Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T06:31:35.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Coping with a Failed Revolution: Basma Abdel Aziz, NaelEltoukhy, Mohammed Rabie & Yasmine El Rashidi

from ARTICLES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2019

John C. Hawley
Affiliation:
Santa Clara University, California.
Get access

Summary

‘In war, truth is the first casualty.’ (Aeschylus)

‘Now I pick up the notebook chronicling that time,starting in the summer of 2010. On every page I takenote of the question marks. The wordtruth seems to repeat itselfmultiple times on each page. My handwriting is barelylegible.’ (Yasmine El Rashidi, Chronicle of aLast Summer, 147)

In 1992 HilaryKilpatrick remarked that ‘twenty years ago the Arabic novelwas regarded as practically synonymous with the Egyptiannovel’ (‘The Egyptian Novel from Zaynab to 1980’: 223).Though novel production had by 1992 become firmly rooted inmost Arab countries the ‘relatively longer history of thegenre’ in Egypt ‘enable[d] its different stages ofdevelopment to be distinguished and studied more easily thanis the case in countries where it has had a life of only twoor three decades’. Judging from several recent novels, a newstage in that development is taking place. The DemocracySpring, or ‘the Arab Spring’, that stretched roughly fromDecember 2010 to mid-2012 and seemed to cross many bordersalmost at the same time has unsurprisingly become apersistent focus for Egyptian novelists, and they areoffering the most cohesive set of responses to thatstartling turn in contemporary Arab history. Their creativespectrum of reflections on the initial hopes and ultimatedisillusionment range from ongoing defiance and hope, to aresigned acceptance, echoing Alphonse Karr's infamous quip:‘plus ça change, plus c'est la mêmechose’. Formalistically this range of responseshas expressed itself in self-deprecating wit, demonstrablein Nael Eltoukhy's Women of Karantina;surrealist abstraction and universalist imagery in BasmaAbdel Aziz's The Queue; a despairingdystopic vision of a relentlessly brutal future in MohammedRabie's Otared; and a personalphilosophical reflection on the nature of change and stasis,in Yasmine El Rashidi's Chronicle of a LastSummer. Only when such very different works areread together can one appreciate the complex psychologicalupheaval that is very much alive in Egyptian – and Arabic –society. For these writers, time itself becomes a centralcharacter, suggesting authors who seek in their craft anominal agency over a series of traumas that remain beyondpersonal control. El Rashidi is most traditional, creating aprotagonist writing as a memoirist who remembers herchildhood and traces her history up to the present.

Type
Chapter
Information
ALT 35: Focus on Egypt
African Literature Today 35
, pp. 7 - 21
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×