Overview

One of Egypt's greatest contemporary writers, Gamal al-Ghitani (1945-2015) was born into a family of modest means in the Egyptian countryside. He trained as a carpet maker before turning his attention to writing, publishing over a dozen novels and several collections of short stories. This haunting memoir, one of seven autobiographical ""notebooks"" written before Ghitani's death, weaves together a series of vignettes in a style that mimics the uneven, discontinuous nature of memory itself. These fragments, or traces, are summoned from across the span of a singular lifetime, from Ghitani's rural birthplace in Upper Egypt to Cairo, to the Arab world and beyond. We read of his childhood adventures, his erotic awakenings, his time as a political prisoner, and his reports from the battlefront in Iraq and the corridors of power in Syria. There are vivid passages that capture fleeting glances of strangers through car windows, flavors and scents of delicacies he still savored, dreams and sorrows of neighbors in the apartment blocks of Cairo before Nasser, as well as recollections of chance conversations at points of transit, in cafes and on elegant streets, and trysts with unnamed paramours. These memories, and Ghitani's musings on memory's own finitude and mutability, make Traces both memoir and a meditation on memory itself, in all its inscrutable workings and inevitable betrayals.

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9789774169533

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A novelist of vision and daring. --Edward Said Al-Ghitani is one of modern Arabic literature's most prominent voices. --Chandrahas Choudhury, The National Gamal al-Ghitani creates a wonderful, lively world that is ironic, funny, and verbally dazzling. --Chad Post, Three Percent Succeeds brilliantly --Robert Irwin, Times Literary Supplement on Zayni Barakat Leaves you feeling spellbound. --Al-Ahram Hebdo on Pyramid Texts A beautiful and tantalizing work. --Juan Goytisolo, author of State of Siege, on Pyramid Texts

[A] novelist of vision and daring. Traces is a recollection of the poignant passage of time and the visceral traces it leaves in memory. Al-Ghitani's work arrives safe and sound on a foreign shore in this exquisite, sensitive, and beautiful translation.

Author Information

Gamal al-Ghitani (1945–2015) was an Egyptian novelist, literary editor, political commentator, and public intellectual. He published over a dozen novels, including Zayni Barakat (AUC Press, 2004) and The Zafarani Files (AUC Press, 2009), as well as several collections of short stories. He was also founding editor of the literary magazine, Akhbar al-adab (1993–2011). He was awarded the Egyptian State Prize for the Novel (1980), the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France (1987), and the Egyptian State Prize for Literature (2007). In 2015, he received the Nile Award in Literature, Egypt’s highest literary honor. Nader K. Uthman is associate professor in the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University, USA.

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