Jar Al-Nabi Al-Hilw, Shagw Al-Hadil (Melancholy Cooing), Al-Ain Publishing House, 2024, pp136
After an eight-year hiatus, the celebrated writer Jar Al-Nabi Al-Hilw returns with this novel, in which he revisits the alluringly simple world his writing has always evoked. This is the story of a poor young man named Fathi who lives in the hallway of the building where he watches two pigeons that share his living space, observing the delicate creatures’ remarkable ability to survive in a harsh world.
The writer documents relationships: between people, between pigeons, between people and pigeons. The climax occurs at the moment when the pigeons’ lives change, altering the life around them. At the same time the novel is an extended lament for lost friends and the friends who passed away, and cherishes the past nostalgically.
Jar Al-Nabi Al-Hilw is an Egyptian novelist born in 1947. His latest novel was Al-Ajouzan (The Two Elders, 2016). He is also a writer of children’s programs for television. He is the author of several novels and collections of short stories.
Ashraf Al-Ashmawi, Mawaleed Hadiqat Al-Hayawan (Zoo Newborns), The Egyptian-Lebanese Publishing House, 2024, pp256
This recent book by novelist Ashraf Al-Ashmawi, featuring a beautiful cover by Ahmed Mourad, includes three short stories: “Cabin without a Sea View”, “Zoo Newborns” and “Pigs’ Farm”. The three short stories are loosely connected by the theme of ordinary people shaken by harsh social conditions, and their perspectives on reality changing as a result, making it hard to differentiate reality from delusin.
In the first story, Aref and his sister Haya lose their mother and father and are forced to live with their elderly grandparents in Imbaba, a radically different neighbourhood new to both of them. Their grandfather turns out to be a violent patriarch, forcing Haya to wear hijab and Aref to work for a Pasha for whom he had been involved in all kinds of unlawful activities.
Al-Ashmawi’s many novels include The Time and the Hyenas, Informant and Toya. The House of the Coptic Woman was translated to English by Peter Daniel for the AUC Press in 2023. His latest novel, The Maximum Speed Is Zero appeared with the Egyptian-Lebanese Publishing House last year.
Ahmed Youssef Shahine, Ahlam Sharei Al-Khornfosh, Nahdet Misr Publishing House, 2024, pp208
This novel revolves around Khaled, a young man from a wealthy family who moves from Cairo to Paris and back, living out a great philosophical predicament of hesitation, fear and confusion. Khaled is always in a state of transition, torn his previous, well-off lifestyle, lounging in the spacious salons of gigantic houses with expensive paintings on the walls, and his new life in modest Cairo streets where the smell of greasy food is dominant. He is the man who can neither listen to Chopin nor to Mahraganat music with complete devotion.
Khaled has a confused relationship with Ghada, about whom he also has hesitant and conflicting feelings. But he is a stand-in for the human condition, with his predicament playing out humanity’s existential crisis and the impossibility of finding relief.
Ihsan Abdel-Kouddous, Anf wa Thalaath Oyoun (A Nose and Three Eyes), Hoopoe Publishing House, 2024, pp536
This timeless classic by the late Ihsan Abdel-Kouddous was first published in Arabic in 1963 by Rose El Youssef. Director Hussein Kamal made it into a flilm in 1972, starring Mahmoud Yassin, Magda, Naglaa Fathi and Mervat Amin. A remake by Amir Ramses starring Salma Abu Deif, Dhafer L’Abidine, Salma Abu Deif, Saba Mubarak and Amina Khalil, presenting a radically different interpretation, was released this year.
Set in Cairo in the 1950s, it is the story of a famous doctor involved with three different women at the same time. Each woman is a different age, and brings with her a different set of circumstances, while the doctor, Hashem’s challenge is to sort through his feelings for each. In some ways it is a feminist novel tracing the limitations and restrictions forced on women in conservative societies. But it is also a record of an era’s notion of manhood and it features subtle criticism of the regime of Gamal Abdel-Nasser which made it all the more exciting when it came out.
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