Page 31 of North American New Book Catalog Spring/Summer 2008 by International Publishers Marketing

2469 ipm_catss2008_text12 10/2/07 10:06 am page 30 the american university in cairo press new titles april may 2008 cell block five fadhil al-azzawi a modern arabic novel translated by william m hutchins new new titles the first iraqi prison novel from the author of the last of the angels being plucked from a baghdad café and deposited in a cell block for political prisoners is a wakeup call for aziz the novel s hero and narrator a young man who has been living on automatic pilot as if he were a guest visiting his own life and he is finally forced to come to terms with the flawed world we inhabit and shape although never charged with any offense he must adjust to a lengthy stay in prison where he is befriended by salam the yard boss mun`im an idealistic university student with a beautiful sister named salwa yusuf an idealist dispatched to the `swamp salman an anarchist schoolteacher and mustafa an aged farmer who dreams of an alternative society while these imprisoned revolutionaries teach aziz to dream that an ideal city with his name on it may lie just over the horizon the police supervisor encourages him to think of a simple crime to which he can confess so he can be charged and eventually released based on the author s own incarceration in iraq cell block five is a clear-headed goodhumored tribute to the prison s men both the inmates and the guards and an indictment of man s gratuitous inhumanity to man pointing out that the transition from abused to abuser tortured to torturer can be an easy one written in 1971 and published outside iraq in 1972 cell block five the first iraqi prison novel was later made into a feature film in syria drawing the reader subtly into the political section of an iraqi prison this compelling story easily transcends cultural boundaries fadhil al-azzawi was born in kirkuk iraq in 1940 he holds a ph.d in cultural journalism from the university of leipzig and is the author of several novels and collections of poetry in iraq he was a member of the kirkuk group of poets of the 1960s generation he has lived in germany since 1977 his novel the last of the angels was published in english by the american university in cairo press in 2007 william m hutchins is the principal translator of naguib mahfouz s cairo trilogy and has most recently translated mohammed khudayyir s basrayatha fadhil al-azzawi s the last of the angels both auc press 2007 and naguib mahfouz s cairo modern auc press 2008 april 2008 hardbound us $17.95 can $20.20 isbn 978-977-416-142-1 112 pages 5x8 original arabic title al-qal`a al-khamisa arabic literature fiction the crane halim barakat a modern arabic novel translated by bassam frangieh and roger allen new a beautifully lyrical novel of memory from a leading syro-lebanese writer in the crane the renowned syro-lebanese author and sociologist halim barakat creates a narrator who looks back wistfully on a childhood in a small village of syria with the image of flying cranes and in particular one wounded bird as a continuing symbol of his emotions toward the past and its impact upon his life the narrator then travels to the united states and with his wife goes through the experiences of american college life in the 1960s he describes his participation in the political protests during that fraught decade and goes on to depict his later life in the american capital of washington dc and its surroundings the link between narrator and author is clearly a close one and yet the careful way in which the narrative s sequence is constructed allows the reader to invoke the world of the imagination in interpreting this nostalgic account of a middle eastern childhood and its international aftermath halim barakat is a novelist critic and scholar of sociology who recently retired from a long career on the faculty of georgetown university in washington dc among his scholarly works in english are visions of society reality in the contemporary arabic novel and the arab world society culture and state bassam frangieh is a scholar in the field of modern arabic literature he has published a number of studies of important modern arab poets and is a translator and anthologist he has taught at several american institutions most recently yale university roger allen is professor of arabic language and literature at the university of pennsylvania among his translations from arabic literature are naguib mahfouz s mirrors auc press 1999 and karnak café auc press 2007 may 2008 hardbound us $18.95 can $21.25 isbn 978-977-416-141-4 176 pages 5x8 original arabic title ta ir al-hawm arabic literature fiction page 30 to order call 1-800-758-3756 fax 1-703-661-1501 www.internationalpubmarket.com

[close]