Here Is a Body: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

In this follow-up to her PEN Award-winning novel, The Queue, an electrifying new voice in Arab women's fiction passionately brings to life the machinations of state oppression Mysterious men are rounding up street children and enrolling them in a so-called "rehabilitation program," designed to indoctrinate them for the military-backed regime's imminent crackdown on its opponents. Across town, thousands of protesters encamp in a city square demanding the return of the recently deposed president. Reminiscent of recent clashes in Egypt and reflective of political movements worldwide where civilians face off against state power, Abdel Aziz deftly illustrates the universal human struggles between resisting and succumbing to an oppressive regime. Here Is A Body is a courageous and powerful depiction of the state cooptation of human bodies, the dehumanization of marginalized groups, and the use of inflammatory religious rhetoric to manipulate a narrative.

Literature & Fiction

Abdel Aziz, Basma

Literary

Hoopoe

A magical story of a Crusade-era bookseller who embarks on a journey through the Islamic world's great medieval cities, winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature In the epic fashion of the great Arab explorers and travel writers of the Middle Ages, scribe and bookworm Mazid al-Hanafi narrates this journey from his remote village in the Arabian Desert. Dreaming of grand libraries, his passion for the written word draws him into a secret society of book smugglers and into the famed cultural capitals of the period--Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Granada, and Cordoba. He discovers a dangerous new world of ideas and experiences the cultural diversity of the Islamic Golden Age, its sects, philosophical schools, wars, and ways of life. Omaima Al-Khamis's magical storytelling and her vivid descriptions of time and place trace a route through ancient cities and cultures and immerse us in a distant era, uncovering the intellectual debates and struggles which continue to rage today.

The Book Smuggler: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Al-Khamis, Omaima

A sensitive and at times darkly humorous story of a young man's experience of illness, his contemplation of death, and his determination to maintain his independence through it all Shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction After reading Kafka, K decides to write his own diary, but he is constantly frustrated by his lack of experiences: he is worn down by the drudgery of his corporate job for a faceless corporation and by his incessant family obligations. When he receives the news that he has leukemia, he finds himself torn between a sense of devastation and a revelation that he has finally found a way out of his writing predicament. Through Mohammed's measured but forceful writing, this compelling debut has a universality that reaches across time, place, and culture.

The Critical Case of a Man Called K: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Mohammad, Aziz

Humor & Satire

Spanning twentieth-century Egyptian history and opening with the true story of a prominent Cairo businessman's murder, this rags-to-riches story wondrously combines real-life events with fiction, told by a "magical storyteller" It was in the spring of 1927 that Cairo's attention was captured by the shocking murder of prominent businessman Solomon Cicurel in his Nile-side villa in the upscale Zamalek district. It was a burglary that went wrong, and four culprits were soon arrested. Their trial was concluded swiftly, their punishments were decisive, and society breathed a sigh of relief. In Ashraf El-Ashmawi's telling, there was a fifth accomplice, Abbas, who fled to his home in the countryside to lay low until the murder trial blew over. However, he did not escape empty-handed and kept stolen documents from Cicurel's villa, ones that he imagined would lead him to a hidden safe. Abbas hatched a plan to return to the capital, find the safe, and make his fortune. The first step was to place his sister Zeinab with Cicurel's widow, Paula. Abbas's rags-to-riches story unfolds as a tale of modern Egypt, taking in the Second World War, the 1952 revolution and rise of Nasser, the 1967 war, and the Sadat and Mubarak eras. Spanning the 1920s to the 1990s, El-Ashmawi deftly weaves together history with fiction in this intriguing English-language debut.

The Lady of Zamalek: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

El-Ashmawi, Ashraf

The Men Who Swallowed the Sun: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Review\nSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 SAIF GHOBASH BANIPAL PRIZE\n"This is a pacy, clever, enjoyable book, rich in storytelling and adroitly threaded with social commentary."—The Irish Times\n“Two Bedouin men seek better lives as illegal immigrants in Libya and Italy.” —The New York Times\n"Stealing, drug-dealing, and the epic of Egyptian migration . . . A funny, furious, breathless tale." —BULAQ\n"A gripping story"—Al-Ahram Weekly\n"A furious, unapologetic tale of illegal immigration, discrimination, and erasure. Here is a book that not only attempts to understand the calculus of poverty and aspiration, but also the flawed politics that undercurrent North Africa."—Egyptian Streets\n“Compelling”—Al Bawaba\nPRAISE FOR ABU GOLAYYEL\n"Abu Golayyel represents a unique experience in Arab literature, an experience inspired by the spirit of the desert and which presents Arab Bedouin life in an atypical manner. His work makes the reader cling to his or her Arab heritage and refuse to abandon it to modernity or Salafism."—The Arab Weekly\n"A great read"—Mona Zaki, Banipal on Thieves in Retirement\n"Masterful"—Library Journal on Thieves in Retirement\n"A sophisticated storytelling experiment. . . and a guarded but deeply felt celebration of writing"—The National on A Dog with No Tail\n“A clever and complex meditation . . . full of swift sarcasm . . . an exploration of Abu Golayyel’s Bedouin identity”—Egypt Independent on A Dog with No Tail\n“A darkly funny social satire”—Bidoun on Dog with No Tail\nAbu Golayyel’s gritty tale of two men’s ill-conceived quest for a better life via the deserts of the Middle East and the cities of Europe is pure storytelling\nTwo Bedouin men from Egypt’s Western Desert seek to escape poverty through different routes. One—the intellectual, terminally self-doubting, and avowedly autobiographical Hamdi—gets no further than southern Libya’s fly-blown oasis of Sabha, while his cousin—the dashing, irrepressible Phantom Raider—makes it to the fleshpots of Milan.\nThe backdrop of this darkly comic and unsentimental story of illegal immigration is a brutal Europe and Muammar Gaddafi’s rickety, rhetoric-propped Great State of the Masses, where “the Leader” fantasizes of welding Libyan and Egyptian Bedouin into a new self-serving political force, the Saad-Shin.\nCompelling and visceral, with a seductive, muscular irony, The Men Who Swallowed the Sun is an unforgettable novel of two men and their fellow migrants and the extreme marginalization that drives them.

Humor & Entertainment

Abu Golayyel, Hamdi

Humor

Review\n"[One] of the best new works from around the world"—The Irish Times\n"This 1950s Egyptian epistolary novel is told by a young woman looking back on the misery, patriarchy and middle-class life that surrounded her upon her return from boarding school."—New York Times Book Review\n"Kouddous . . .wrote fiction about the Arab world way ahead of its time, pared down and powerful."—LitHub\n"Fresh, unpretentious and irresistibly cinematic"—ArabLit\n"A classic of Egyptian Literature. It's great that books like this are being published and that Ihsan Abdel Kouddous' work is available to the English reader in such a good translation."—Raphael Cormack, author of Midnight in Cairo\n"Ihsan Abdel Kouddous was a great novelist, a pioneer journalist, and a progressive activist who long fought for women’s rights and secular democratic values."—Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building\n"Abdel Kouddous enriched Egyptian literature and cinema with everlasting works"—Egypt Today\n“Ihsan is an artist”—Tawfik al-Hakim, author of Return of the Spirit\n“Abdel Kouddous enriched the world of Arab culture.”—Sky News Arabia\n“What sets Ihsan Abdel Kouddous apart is his ability to combine, on the page, the different overlapping threads of politics and society.”—Al-Shorouk\n“The novel I Do Not Sleep represents a turning point in Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s narratorial style.”—Hafriyat\nA story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English\nSixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father’s life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake.\nWritten as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous’s classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family.\nAbdel Kouddous’s masterpiece I Do Not Sleep was adapted into a classic of Egyptian cinema in 1957, and its publication for the first time in English is an international publishing event.

I Do Not Sleep: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Abdel Kouddous, Ihsan

A story of betrayal, desire, and family drama, written by a giant of Egyptian popular fiction who shocked readers in the 1950s when this Lolita-esque novel first appeared and whose work has never before been available in English Sixteen-year-old Nadia had been raised by her father, after her parents divorced when she was only a baby. Indulged and petulant, she remained the only female in her father's life. But when she returns from boarding school to find that he has remarried without her knowledge, she conspires to restore her rightful place, creating misery, confusion, and a flood of unexpected consequences in her wake. Written as a letter, a confession, by now twenty-one-year old Nadia, Ihsan Abdel Kouddous's classic novel of revenge and betrayal challenges patriarchal norms with its strong female characters and brazen sexuality, and continues to speak to the complex human condition. It dives into middle-class life, and lays bare the repressed desires, seething jealousies, and complicated dramas of family. Abdel Kouddous's masterpiece I Do Not Sleep was adapted into a classic of Egyptian cinema in 1957, and its publication for the first time in English is an international publishing event.

I Do Not Sleep (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Night Will Have Its Say: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

International Booker Prize finalist and "one of the Arab world's most innovative novelists" (Roger Allen) delivers a brilliant retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa\nThe year is 693 and a tense exchange, mediated by an interpreter, takes place between Berber warrior queen al-Kahina and an emissary from the Umayyad General Hassan ibn Nu'man. Her predecessor had been captured and killed by the Umayyad forces some years earlier, but she will go on to defeat Ibn Nu'man's forces.\nThe Night Will Have Its Say is a retelling of the Muslim wars of conquest in North Africa during the seventh century CE, narrated from the perspective of the conquered peoples. Written in Ibrahim al-Koni's unique and enchanting voice, his lyrical and deeply poetic prose speaks to themes that are intensely timely. Through the wars and conflicts of this distant, turbulent era, he addresses the futility of war, the privilege of an elite few at the expense of the many, the destruction of natural habitats and indigenous cultures, and questions about literal and fundamentalist interpretations of religious texts.\nAl-Koni's masterly account of conquest and resistance is both timeless and timely, infused with a sense of disaster and exile—from language, the desert, and homeland.

Al-Koni, Ibrahim

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Hoopoe publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hoopoe

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Hoopoe publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Here Is a Body: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Book Smuggler: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Critical Case of a Man Called K: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Lady of Zamalek: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

Here Is a Body: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Men Who Swallowed the Sun: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

I Do Not Sleep: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

I Do Not Sleep (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Night Will Have Its Say: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)

The Night Will Have Its Say: A Novel (Hoopoe Fiction)