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Homecoming: Sixty Years of Egyptian Short Stories
Short story writing in Egypt was still in its infancy when Denys Johnson-Davies, described by Edward Said as "the leading Arabic-English translator of our time," arrived in Cairo as a young man in the 1940s. Nevertheless, he was immediately impressed by such writing talents of the time as
Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Gohar, and the future Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and he set about translating their works for local English-language periodicals of the time.
He continued to translate over the decades, and sixty years later he brings together this remarkable overview of the work of several generations of Egypt's leading short story writers. This selection of some fifty stories represents not only a cross-section through time but also a spectrum of
styles, and includes works by Teymour, Hakki, Gohar, and Mahfouz and later writers such as Mohamed El-Bisatie, Said el-Kafrawi, Bahaa Taher, and Radwa Ashour, as well as new young writers of today like Hamdy El-Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin, and Youssef Rakha.
Mahmoud Teymour, Yahya Hakki, Yusuf Gohar, and the future Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and he set about translating their works for local English-language periodicals of the time.
He continued to translate over the decades, and sixty years later he brings together this remarkable overview of the work of several generations of Egypt's leading short story writers. This selection of some fifty stories represents not only a cross-section through time but also a spectrum of
styles, and includes works by Teymour, Hakki, Gohar, and Mahfouz and later writers such as Mohamed El-Bisatie, Said el-Kafrawi, Bahaa Taher, and Radwa Ashour, as well as new young writers of today like Hamdy El-Gazzar, Mansoura Ez Eldin, and Youssef Rakha.
372 pages, Hardcover
First published January 15, 2012
About the author
Denys Johnson-Davies
100 books51 followersDenys Johnson-Davies (Arabic: دنيس جونسون ديڤيز) (1922-2017) was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who has translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.
Born in 1922 in Vancouver Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
Davies, referred to as “the leading Arabic-English translator of our time” by the late Edward Said, has translated more than twenty-five volumes of short stories, novels, plays, and poetry, and was the first to translate the work of Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. He is also interested in Islamic studies and is co-translator of three volumes of Prophetic Hadith. He has also written a number of children’s books adapted from traditional Arabic sources, including a collection of his own short stories, Fate of a Prisoner, which was published in 1999.
Born in 1922 in Vancouver Canada to English parentage, Davies spent his childhood in Sudan, Egypt, Uganda, and Kenya, and then was sent to England at age 12. Davies studied Oriental languages at Cambridge, and has lectured translation and English literature at several universities across the Arab World. In 2006, he published his memoirs. In 2007, he was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award "Culture Personality of the Year", a valued at about $300,000.
Davies lives in and divides his time between Marrakesh and Cairo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denys_Jo...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 15, 2014
In general, I'm a huge fan of translated works. I feel that translating into English lends this transcendent quality to language, this innovative use of imagery that almost always feels ethereal and otherworldly.
Almost.
For a lot of these stories, you can glimpse the greatness behind the curtain. The ideas move you, the twists wow you and sometimes even the language does. But as an exercise in consistency, I think it falls flat. I don't know if its the Arabic language generally or this translation specifically, but it just didn't come together. It seems not all translations are created equal.
I'm planning to seek out these titles in the original Arabic because they seem like they'd be best served by that.
Almost.
For a lot of these stories, you can glimpse the greatness behind the curtain. The ideas move you, the twists wow you and sometimes even the language does. But as an exercise in consistency, I think it falls flat. I don't know if its the Arabic language generally or this translation specifically, but it just didn't come together. It seems not all translations are created equal.
I'm planning to seek out these titles in the original Arabic because they seem like they'd be best served by that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review