The Mother of the World as seen through the lens of French photographer Jean Pierre Ribi??re and the pen of Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim. The result is a rich and highly original portrait of a city. Ribi??re's seventy powerful photographs capture fugitive moments in urban life and architecture, in which historic grandeur meets modernity in a race with time. Meanwhile, Sonallah Ibrahim's incisive exploration of Cairo's past and his own past reveals a man living on the edge of a city living on the edge of itself.

Unlike The Literary Atlas of Cairo, which focuses on the literary geopolitics of the cityscape, this companion volume immerses the reader in the complex network of socioeconomic and cultural lives in the city. The seven chapters first introduce the reader to representations of some of Cairo's prominent profiles, both political and cultural, and their impact on the city's literary geography, before presenting a spectrum of readings of the city by its multiethnic, multinational, and multilingual writers across class, gender, and generation. Daunting images of colonial school experiences and startling contrasts of postcolonial educational realities are revealed, while Cairo's moments of political participation and oppression are illustrated, as well as the space accorded to women within the city across history and class. The city's marginals are placed on its literary map, alongside representations of the relationship between writing and drugs, and the places, paraphernalia, and products of the drug world across class and time.

A look at some of the raging debates in the arts in Egypt

The coffeehouse is a microcosm of the larger Egyptian society with its history of multiculturalism and great diversity. It is not only a social space which was created and shaped by the people over decades in their streets, neighbourhoods and cities, but it also occupies a sphere in the popular imagination full of stories, memories and social networks. Despite the coffeehouse's cultural centrality and socio-political importance in Egypt, academic research and publications on its significance remain sparse. This volume aims to fill this gap by presenting, for the first time in English, a full study analysing the importance of the coffeehouse as an urban phenomenon, with its cultural, historical, economic and political significance in contemporary Egyptian society. The volume shows how historically the coffeehouse has always played a key role as a commercial enterprise; and culturally, as a place for rich literary and artistic production which has multi-layered representations in Egyptian novels, cinema and popular music, amongst other genres. Economically, the coffeehouse has been vital for accessing job opportunities, especially for informal workers; in addition to having played a crucial role in political mobilisation during decisive historical events, as well as in recent years during the 2011 revolution and its aftermath. Through extended interviews with six residents in Cairo, the authors further examine the role and influence of the coffeehouse as a significant feature of contemporary Egyptian life and urban landscape.

This volume explores the meaning and significance of urban space, and maps the spatial inscription of power on the mega-city of Cairo.

This volume is designed as an introduction to the contemporary Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most important Arabic novelists of the modern era, with an unrivalled reputation for independence and integrity among contemporary Egyptian writers. The first study in any language devoted exclusively to Sonallah Ibrahim, the volume discusses each of the author's novels individually, beginning with the seminal Tilka al-ra'iha [That Smell] (1966) and ending with al-Jalid [Ice] (2011). Each work is discussed individually in its literary, social, historical and political context. The volume traces the evolution of Sonallah Ibrahim's work in terms both of their themes and of their literary technique, and concludes with an attempt at an overall evaluation of the author's contribution to the contemporary Egyptian novel. Paul Starkey's account shows how innovative and stylistically rich the Arabic novel has become over a period of some fifty years, beyond the better-known work of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris. As such, the volume will serve as an introduction not only to the individual author but also to the development of Egyptian (and, more generally, Arabic) literature over the last half century.