{"id":14437,"date":"2016-05-16T07:06:24","date_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=14437"},"modified":"2016-05-16T07:06:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-16T11:06:24","slug":"day-of-blogging-for-ahmed-naji-his-reading-recommendations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/day-of-blogging-for-ahmed-naji-his-reading-recommendations\/","title":{"rendered":"Day of Blogging for Ahmed Naji: His Reading\u00a0Recommendations"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

From noon on Monday, May 16 through noon on Tuesday, May 17, the world will host a\u00a0\u201cDay of Blogging for Ahmed Naji.<\/a>\u201d This comes on the same day he receives his PEN\/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, in absentia, in NYC:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"12524157_1764721093763360_4227884242732625602_n\"Naji has been in jail since February 20 on charges of \u201cviolating public morals\u201d with a published excerpt of his novel Using Life<\/em>. This day of blogging, in organizers\u2019 words, is \u201cto offer a writer who\u2019s been sentenced to jail for two years the chance to get out of prison, but also to ensure that he is the last person imprisoned for his writings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naji first emailed me in 2010, in his capacity as a journalist at Akhbar al-Adab<\/em>. By then, he was already a relatively well-known novelist, at least in the tiny circles where these things are well-known.<\/p>\n

He started blogging in 2005 at Wassia\u2019 khayalak<\/a> (Widen your imagination), at 20, and he wrote about a variety of things: movies, books, politics, society, human rights. In 2006, he got his Master\u2019s in journalism and started working at Akbar al-Adab<\/em>. He published his first novel, Rogers, <\/em>in 2007, and in 2010 it was just appearing in Italian translation. By 2010, he was part of the center of a new literary movement that sought to tear down the more polite literature of the twentieth century and build something new.<\/p>\n

Even when he became a successful journalist and novelist, he maintained an interest in blogging and other ways words could be used.<\/p>\n

And he didn\u2019t wait for 2011 to free him from his mental chains. \u201cI had that since I started writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still: \u201cOf course a new era has begun,\u201d he told me in March of 2011. \u201cWhat is it? How it will be? We\u2019re still waiting for an answer to these questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the spring of 2011, he emphasized to me several times that \u201cthe coming steps will not be easy.\u201d He believed that a \u201cbig part of the societal attitudes toward art have been created by military regime which has ruled Egypt for the last 60 years.\u201d And \u201cif we could have a democratic state, this will be a first step.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, back in 2011, that he hoped \u201cthere will not be many novels about the revolution. I believe using the revolution as literary topic will lead to kitsch literature, and will turn that great moment to silly stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

But before that, in 2010, when Naji was part of a burgeoning new literary movement. He told me his favorite books were Nael Eltoukhy\u2019s 2006<\/em><\/a> (2009), Ihab Abd El-Hamid\u2019s Failed Lovers<\/em> (2005), and Yasser Abdel-Hafez\u2019s On the Occasion of Life<\/a><\/em> (2005).<\/p>\n

I must like this question, because I asked him again, over email, at the end of 2011. He gave just one new title: Youssef Rakha\u2019s Sultan\u2019s Seal<\/a> <\/em>(2011).<\/p>\n

The last time we talked was in November 2015, over Skype, and it was mostly about the case against him (and the noise in the background, since I was sitting in a parking lot). He said he was trying to finish a collection of short stories. He was working on edits, hoping it would be published in 2016.<\/p>\n

He characterized the trial against the excerpt of his novel as not about sex<\/em>, but about language<\/em>. Those things that the prosecution claims are \u201cagainst public morality,\u201d Naji said, you can find them in the hadith, or the reports about the life of Muhammad.<\/p>\n

Naji traced this new public morality to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Arabic literature had its nahda, <\/em>or \u201cawakening.\u201d That\u2019s when authors like Muhammad Husayn Haykal (Zaynab, <\/em>1913) and Salama Moussa put their stamp on Egyptian literature. \u201cThey cared very much about not using these words. So they disappeared from the written language, even though you can hear it everywhere on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naji said he thought an examination of language was essential to creating a new literature. And: \u201cI believe I have the right to use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we talked, he listed off a few other Egyptian writers that he saw as at the center of this project: Mohammed Rabie, Youssef Rakha, Nael Eltoukhy.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t record our talk. But I wrote down that he said, at the end: \u201cI hope they stay safe, I hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Naji\u2019s reading list:<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is no full-length book in translation by Ihab Abdel Hamid. But you can read \u201cCairo<\/a>\u201d over at the Qisus Ukhra blog.<\/p>\n

Nael Eltoukhy\u2019s 2006 <\/em>hasn\u2019t (yet) been translated into English, but his 2013 novel Women of Karantina<\/em>was translated by Robin Moger and is available from AUC Press.<\/p>\n

Yasser Abdel Hafez\u2019s Book of Safety<\/em> (2013) will be published soon in English.<\/p>\n

Mohamed Rabie\u2019s International Prize for Arabic Fiction-shortlisted Otared<\/em> was translated by Robin Moger and will be out this fall from Hoopoe Fiction.<\/p>\n

Youssef Rakha\u2019s Sultan\u2019s Seal<\/em>, trans. Paul Starkey, is available from Interlink.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY MLYNXQUALEY on MAY 16, 2016 \u2022 ( 0 ) From noon on Monday, May 16 through noon on Tuesday, May 17, the world will host a\u00a0\u201cDay of Blogging for Ahmed Naji.\u201d This comes...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1012,940],"tags":[1816],"class_list":["post-14437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-spring","category-egypt","tag-ahmed-naji"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437","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=14437"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14439,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14437\/revisions\/14439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}