The Politics and Economics of Exile

The fourth chapter takes the reader beyond the boundaries of the Egyptian nation, to Europe and the Gulf, to explore the space of political and economic dislocation, and brings together the work of Bahaa Taher and Muhammad al-Bisati. It traces the transformation of the exilic novel from the early decades of the twentieth century: while early Arabic narratives showed a movement beyond the borders of Egypt largely for the purposes of education, Taher’s Al-Hubb fi al-manfa (Love in Exile, 1995) and al-Bisati’s Daqq al-tubul (Drumbeat, 2006) depict Europe as the space of political exile, and the Arab Gulf as the site of economic exploitation. In both cases the novels under examination raise questions about the unity of the Egyptian nation-state in an age where political, social, and economic flows extend beyond the boundaries of the nation. The two works engage not only with issues of national identity and belonging, but also with that of regional affiliation. highlighting how the experience of economic and political dislocation serves to illuminate the failure Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalist dream, and its dissolution under the regimes of Sadat and Mubarak in the following decades.

Cairo: Urban Space, Surveillance and the State

This chapter focuses on the representation of the urban space of Cairo. It examines Sonallah Ibrahim’s Tilka-l-raʾiha (The Smell of it, 1966), Gamal al-Ghitani’s Waqaʾiʿ harat al-Zaʿfarani (The Zafarani Files, 1976), Ibrahim Aslan’s Malik al-hazin (The Heron, 1981), and Radwa Ashour’s, Faraj (Blue Lorries, 2008) reading the novels in opposition to the realist narratives of earlier decades. The shift away from the realist depictions of the urban metropolis as the site of national struggle, or of the alley as the cross-section of Egyptian society, is accompanied by a new representational aesthetics. Through the presentation of the city as the space of incarceration, the reimagination of the alley as a fantastic space, and the turn towards the previously ignored neighborhood of Imbaba, these writers showcase new literary techniques; aspects of magical realism; elements of the fantastic; a turn to hyper-realism, in order to represent the transformation of the urban space of Cairo into one of surveillance and control.

Beyond the Sixties

The book concludes with a discussion of the continued importance of this generation beyond the decade of the sixties. It traces the transformation of the sixties generation from an emerging group of writers to established members of the literary and cultural sphere in Egypt, who came to occupy positions of prominence in the field. It presents the career trajectories of the figures at the heart of this book including; the reception of their fiction; the conferral of awards; and the translation of their works. In doing so it also explores the impact of the sixties generation upon contemporary writers, particularly the nineties generation in Egypt. Despite the differences in political and ideological positions, the struggles of the writers of the sixties generation are not wholly divorced from those of their successors. Both were generations contending with the aftermath of revolutionary change, the realities of the failings of democratic projects, and the role of artists and intellectuals in confronting the injustices of the state. As the chapters of this book show, with the sixties generation came the disappearance of the idealised Egyptian nation in the novel. The works of their successors continue to grapple with its aftermath.

Of Other Cities

This chapter expands the literary map beyond the boundaries of Cairo and moves to the coastal city of Alexandria. A city that was largely absent from the literary landscape throughout much of the twentieth century, the writers of this generation place it front and center in their fiction. Here the work of two natives of the city, Edwar al-Kharrat and Ibrahim Abdel Meguid, who both produced “Alexandrian Trilogies” provides the impetus for this chapter. Both writers shift the focus away from the city of Cairo and present the city of Alexandria not only as the possible alternative for the Cairene exile (as in Naguib Mahfouz’s 1967 novel Miramar) but as a city with a complicated past and present. In works that blend autobiography and fiction, realism and the fantastic, the two novelists contend with the city’s colonial, cosmopolitan, and post-revolutionary contexts, calling into question Cairo’s position of dominance.

Re-imagining the Rural: The Mystical and the Mythical

Chapter Three centers around works by Abd al-Hakim Qasim, Yahya Taher Abdullah, and Yusuf al-Qaid. Here we move to the villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt, the latter appearing in Egyptian novels for the first time. These novels are read in opposition to the social realist works of the previous generation, with their concentration upon the countryside as the space of revolutionary struggle and political mobilization. The rural here is transformed into a space of suffering and degradation, in which the villagers struggle to contend with the difficulties of their daily life. The village is thus represented as mystical and mythical space, with the writers employing literary techniques from fantastic literature and magical realism, in order to represent the ongoing marginalization of the Egyptian village and its separation from the rest of the nation. These works of fiction are situated within the broader socio-economic context of the period, particularly Abdel Nasser’s agricultural reforms begun in the 1950s. The failure of the policies is reflected in the literary output of the generation, who grappled to come to terms with the continued marginalization and exclusion of the Egyptian village.

Introduction: Space and the Sixties

The first part of the chapter presents the members of the sixties generation, telling the story of their emergence onto the cultural scene in Egypt. It outlines the socio-economic and political context of which they were both a part and an expression. Who are these writers? When and how did they emerge? What is significant about their work? Why did they appear at such a critical moment in Egyptian history? What are the sources of literary and aesthetic inspiration? This chapter draws on an array of primary material from the journals of the time whose pages were filled with discussions about this emerging generation. This presentation of the sixties generation is undertaken with an attention to the broader context of the literary sphere in Egypt, what Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural production.” The second part of the chapter focuses on the theoretical arguments for the examination of space in literature, examining the broader “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, engaging this approach within the context of modern and contemporary Egyptian literature. A focus upon spatial representations expands our analysis of the work of the sixties writers, bringing together the thematic, the aesthetic, and the political.