Book 99 - MAR 27, 2025 - THU
WOMEN OF KARANTINA: A NOVEL
Published in 2013, it´s a novel featuring Aly and Injy, a couple that flees a murder charge in Cairo and starts a small criminal operation in Alexandria, which eventually becomes an underground empire, turning them into legends. The story spans generations, from the onset of the 20th century to contemporary Egypt.
Eltoukhy´s fast paced and fragmented prose blends historical fiction with humor, creating Karantina, a reimagined version of a neighborhood of Alexandria where crime and public affairs are intertwined. He blurs the lines between gangsters and politicians and shows how power is often built on violence and manipulation. Despite the title and strong female characters like Injy, who defies traditional gender roles and navigates a male-dominated underworld, the book doesn´t focus on feminist themes. Clever and subversive, it´s a masterpiece of modern Egyptian literature.
Book 91 - MAR 19, 2025 - WED
BLACK MAGIC: A MODERN ARABIC NOVEL
Published in 2007, it´s set in contemporary Cairo, where Nasir, a photographer working for state television, becomes involved with Fatin, an older woman who has just escaped a suffocating marriage and now knows exactly what she wants from life. Nasir becomes obsessed with an incandescent and erotic romance, a relationship in which he´s at once enraptured and non-committal.
As a boy, Nasir was entranced by his father's gift of a camera, finding in it the means to possess beauty and to assert himself. Through his adult unforgiving lens, the novel portrays a noir-like exploration of Cairo’s hidden layers, defined by materialism, frivolity, sexual frenzy, and violence.
Book 83 - MAR 11, 2025 - TUE
CAIRO: MY CITY, OUR REVOLUTION
by Ahdaf Soueif
It´s a memoir set in Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, as Ahdaf Soueif captures the pulse of the city as both a lifelong home and the epicenter of an uprising.
Along with thousands of compatriots, she called Tahrir Square home for eighteen days, as she reported from there for the world media.
Novelist, commentator, and activist, Soueif blends personal experiences with the collective feelings of hope and fear of the manifestants. Part political reflection, part love letter to her city, this book charts a story of the Revolution that is both intimately hers and publicly Egyptian. Or as she later commented: "People everywhere want to make this Revolution their own, and we in Egypt want to share it".
Book 75 - MAR 03, 2025 - MON
by Salwa Bakr
It´s a historical novel set in 9th-century Egypt, when an Arab Muslim class governed a country of mostly Coptic Christians. It follows a young Coptic sent to Bashmour, a rebellious Coptic region in the Nile Delta, as an aide to an envoy tasked with convincing the rebels to surrender.
But the protagonist is caught up by events that alter his life forever, as his mission turns into a journey of self-discovery, love, faith, and enduring identity in a world filled with oppression and defiance. Through his eyes, readers witness a portrayal of medieval Egyptian society, its religious tensions, and the struggle for cultural survival that defined the Bashmourian Revolts and their brutal suppression.
Salwa Bakr blends history with fiction in this novel, which not only brings to life a lesser-known episode of Egyptian history but also resonates with contemporary issues of religious and ideological conflict.
Book 67 - FEB 23, 2025 - sUN
THAT SMELL AND NOTES FROM PRISON
Published in 1966, That Smell follows a recently released political prisoner through his disorienting return to life in Cairo. As he struggles to reconnect with society, he finds himself adrift in a world that feels alien.
Sonallah Ibrahim captures the protagonist’s detachment from his surroundings and, at the same time, reflects the oppressive political and social climate of 1960s Egypt. The story is based on the author´s five-year experience in prison under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime.
One of the most influential novels in Arabic since WWII, That Smell was banned soon after its release, and an uncensored version of it didn´t appear in Egypt for two decades.
Book 59 - FEB 15, 2025 - sat
by Yusuf Idris
Published in 1956, it´s set in Cairo during the 1952 revolt against British colonial rule and its corrupt royalist allies. It follows a passionate young revolutionary, Yehia, and his love affair with Fawziya, a strong-willed woman keen to support his cause and struggling with societal constrains.
Hamza is another key character, who serves as a revolutionary leader and mentor figure. Unlike Yehia, who is driven by emotion, Hamza is more disciplined and ideological, representing the strategic and organizational side of the resistance movement.
From the ashes of a city in turmoil, love may grow, but what place do personal feelings have in face of the greater love for one´s homeland? In this novel, Yusuf Idris brings to life remarkable characters of modern Arabic fiction and captures the soul of Cairo at that time.
Book 51 - FEB 07, 2025 - FRI
It´s a novel about Bahiah Shaheen, a young medical studend who feels torn between the role of obedient daughter of a prominent Egyptian public official and the artist she longs to be.
She feels encouraged to break free by a chance encounter with a stranger at a gallery, starting a rebellion against family and tradition, and a journey of self-discovery through inner struggles to accept forbidden desires and the final realization that fulfilment in life is possible.
Nawal El Saadawi´s Two Women in One is the story of countless women and speaks of their quest for emancipation, individual identity, and dignity.
Book 43 - Jan 30, 2025 - THU
Set in Cairo in the aftermath of the Six-Day War of 1967, Love in the Rain introduces characters who, each in his or her own way, experience the effects of that calamitous event.
Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz explores the intersecting lives of men and women - centered in the protagonist Hosny Hejazi, a photographer who helps girls in reaching artistic positions in exchange for a price - as they navigate personal desires and harsh realities amid political upheaval, social change, and poverty.
Love in the Rain exposes the hypocrisy that condemns any breach of sexual morality but turns a blind eye to violence, corruption, and oppression.
Book 35 - Jan 22, 2025 - WED
by Miral al-Tahawy
Miral al-Tahawy´s first novel is set in a Bedouin tribal society, weaving themes of tradition, gender, and freedom.
It features women whose lives are subject to the will of a single, often absent, patriarch and his brutal mother. As their lives unfold, the tragedy of a sonless mother is revealed.
It is narrated from the standpoint of a young girl who struggles to live within the oppressive confines of her father´s home in the desert and dreams to break free.
Set in a harsh and beautiful landscape, the novel offers an insider exploration of identity, womanhood, and the complexities of belonging in a Bedouin tribe.
Book 27 - Jan 14, 2025 - Tue
In downtown Cairo the Yacoubian Building, an once-elegant temple of Art Deco, is slowly decaying in the smog of the city.
Diverse people live there: from a pious son of the building's doorkeeper, a decadent aristocrat and self-proclaimed specialist in women, a young shop-girl being harassed by her boss and hating herself for accepting money from him, to a ruthless businessman whose store occupies the ground floor.
Each character embodies a facet of modern Egypt - where ill-gotten wealth and religious hypocrisy are allies, where the arrogance of the powerful finds expression in the exploitation of the weak, where youthful idealism can turn to extremism, but where a less violent vision of society may yet prevail. Published in 2002, this novel caused stir and has remained an Arabic-language bestseller ever since.