BOOKPATHS

Egypt

Negar Azimi considers the question -- "what do Egypt's writers do now?"

Still, his tale [Waguih Ghali's 'Beer in Snooker Club'] presents uncanny parallels to today’s Egypt, where artists, intellectuals and youth at large are beginning to fashion a new cultural republic of sorts even as they also struggle to find their bearings.

Egypt

"Celebrated novelist and political commentator," Ahdaf Souelf, "has the perfect way to support Egypt's revolution: come on holiday."

Probably the most immediate way for us to get back on our feet is to get tourism going. This is the moment for everyone who wishes the Egyptian revolution well to come and visit. Everyone who's interested in the great experiment we're living through should come and be part of it.

Egypt

Writer Tariq Ali comments on the chaos in Egypt and what it means for the Arab world.

The millions of people in the streets of Egypt are demanding a total overhaul.  They want, as in Tunisia, a new constitution that guarantees political and social rights.  They want an independent foreign policy that is decided in Cairo, not Tel Aviv or Washington.  They want to life the blockade of Gaza so that its people can live as normally as possible.

Egypt

Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif comments on Mubarak's regime.

The events of this past week prove what many of us have believed for a long time:  the Egyptian people do not deserve the regime that has been visited on them for the last 30 years.

Egypt

Benedicte Page reports that the Bibliotheca Alexandrina "is being kept safe by Egypt's young people during the current unrest sweeping the country."

Alexandria, Egypt

TS Learner, “author of a new thriller set in 1970s Alexandria," takes readers on a tour “of the catacombs, cafes and archeological sites of Egypt’s decadent colonial jewel.”

Alexandria is not an obvious tourist destination, but it's worth taking a few days out to discover why this layered cake of a city has been muse to so many literary giants. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331BC, it was in Alexandria that EM Forster had his first love affair, Daphne du Maurier wrote Rebecca and Lawrence Durrell (inspired by the political complexity of pre-Nasser Egypt) wrote The Alexandria Quartet. – from “Alexandria: an Author’s Tour, by TS Learner, The Guardian

The Cavafy Museum, Alexandria, Egypt

The life and work of Greek poet Constatine P. Cavafy is celebrated at The Cavafy Museum in Alexandria, housed in the apartment where he spent the last 35 years of his life.  The Cavafy Museum website offers visitor information, along with a selection of his work.

In the Same Space
By C. P. Cavafy

The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood
that I’ve seen and walked through years on
   end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was
   sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you has been
   transformed into feeling.

Related Website

Online -- Constantine P. Cavafy’s Poems (English)

Alexandria, Egypt

Peter Porter writes about Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria.

“It had not been Durrell’s original intention to carry the story over so long a span, but once begun, he found he had an irresistible impulse to complete the full trajectory of a long-fostered obsession. Alexandria became the mise en scène of his masterpiece, if not by accident, at least fortuitously. To state this is not to question the powerful presence of the city throughout the novels. But Durrell’s creative instinct appears to have hit on Alexandria as the right domain for his long-anticipated magnum opus because it had become highly familiar to him during his wartime exile and, more importantly, because an Alexandrian woman had entered his life at a critical point.” – from “Lawrence Durrell in the Ambiguous White Metropolis,” by Peter Porter, The Times

Egypt

Maya Jaggi talks with Egyptian novelist (and dentist) Alaa Al Aswany.

“Al Aswany, now 51, lives in Garden City, just south of downtown Cairo, with his wife, Iman Taymur, and their two daughters, May, 12, and Nada, 11. Speaking in a hotel beside the Nile, and later in London, he says he is unwilling to give up his clinic, despite being a rarity among Arabic novelists in being able to live from his writing (Mahfouz was a government bureaucrat). ‘Dentistry is my window on Egyptian society,' he says. 'Success can be dangerous - you get isolated. But if you block your contact with the street, you're in trouble. More than 60% of Egyptians are below the poverty line. I must keep loyal to them, or I'll lose everything.’" – from “Cairo Calling,” by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

Farringford Hotel, Isle of Wight, England

Once the Isle of Wight home of Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Farringford now caters to visitors as a hotel and restaurant “set in 33 acres of parkland and adjoining 500 acres of National Trust downland and breathtakingly beautiful coastline.”  Alfred Tennyson and his wife, Emily, first rented Farringford in 1853 “with the right to purchase, which they did in 1856 on the proceeds of the publication of Maud."  Farringford was Tennyson’s home for the next forty years, “the happiest period” of his life.  It was here that Tennyson wrote many of his most famous works, including The Charge of the Light Brigade; his second son was born; and where guests, such as Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and Charles Darwin, were entertained.

For visitor information, visit Farringford’s website.