and the waters that so haunt and define it. With writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Loti, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and André Gide, we discover and rediscover the many delights of this great city of antiquity, meeting point of East and West, and gateway to peoples and civilizations.

A Nile Anthology brings together the accounts and reflections of visitors and travelers to the Nile between Luxor and Aswan through the ages, from Herodotus in the fifth century BC, and the Arab geographers of medieval times, to such nineteenth-century luminaries as Amelia Edwards, Florence Nightingale, Jean François Champollion, Edward Lane, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. From the practicalities of river travel to descriptions of the pharaonic monuments, via the sights, sounds, and smells of the teeming souks, our writers guide us through a world and an age long gone.

This book presents a concise 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

Vernacular poetry and folktales, standardized Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, as well as literary works by Middle Easterners in different European languages offer a complex regional literary field. While comparative work among the "classical" traditions of these literatures is undertaken without comment, scholarship on their modern traditions is suspended between the exigencies of imperialism, nationalism, and academic parochialism. This issue of Alif is devoted to the exploration of those persistent ties and affinities, as well as to the attempt to recover and discover new or enduring linkages between literatures, languages, and cultures in a world where they are largely forgotten or wilfully ignored.

"How could a good Muslim boy like you be born into a Jewish family!" For Galal, forced to leave Egypt in the 1960s Jewish exodus with his family, the Diaspora has none of the beauty of a rich tapestry of history; it's a day-to-day struggle to fit into his new life in Paris, reconcile the conflicting demands of family and friends, and come to terms with who he is. Deeply personal, this unusual and uplifting coming-of-age novel takes us into the heart of an ordinary young man in the grip of an unforgiving historical moment.

The eleven short stories in this book take us back to an Alexandria past, the cosmopolitan city as it was experienced by the author in the years before, during, and following the Second World War. Against a backdrop of major events in Alexandria's history, from the halcyon days of the late 1930s, through the alarums of the War, to the 1952 Revolution and the dispersion of almost the entire foreign community of the city, Tzalas weaves his stories peopled with characters from his youth. These are ordinary people, people of different nationalities and faiths, but all Alexandrians, living side by side in the Great City. In describing each character with great sensitivity and perception, Tzalas succeeds not only in capturing the essence of the city itself, but in poignantly foretelling the fundamental changes and exodus that were to come. The events surrounding, among others, a German family caught in the city during the Second World War, three French monks, an old Greek musician, and a group of cultivated elderly Alexandrian gentlemen, are told with an affection often tinged with sadness. Through these characters, Tzalas tells the story of everyday lives caught up in the turbulent currents of history and the transformation of a beloved city-the end of an era. Each of the eleven stories is accompanied by an evocative illustration by Anna Boghiguian.

The first book in the Detective Hanash crime series

Twin sisters Randa and Lamis live in the besieged Gaza Strip. Inseparable to the point that even their mother cannot tell them apart, they grow up surrounded by the random carnage that characterizes life under occupation. Randa, who wants to be a journalist, writes to record the devastation around her, taking pictures of martyred children. Meanwhile, their beloved neighbor Amna quietly converses with all those she has lost, as she plans the wedding of Lamis and her son Saleh. With their menfolk almost entirely absent, it is the women who take center stage in this poignant novel of resilience, determination, and living against the odds.

The articles in Alif 37 analyze the literary in relation to an array of journalistic genres and forums, including the interview, investigative journalism, the questionnaire, the blogosphere, creative non-fiction and reportage, literary websites, cultural periodicals, the autobiographical essay, and writers' opinion articles, presenting fresh aspects of such topics as Arab literary modernity, the politics of reception and translation in cultural journalism, and gender and censorship of creative writers.