Take them out of the ball game Egypt's cultural players in crisis

Middle East Report

Volumn 31, Issue 219, 2001, Pages 10-15

  Mehrez, Samia ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL CONFLICT; ISLAMISM;

EGYPT;

EID: 0034911429     PISSN: 08992851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1559249     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. The three novels are Qabla wa Ba'd (Before and After), by Tawfiq 'Abd al-Rahman, a 61 year-old retired civil servant,
2. Ahlam Muharrama (Forbidden Dreams), by Mahmoud Hamid, a 34 year-old civil servant in the Ministry of Culture, and
3. Abna' al-Khata' al-Rumansi (Children of Romantic Error), by Yasser Shaaban, a 32 year-old psychiatrist/journalist.
4. For a reading of the three novels, see Ferial Ghazoul, "The Artist vs. The Commissar," al-Ahram Weekly, January 25, 2001.
5. For brief interviews with the writers, see al-Ahram Weekly, January 18, 2001.
6. Al-Hayat, January 11, 2001.
7. Al-Usbu', January 25, 2001. The figure quoted above is 'Abd al-Sabbour Shahine, perpetrator of the legal case against Nasr Abu Zeid. Shahine filed to divorce Abu Zeid from his wife, on the grounds that Abu Zeid's textual criticism of the Qur'an made him an apostate, and hence unfit to marry a Muslim. Abu Zeid and his wife eventually relocated to the Netherlands to escape the second, unfavorable verdict.
8. Yasser Shaaban, Abna al-Khata' al-Rumansi (Cairo: GOCP, 2000), p. 233.
9. Ghazoul, al-Ahram Weekly, January 25, 2001.
10. Al-Hayat, January 13, 2001.
11. Gamal al-Ghitani, "Why Don't You Leave?" Akhbar al-Adab, January 21, 2001.
12. Al-Ahram Weekly, January 25, 2001.
13. For a detailed account of the Haydar affair, see Sabry Hafez, "The Novel, Politics and Islam," New Left Review, September-October 2000,
14. and Max Rodenbeck, "Witch Hunt in Egypt," New York Review of Books, November 16, 2000.
15. Akhbar al-Adab, January 21, 2001.
16. This policy posits that 70 percent of the manuscripts published by GOCP in a given year must be written by writers from the provinces. Manuscripts from Cairene writers in excess of the allotted 30 percent - regardless of quality - go on the "waiting list" until the quota of writers from the provinces is filled.
17. Al-Hayat, January 11, 2001.