Khan Al-Khalil

Naguib Mahfouz’s novel Khan al-Khalil, published in 1945, is set two years earlier, during the second world war, with the campaign in north Africa ongoing and the Germans bombing the city of Cairo. The story begins with Ahmad Akif, a civil servant, leaving his work place and heading to the new apartment he has moved …

Ahmed Matar’s Black Humor

I have been listening to Ahmed Matar's poetry since childhood, when no long car ride was undertaken without the cassette tape of the Iraqi poet reciting poems, giving us lines which were a blend of humor and despair, ironic in  their tone, lacerating in their self-criticism, bringing us face to face with a shared Arab …