{"id":13773,"date":"2015-10-19T05:36:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T09:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=13773"},"modified":"2015-10-19T05:36:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-19T09:36:50","slug":"gamal-al-ghitani-1945-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/gamal-al-ghitani-1945-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Gamal al-Ghitani (1945-2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Towering Egyptian Novelist and Cultural Critic, Gamal al-Ghitani, Dies at Age\u00a070<\/h3>\n

BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 3<\/a> )<\/span><\/h3>\n
\n

Acclaimed Egyptian novelist and journalist Gamal al-Ghitani has died in a Cairo military hospital, aged 70:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ghitani\"<\/a>He had been in a coma in al-Galaa Military Hospital for two months after being admitted with respiratory problems. He\u00a0reportedly suffered a heart attack in August\u00a0and was deprived of oxygen.<\/p>\n

According to\u00a0Al Ghitani\u2019s wife, Magda\u00a0al-Guindi,\u00a0he died this morning. Egyptian state media reported that Al Ghitani\u2019s funeral was to be held at Cairo\u2019s Sayyida Nafisa mosque later in the day.<\/p>\n

Al-Ghitani is one of Egypt\u2019s most celebrated twentieth-century novelists, author of the widely influentialZayni Barakat,<\/i>\u00a0as well as\u00a0founder and first chief editor of one of Arabic\u2019s leading literary newspapers,Akhbar Al-Adab<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Recently, Egyptian authorities announced that they were naming a street in the Gamaliyya neighborhood \u2014 where al-Ghitani was born \u2014 for the august author. The street will have its name changed from \u201cDabbabya\u201d to \u201cGamal al-Ghitani.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0It connects two key\u00a0streets in Islamic Cairo: El-Moez and Gamaliyya.<\/p>\n

The widely respected novelist\u00a0was this year\u2019s winner of the Nile Award<\/a>, Egypt\u2019s largest state-funded literary prize. Over his lifetime, he produced\u00a0several short-story collections and\u00a0more than a dozen\u00a0novels, most prominently the classic\u00a0Zayni Barakat<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>which was translated by the late Farouk Abdel Wahab, and named\u00a0one of the Arab Writers Union\u2019s \u201cTop 105\u201d<\/a> of the 20th century. It also has exerted a global influence, notably over acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh.<\/a><\/p>\n

Al-Ghitani\u2019s\u00a0complete works were released<\/a> late last year.<\/p>\n

Al-Ghitani was born in Sohag, in upper Egypt, in 1945. According to Arab World Books<\/a>, he wrote his first story in 1959 at the age of 14. He\u00a0was\u00a0apprenticed as a child to\u00a0a carpetmaker, and later worked in one of the Khan el-Khalili factories, but in 1969 he found work at the\u00a0news desk of the daily paper Akhbar el-Youm<\/em>.\u00a0He worked as a war correspondent before settling into a more literary niche.<\/p>\n

Critic Samia Mehrez has called al-Ghitani \u201cthe silent ironist par excellence.\u201d\u00a0Edward Said, according to<\/a>Ahram Weekly<\/a>, <\/em>once\u00a0said that,\u00a0\u201cThe finest, leanest, most steely Arabic prose that I have either read or heard is produced by novelists (not critics) like Elias Khoury and Gamal El-Ghitani. \u2026 Each of whose prose is a razor-sharp Aristotelian instrument the elegance of which resembles Empson\u2019s or Newman\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of al-Ghitani\u2019s works are in English translation: Zayni Barakat<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(trans. Farouk Abdel Wahab,),\u00a0The Zafarani Files<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(also trans. Abdel Wahab,),\u00a0The Mahfouz Dialogs<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(trans. Humphrey Davies),\u00a0Pyramid Texts<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(also trans. Davies), and\u00a0The Book of Epiphanies<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(trans. Abdel Wahab,), among others.<\/p>\n

The Zafarani Files\u00a0<\/em>was longlisted for\u00a0the Best Translated Book Award in 2010.\u201d His novel Le Livre des Illuminations<\/em> (1990),\u00a0or\u00a0Kitab al-Tajalliyat,<\/em>\u00a0was awarded the Laure Bataillon Prize<\/em> in 2005 for the best work of fiction translated into French that year.\u00a0In 2006, he received the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour<\/em> for his collection of stories Schegge di fuoco<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Al-Ghitani\u00a0also won the French Chevalier de l\u2019Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1987, as well as several other awards.<\/p>\n

Read online:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNaguib Mahfouz\u2019s Childhood,\u201d<\/a> from The Mahfouz Dialogs<\/em> (trans. Humphrey Davies), 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnnihilation,\u201d<\/a> from\u00a0Pyramid Texts <\/em>(trans. Humphrey Davies)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Crop\u201d<\/a> (trans. Mohammed Shaheen)<\/p>\n

\u201cMystery Woman\u201d<\/a> (trans. Paul Starkey)<\/p>\n

Profiles:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gamal El-Ghitani: A scent of history<\/a><\/p>\n

Open letters:<\/b><\/p>\n

Al-Qahira<\/em> has published three open letters from al-Ghitani\u2019s wife, the author Magda al-Guindy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Video:<\/strong><\/p>\n

An interview on\u00a0<\/a>Ahram Online<\/a>:<\/em>\u00a0According to AO,\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThis interview with late novelist Gamal El-Ghitani was published on 11 Sep 2012, where he expressed fears of Muslim Brotherhood, spoke of Akhbar Al-Adab, the literary journal he founded and how he views his career.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

see also Five Short texts by al-Ghitani<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Towering Egyptian Novelist and Cultural Critic, Gamal al-Ghitani, Dies at Age\u00a070 BY MLYNXQUALEY on OCTOBER 18, 2015 \u2022 ( 3 ) Acclaimed Egyptian novelist and journalist Gamal al-Ghitani has died in a Cairo military...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,940,76],"tags":[1782],"class_list":["post-13773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-egypt","category-obituaries","tag-gamal-al-ghitani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13773"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13776,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13773\/revisions\/13776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}