Complete Review has recently posted a thorough review on Professor Hanaa by Reem Bassiouney. Read the complete review here.
Tag Archives: Egypt
Reem Bassiouney’s interview with BBC World about her novel Professor Hanaa
Reem Bassiouney The novelist talks about creating a more complex, Egyptian answer to ‘chick lit’ with her bestselling book Professor Hanaa.
Listen to the interview here
http://garnetpublishing.co.uk/media/listen-reem-bassiouneys-interview-strand-bbc-world-service
Or read the transcript below:
Professor Hanaa, the story of the professor who would not be virgin on her 40th birthdaty, released in the United Kingdom
Professor Hanaa
by Reem Bassiouney
The Egyptian bestselling novel and the winner of the Sawiris literary award, the biggest award in Egypt, now in the UK
“Deep, original, fascinating…opens new doors to the modern novel in the Arab world and represents Egyptian society with all its complexities, paradoxes and pressing problems.” Gamal Al Ghitany, Novelist and editor in chief of Egypt’s premier literary journal, Akhbar Al Adab
On the eve of her fortieth birthday an Egyptian academic, Professor Hanaa, finds herself alone and unloved. For twenty years she has battled with an impossible love for an unobtainable colleague, and has become an outcast in a society where family and friends mean everything. Single-mindedly intent on changing her life, Hanaa determines she will lose her virginity before her birthday and sets her sights on Khalid, her teaching assistant. An earnest, hardworking and devout young man, Khalid is an unlikely accomplice; however Hanaa’s powers of persuasion know no bounds. What ensues is a humorous and wry commentary on relationships in the Arab world.
About the author
Reem Bassiouney is the author of five highly acclaimed novels in Arabic, all of which have been best-sellers in Egypt. Her second novel, The Pistachio Seller won the best Arabic translated novel award in 2009, and her new novel Professor Hanaa, which appeared in Arabic in 2008, won the first prize in the Sawiris literary award – the biggest award in Egypt.
Watch the author’s conference at Georgetown University
The Ghoul and the Arab Populous Revolt, an article by Jamal Kanj
Jamal Kanj is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, published by Garnet Publising in 2010.
Growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp, I remember at times when my little brother cried for no good reason at night; my late mother would warn him: the ghoul comes to the sound of crying children. Instinctively petrified from this imaginative monster, the child would hush instantly.
Today’s contemporary ghoul to scare off the West is Al Qaida. Indeed, it was a monster impregnated in the most radicalized fringe elements of Muslim and Arab societies, was incubated under repressive dictatorships, and fed by Western hypocrisy.
Walk like an Egyptian: A review on the book Hold on to Your Veil, Fatima!
Hold on to Your Veil, Fatima! And Other Snapshots of Life in Contemporary Egypt
BY Sanna Negus
Paperback
c.160pp
216 x 138mm
Garnet Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-85964-238-2
February 2010
Walk like an Egyptian
“Hold onto Your Veil, Fatima! And Other Snapshots of Life in Contemporary Egypt” by Finland-based author Sanna Negus is a far cry from the many meaningless tales of local lifestyles by foreign journalists in and arouna the Arabian Peninsula.
by Halima Khan
http://www.libasinlemational.com
The insight Negus gives into the workings of Egypt sets the mood of an interesting narrative. This is a break from the bitter political analysis and religious slandering that many correspondents subject Egypt to.
Sanna Negus, a reporter for Finland Radio, came to the Middle East in the mid-‘ 99as for graduate studies in Cairo; fundamentally for the reason that she wanted to acquire an unusual language and figured Arabic fit the bill. She ended up writing a book that has been defined as an “expose of contemporary Egypt that’s at once harrowing and
humorous”.
Garnet on Publishing 