The Automobile Club of Egypt
The Automobile Club of Egypt

Author: Alaa Al Aswany

Publisher: Random House India

Published: 2015-08-22

Total Pages: 531

ISBN-13: 8184007310

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A rollicking, exuberant and powerfully moving story of a family swept up by social unrest in post–World War II Cairo Abd el-Aziz Gaafar, formerly a well-respected landowner now in the grip of penury, moves his family to Cairo and takes on menial work at the Automobile Club—a place of refuge and luxury for its European members, but one where Egyptians may appear only as servants. Alku, the lifelong Nubian servant of Egypt’s corrupt king, runs the show in all but name. The servants, a squabbling, humorous, and deeply human group, live in a perpetual state of fear: beaten for their mistakes, their wages dependent on Alku’s whims. When Abd el-Aziz’s pride gets the better of him and he stands up for himself, his death—as much from shame as from his injuries after Alku has him beaten—leaves his widow further impoverished and two of his sons obliged to work in the Club. As the family is drawn into the turbulent politics of Egypt—public and private—both servants and masters are subsumed by the country’s social upheaval. Soon, the Egyptians of the Automobile Club face a stark choice: to live safely but without dignity as servants, or to fight for their rights and risk everything.

On the State of Egypt
On the State of Egypt

Author: Alaa Al Aswany

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-03-25

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0307946983

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Alaa Al Aswany is among the best writers in the Middle East today, a suitable heir to the mantle worn by Naguib Mahfouz, his great predecessor.” –Jay Parini, The Guardian (UK) From one of Egypt’s most acclaimed novelists, here is a vivid chronicle of Egyptian society, with penetrating analysis of all the most urgent issues—economic stagnation, police brutality, poverty, the harassment of women and of the Christian minority, to name a few—that led to the stunning overthrow of the Mubarak government. Al-Aswany addresses himself to all the questions being asked within Egypt and beyond: who will be the next president, and how will he be chosen in a land where heretofore only simpletons, opportunists and stooges involved themselves with elections? What role will the Muslim Brotherhood play? How can democratic reforms be effected among a people used to such contradictions as the religiously observant policeman who commits torture? In a candid and controversial assessment of both the potential and limitations that will determine his country’s future, Al-Aswany reveals why the revolt that surprised the world was destined to happen. “[The] star of a new generation of Egyptian novelists.” –The Independent (UK)

Friendly Fire
Friendly Fire

Author: Alaa Al Aswany

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2009-08-27

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0061959456

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Friendly Fire, the first collection of short stories from Alaa Al Aswany, acclaimed author of Chicago and The Yacoubian Building, deftly explores the lives of contemporary Egyptians. Here are stories of generational conflict, corruption, repression, infidelity, and the dangerous clashing of western and Arab ideals, all beautifully rendered by Al Aswany, a true modern master and one of Egypt’s “most exciting literary exports” (Minneapolis Star Tribune).

the yacoubian building
the yacoubian building

Author: ʻAlāʼ Aswānī

Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9789774248627

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairo's main boulevards. From the pious son of the building's doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt -- where political corruption, ill-gotten wealth, and religious hypocrisy are natural allies, where the arrogance and defensiveness of the powerful find expression in the exploitation of the weak, where youthful idealism can turn quickly to extremism, and where an older, less violent vision of society may yet prevail. Alaa Al Aswany's novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the world's best selling novel in the Arabic language since.

Beer in the Snooker Club
Beer in the Snooker Club

Author: Waguih Ghali

Publisher: New Amsterdam Books

Published: 1999-11-02

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1461663245

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Waguih Ghali was raised in Cairo but spent much of his adult life studying and working in Europe. In Beer in the Snooker Club, Ghali chronicles the lives of Cairo's upper crust who, after the fall of King Farouk, are thoroughly unprepared to change its neo-feudal ways. Beer in the Snooker Club was the only book written by Ghali before his suicide in 1968. "Ghali's novel reproduces a cultural state of shock with great accuracy and great humor."–James Marcus of The Nation

The Dictatorship Syndrome
The Dictatorship Syndrome

Author: Alaa Al Aswany

Publisher: Haus Publishing

Published: 2019-12-29

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 1912208601

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.

The Gray Lady Winked
The Gray Lady Winked

Author: Ashley Rindsberg

Publisher: Midnight Oil Publishers

Published: 2021-05-03

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1736703331

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Think a newspaper can’t be responsible for mass murder? Think again. As flagship of the American news media, the New York Times is the world’s most powerful news outlet. With thousands of reporters covering events from all corners of the globe, the Times has the power to influence wars, foment revolution, shape economies and change the very nature of our culture. It doesn’t just cover the news: it creates it. The Gray Lady Winked pulls back the curtain on this illustrious institution to reveal a quintessentially human organization where ideology, ego, power and politics compete with the more humble need to present the facts. In its 10 gripping chapters, The Gray Lady Winked offers readers an eye-opening, often shocking, look at the New York Times’s greatest journalistic failures, so devastating they changed the course of history. How its World War II Berlin bureau chief, a known Nazi collaborator, skewed coverage in favor of the Third Reich for over a decade. Its notorious coverup of the Ukraine Famine, a genocide committed by Stalin, showing that it was the newspaper's owners who directed the coverup in order to advance their own financial and ideological interests. The “1619 Project," a cynical, ideologically driven attempt to revise American history by rooting the nation's birth in slavery instead of liberty. The result is an essential look at the tangled relationship between media, power and politics in a post-truth world told with novelistic flair to reveal a uniquely powerful institution’s tortured relationship with the truth. Most importantly of all, The Gray Lady Winked presents a cautionary tale that shows what happens when the guardians of the truth abandon that sacred value in favor of self-interest and ideology—and what this means for our future as much as for our past.

Tales from the Radiation Age
Tales from the Radiation Age

Author: Jason Sheehan

Publisher: 47north

Published: 2014-02-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781477848913

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer--con man, carpetbagger, survivor--has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die. But when he meets Captain James Barrow, a former OSS agent and the most wanted man in the world, Duncan finds himself a reluctant hero caught up in a whole new level of weird, rollicking adventure... And the second most wanted man in the world. Tales from the Radiation Age is a throwback to the pulp-origins of science fiction, painting a vision of the future that's richly detailed, wildly imaginative--and altogether too easy to imagine.