Bøger udgivet af The American University in Cairo Press

Aspiring photographer Dunya Noor discovers early on that her curious spirit, rebellious nature, and very curly hair are a recipe for disaster in 1980s Syria.

Tales of Yusuf Tadrus is set in the Egyptian Delta town of Tanta, and tells the story of a young Coptic artist from a humble background. It provides an intimate glimpse into Egyptian Christian life, and carefully tells of the struggles faced by an artist who seeks to remain true to his calling. Written with sensitivity and honesty, it addresses an array of social issues in Egypt's rapidly changing landscape, from fundamentalism to emigration.

A thrilling mystery that brings together the supernatural, a passionate love affair, and a family tragedy.

Little is known about Egypt's Gypsies, called Dom by scholars, but variously referred to by Egyptians as Ghagar, Nawar, Halebi, or Hanagra, depending on their location. Moreover, most Egyptians are oblivious to the fact that there are today large numbers of Gypsies dispersed from the outskirts of villages in Upper Egypt to impoverished neighborhoods in Cairo and Alexandria. In Gypsies in Contemporary Egypt sociologist Alexandra Parrs draws on two years of fieldwork to explore how Dom identities are constructed, negotiated, and contested in the specifically Egyptian national context. With an eye to the pitfalls and evolution of scholarly work on the vastly more studied European Roma, she traces the scattered representations of Egyptian Dom, from accounts of them by nineteenth-century European Orientalists to their portrayal in Egyptian cinema as belly-dancers in the 1950s and beggars and thieves more recently. She explores the boundaries-religious, cultural, racial, linguistic-between Dom and non-Dom Egyptians and examines the ways in which the Dom position themselves within the limitations of media discourses about them and in turn differentiate themselves from the dominant population. This interplay of attitudes, argues Parrs, sheds light on the values and markers of belonging of the majority population and the paradigms of nation-state formation at the governmental level. Based on extensive interviews with government workers and ordinary individuals in routine contact with the Dom, as well with Dom engaged in a variety of trades in Cairo and Alexandria, Gypsies in Contemporary Egypt is about the search for the fragments of identity of the Egyptian Dom.

A collection of letters in a small painted box passed down through three generations of a London family is the starting point for a vivid account of a three-month journey up and down the Nile in a bygone age. The letters, like a time capsule, bring to life a lost world of Edwardian travel and social mores, of Egypt on the brink of the modern age, of the great figures of Egyptology, of aristocrats and archaeologists. In 1907/08 Ferdinand Platt (known to his family as Ferdy) traveled to Egypt as personal physician to the ailing 8th Duke of Devonshire-one of the giant statesmen of the late Victorian age-and his family party, recounting his adventure in letters to his young wife in England. Throughout the journey Ferdy not only reported on the sights of the country around him, with his amateur Egyptologist's eye, and the people he met along the way (including Howard Carter and Winston Churchill) but also recorded his private thoughts and intimate observations of a formal and stratified society, soon to be witness to its own extinction. Introduced by Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson and Ferdy's great-nephew Julian Platt, the letters open an intriguing window onto travel in Egypt during the Belle Epoque and the golden age of Egyptology.

A lavishly illustrated photographic journey through the history and traditions of the ancient churches of Ethiopia. The ancient Aksumite Kingdom, now a part of Ethiopia, was among the first in the world to adopt Christianity as the official state religion. In AD 340 King Ezana commissioned the construction of the imposing basilica of St. Mary of Tsion. It was here, the Ethiopians say, that Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments. By the fifth century, nine saints from Byzantium were spreading the faith deep into the mountainous countryside, and over the next ten centuries a series of spectacular churches were either built or excavated out of solid rock, all of them in regular use to this day. Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the best known cluster, but the northern region of Tigray, less well known and more remote, has many churches that are architectural masterpieces of the basilical type.Ethiopia: The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom traces the broad sweep of ecclesiastic history, legend, art, and faith in this sub-Saharan African kingdom as seen through the prism of sixty-six breathtaking churches, unveiling the secrets of their medieval murals, their colorful history, and the rich panoply of their religious festivals, all illustrated with more than eight hundred superb color photographs by some of the most celebrated international photographers of traditional cultures. This magnificent, large-format, full-color volume is the most comprehensive celebration yet published of Ethiopia's extraordinary Christian heritage. Ethiopia is the third book on iconic places of worship published by Ludwig Publishing and the American University in Cairo Press, following the bestselling success of The Churches of Egypt and The History and Religious Heritage of Old Cairo.

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 Jerusalem Anthology takes us on a journey through a city, not just of illusion and powerful accumulated religious emotion, but of colors, lights, smells, and sounds, an inhabited city as it was directly experienced and lived in through the ages. Memoirs of visitors such as as sixth-century AD pilgrim Saint Silvia of Bordeaux, medieval Jerusalemite al-Muqaddasi, Grand Tour voyagers Gustave Flaubert and Alexander Kinglake, the humorous Mark Twain, or the cynical T.E. Lawrence provide vivid and sometimes disturbing vignettes of the Holy City at very different times in its tumultuous history.

This cross-disciplinary, ethnographic, contextualized, and empirical volume-with an updated introduction to take account of the dramatic events of early 2011-explores the meaning and significance of urban space, and maps the spatial inscription of power on the mega-city of Cairo. Suspicious of collective life and averse to power-sharing, Egyptian governance structures weaken but do not stop the public's role in the remaking of their city. What happens to a city where neo-liberalism has scaled back public services and encouraged the privatization of public goods, while the vast majority cannot afford the effects of such policies? Who wins and loses in the "march to the modern and the global" as the government transforms urban spaces and markets in the name of growth, security, tourism, and modernity? How do Cairenes struggle with an ambiguous and vulnerable legal and bureaucratic environment when legality is a privilege affordable only to the few or the connected? This companion volume to Cairo Cosmopolitan further develops the central insights of the Cairo School of Urban Studies.

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.

An unconventional novel that explores the darker side of modern Tunisian society

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.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature

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 desperate attempt to save his mother and two sisters from famine and disease, a young man leaves his native village in Sudan and sets out alone to seek work in the city. This is the beginning of Hamza's long journey. Hunger and destitution lead him ever farther from his home: first from Sudan to Egypt, where the lack of work forces him to join a band of smugglers, and finally from Egypt to Europe-Italy, France, Holland-where he experiences first-hand the harsh world of migrant laborers and the bitter realities of life as an illegal immigrant. Tarek Eltayeb's first novel offers an uncompromising depiction of poverty in both the developed and the developing world. With its simple yet elegant style, Cities without Palms tells of a tragic human life punctuated by moments of true joy. "e;Once started it is difficult to put down. It is sensational, original, and altogether a magnificent literary debut."e; -James Kirkup, Banipal

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.