Zarafani Files - Brossura

Gamal Al-Ghitani

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1906697159 ISBN 13: 9781906697150

Casa editrice: Arabia Books, 2009

Riassunto

An unknown observer is watching the residents of a small, closely-knit neighborhood in Cairo's old city, making notes. The college graduate, the street vendors, the political prisoner, the cafe owner, the taxi driver, the beautiful green-eyed young wife with the troll of a husband - all are subjects of surveillance. The watcher's reports flow seamlessly into a narrative about Zafarani Alley, a village tucked into a corner of the city, where intrigue is the main entertainment, and everyone has a secret. Suspicion, superstition, and a wicked humour prevail in this darkly comedic novel. Drawing upon the experience of his own childhood growing up in al-Hussein, where the fictional Zafarani Alley is located, Gamal al-Ghitani has created a world richly populated with characters and situations that possess authenticity behind their veils of satire.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'[This] is only the third of [Ghitani's] books... to be translated into English... He is far better known, not just in the Arab world but in France and Germany, than he is in Britain... Some contemporary Arab novels read as though they have been written with translation into a major European language in mind. This is not the case with Ghitani's book, which is about local things and written for a local audience... Ghitani's account of ordinary folk faced with a catastrophe that will spread across the world might suggest comparisons with British science-fiction novels of the 1950s, such as John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids or John Christopher's The Death of Grass, but the tone of the Egyptian novel is absurdist and bleakly comic and a more appropriate comparison might be with Ionesco's Rhinoceros. The translator, Farouk Abdel Wahab, has done his work so well that it is almost invisible and I often forgot that I was reading a translation.' (Robert Irwin Times Literary Supplement 20091001)

'an incredibly funny, inventive novel' (Chad W. Post Three Percent 20090201)

L'autore:

Gamal al-Ghitani was born in 1945 and is the author of the Mahfouz dialogues (2007), Zayni Barakat (Penguin, 1988) - is a post-modern historical novel of the first order which doubles as an allegory of Nasser s police state - and Pyramid Texts (2007). He is the Editor in chief of the Cairo Literary Review and his novels have been translated into many languages.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Arabia Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1906697159
• ISBN 13: 9781906697150
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 340