Friendly Fire
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- 7,49 €
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- 7,49 €
Descrizione dell’editore
The new book from Alaa Al Aswany, author of the international bestsellers The Yacoubian Building and Chicago
Friendly Fire is a novella and collection of short stories from Alaa Al Aswany, author of the bestselling The Yacoubian Building. As in that novel, Al Aswany dissects modern Egyptian society and reveals with skill and detachment the hypocrisy, violence and abuse of power characteristic of a world in moral crisis. Here, though, the focus has shifted from the broad historical canvas to the minute stitches of pain that hold together an individual, a family, a school classroom, or the relationship between a man and a woman. Can a man so alienated from his society that he regards all its members as no better than microbes wriggling under a microscope survive within it? Can cynical religiosity triumph over human decency? Can a man put the thought of a delicious dish of beans behind him long enough to mourn his father's death? Alongside these wry questions, other, less mordant perspectives also have their place: an ageing cabaret dancer bestows the blessing of a vanished world on her lover's son; a crippled boy wins subjective victory from objective disaster. In Friendly Fire, readers will find again the vivid, passionate characters of today's Cairo, clamouring to be heard.
Friendly Fire also features an introduction by Alaa Al Aswany giving the history of the novella, 'The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers', which was banned in Egypt for a decade.
Reviews
'Alaa Al Aswany is a world writer, making Egyptian concerns into human ones and beautifully illuminating our always extraordinary and sometimes sad and baffling world.' The Times
'Alaa Al Aswany is among the best writers in the Middle East today, a suitable heir to the mantle worn by Naquib Mahfouz, his great predecessor, whose influence is felt on every page. Yet Al Aswany has his own magic.' Guardian
'A wonderful storyteller and a cynically astute observer of human folly and frailty.' Spectator
About the author
Alaa Al Aswany was born in 1957. He is a dentist by profession, and for many years practiced in the Yacoubian Building which was to form the setting for his bestselling novel of the same name. He has written prolifically for Egyptian newspapers on politics, literature and social issues and his second novel, Chicago, was published by Fourth Estate in 2008.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his deft new collection, the ever-controversial Al Aswany (The Yacoubian Building) again delves into the various miseries of modern Egyptian life. In the long story "The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers," the title character rants against Egypt and its citizens with irresistible venom. Isam's hobbies include denouncing the "stupid tribal loyalty" of his compatriots, humiliating his defeated cartoon-drawing father, sleeping with his mother's maid and infuriating his co-workers by blatantly sipping coffee during Ramadan. But when Isam meets the enchanting German, Jutta, it appears that he may have found just the Western woman to ease his existential pain. In the powerful "A Look into Nagi's Face," Nagi, a half-French student, becomes a sadistic teacher's favorite, upsetting the classroom's balance of power. Domestic violence in a bourgeois Egyptian household gets out of hand in "When the Glass Shatters"; "Dearest Sister Makarim" mocks the formalities and traditions that hinder real communication between the sexes in modern Muslim culture. Acerbic critique of Egyptian culture is what weaves these stories into a coherent collection. The author systematically unveils his country's most revered institutions, from hospitals and schools to religion and marriage.
