Amazon.com: Who are your literary heroes, and in particular, what is it you love about Moby Dick? Saladin Ahmed: That first one's a very long discussion—but some names that come to mind: Fritz Leiber, Borges, Melville, Maxine Hong Kingston, Whitman,...

“They don’t think. They don’t use logic,” she says. “They think art is forbidden.” The Salafis have done little to dispel this perception. Their leader, Sheik Abdel Moneim el-Shahat (who lost his individual bid for Parliament), recently accused the...

Mr. El-Shaha, who failed to win a seat in that election, earlier stirred controversy by demanded that statues which he denounced as idols be covered with was and condemning the writings of Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz as “prostitution...

The Crusades through Arab Eyes (Saqi Books, £14.95) by eminent Lebanese author, Amin Malouf is a great read – take care though: it’s not the angle that western readers are used to. Miramar Everyone should read one Naguib Mahfouz novel. In English this...

Their influence is obvious in the streets of Cairo, where covered, timid women in black are becoming more common and the Utopian ideal of total male domination drains the joy from the once vibrant city of Naguib Mahfouz. Ultimately that’s why the Cairo...

They did not only target top officials and security officers, but also intellectuals and writers whose views they deemed to be contrary to Islam. Al-Gamaa claimed responsibility for the assassination of secular writer Farag Foda, and an attempt to kill...