ARABIC LITERATURE A politically charged novel from Egypt’s Nobel laureate Karnak Café Naguib Mahfouz A Modern Arabic Novel Translated by Roger Allen t a Cairo café, a cross-section of Egyptian society, young and old, rich and poor, are Adrawn together by the quality of its coffee and the allure of its owner, legendary former dancer Qurunfula. When three of the young patrons disappear for prolonged periods, the older customers display varying reactions to the news. On their return, they recount horrific stories of arrest and torture at the hands of the secret police, and the habitués of the café begin to with- draw from each other in fear, suspecting that there is an informer among them. With the night- time arrests and the devastation of the country’s defeat in the 1967 War, the café is transformed from a haven of cameraderie and bright-eyed idealism to an atmosphere charged with mounting suspicion, betrayal, and crushing disillusionment. Exposing the dark underbelly of ideology, and delving into the idea of the ‘necessary evils’ of social upheaval, Karnak Café remains one of the Nobel laureate’s most pointedly critical works, as relevant and incisive today as it was when it was first published in 1971. NAGUIB MAHFOUZ was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He died in Cairo on August 30, 2006 at the age of 94. March 96pp. Hardbound ROGER ALLEN is professor of Arabic language and ISBN-10 977 416 072 X literature at the University of Pennsylvania. ISBN-13 978 977 416 072 1 Among his translations are Naguib Mahfouz’s Original Arabic title: Mirrors (AUC Press, 1999) and Bensalem al-Karnak Himmich’s The Polymath (AUC Press, 2000). LE70 / $19.95 For sale worldwide 1 PORTFOLIOS AND CALENDARS An elegant literary desk diary celebrating Egypt’s Nobel laureate The Naguib Mahfouz Diary 2008 A Literary Desk Calendar must for any fan of the Egyptian Nobel laureate’s wide-ranging fiction, The Naguib A Mahfouz Diary 2008 makes a handy addi- tion to any desk, office, or home. Organized as a weekly desk calendar, it offers plenty of space for writing in appointments and schedules, inter- spersed with choice quotations from Mahfouz’s novels and short stories. Elegantly designed and packaged, The Naguib Mahfouz Diary 2008 is illus- trated with twelve photographs—one for each month of the year—of Mahfouz, his literary milieu, and the Cairo of his fictional world. Practi- cal and beautiful, The Naguib Mahfouz Diary 2008 makes a perfect gift for admirers of the Nobel- winning novelist. Also Available: The Naguib Mahfouz Diary 2007 A Literary Desk Calendar March 104pp. Spiral bound 104pp. Spiral bound 12 b/w illustrations 12 b/w illustrations ISBN-10 977 416 055 X ISBN-10 977 416 066 5 ISBN-13 978 977 416 055 4 ISBN-13 978 977 416 066 0 LE50 / $12.95 LE50 / $12.95 For sale worldwide For sale worldwide 2 ARABIC LITERATURE A new collection of dreams from Egypt’s Nobel laureate Dreams of Departure The Last Dreams Published in the Nobel Laureate’s Lifetime Naguib Mahfouz Translated by Raymond Stock n this second collection of writing based on his own dreams serialized in a Cairo magazine Ibefore his death in 2006, Egyptian Nobel lau- reate Naguib Mahfouz again displays his match- less ability to tell epic stories in uncannily terse form. As in the first volume (The Dreams, AUC Press, 2004), we meet more of the real (and unreal) figures that filled the author’s life with glory and worry, ecstasy and ennui, in tales dreamed by a mind too fertile to ever truly rest. In them, a man sent by a victorious invader to open a storehouse holding the statue of Egypt’s reawakening finds his access denied by a menacing reptile. An obscure writer dies, and a despairing inscription on his coffin turns his funeral into a massive demonstration. A man opens a stubborn gate to stare at a lake over which loom the illumi- nated faces of those he has loved, but who are no more—in search of the soul who made him long to live forever. The ever more condensed and poetic episodes in Dreams of Departure movingly carry on Mahfouz’s only major work after a knife attack in 1994 ironically inspired him to dream in print for his readers. NAGUIB MAHFOUZ was born in 1911 in the crowded Cairo district of Gamaliya. He wrote nearly 40 novel-length works, plus hundreds of short stories and numerous screenplays. He was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He February died in Cairo in 2006 at the age of 94. 112pp. Hardbound ISBN-10 977 416 067 3 RAYMOND STOCK is writing a biography of Naguib ISBN-13 978 977 416 067 7 Mahfouz. He is the translator of Naguib Mahfouz’s Original Arabic title: Voices from the Other World (2002), Khufu’s Wisdom Ahlam fatrat al-naqaha (2003), The Dreams (2004), and The Seventh Heaven LE70 / $19.95 (2005), all published by the AUC Press. For sale worldwide 3 ARABIC LITERATURE An extraordinary new novel from the author of Zayni Barakat Pyramid Texts Gamal al-Ghitani A Modern Arabic Novel Translated by Humphrey Davies ith its Sufistic parables of the human condition, rendered in a style redolent Wof both the austere meditations of Borges and the dark engorged ruminations of Arthur C. Clark, Pyramid Texts engages the mind and beguiles the imagination. In a series of chap- ters each shorter than the last—so that, like their subjects, they taper ultimately into nothingness— the author evokes the obsessions that have drawn men over the centuries to the brooding presence of mankind’s most ancient and mysterious monu- ments. Among others in a procession of exotic characters, a Moroccan seeker after knowledge spends years contemplating the pyramids in the hope that one day he will understand the mysteri- ous writing that fitfully appears on their sides. Another waits patiently for the moment when the shadow of one will diverge from its accustomed path and bestow immortality, and the Sphinx per- forms a celestial dance. Pyramid Texts leads us into into a world of endless passages and mysterious sighing winds, a world whose claustrophobic and shadowy spaces may be illuminated by flashes of ecstasy leading to scintillating transfigurations and dizzying annihilations. GAMAL AL-GHITANI was born in 1945. He has written thirteen novels, including Zayni Barakat (AUC Press, 2004), and six collections of short March stories. He is editor-in-chief of the literary review 112pp. Hardbound Akhbar al-adab. ISBN-10 977 416 051 7 ISBN-13 978 977 416 051 6 HUMPHREY DAVIES is the translator of The Original Arabic title: Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany (AUC Press, Mutun al-ahram 2004) and Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury, for LE70 / $17.95 which he was awarded the Banipal Prize for For sale worldwide Literary Translation. 4 ARABIC LITERATURE A multifaceted fictional recreation of the Iraqi city of Basra Basrayatha Portrait of a City Mohammed Khudayyir A Modern Arabic Novel Translated by William Hutchins asrayatha is a literary tribute by author Mohammed Khudayyir to the city of his Bbirth, Basra, on the Shatt al-Arab water- way in southern Iraq. Just as a city’s inhabitants differ from outsiders through their knowledge of its streets as well as its stories, so Khudayyir distin- guishes between the real city of Basra and Basrayatha, the imagined city he has created through stories, experiences, and folklore. By turns a memoir, a travelogue, a love letter, and a meditation, Basrayatha summons up images of a city long gone. In loving detail, Khudayyir recounts his discovery of his city as a child, as well as past communal banquets, the public baths, the delights of the Muslim day of rest, the city’s flea markets and those who frequent them, a country bumpkin’s big day in the city, Hollywood films at the local cinema, daily life during the Iran–Iraq War, and the canals and rivers around Basra. Above all, however, the book illuminates the role of the storyteller in creating the cities we inhabit. Evoking the literary modernism of authors like Calvino and Borges, and tinged with nostalgia for a city now disappeared, Basrayatha is a masterful tribute to the power of memory and imagination. MOHAMMED KHUDAYYIR was born in Basra, Iraq, where he still lives. He is the author of several col- lections of short stories. He was awarded the February Oweiss prize in 2004. 160pp. Hardbound 10 b/w photographs WILLIAM HUTCHINS is the principal translator of ISBN-10 977 416 064 9 Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy (AUC Press, 1989– ISBN-13 978 977 416 064 6 1992), and recently translated Ibrahim al-Mazini’s Original Arabic title: Ten Again and other stories (AUC Press, 2006). Basrayatha: Surat madina LE80 / $18.95 For sale worldwide 5 ARABIC LITERATURE A luminous novel of hope and redemption from Saudi Arabia Wolves of the Crescent Moon Yousef Al-Mohaimeed A Modern Arabic Novel Translated by Anthony Calderbank n a Riyadh bus station, Turad, a bitter older man, resolves to leave the city he has come to Iloathe. Born into a Bedouin family, Turad left his desert home as a young man to work in the city—as a tea-boy, car-washer, security guard, and office messenger—after a traumatic event that led to him losing his left ear.