The New York Times chats with Miral al-Tahawy about her book Brooklyn Heights: A Modern Arabic Novel : NYT : The central character in the book, “Brooklyn Heights,” is a single mother named Hend. She has one son and struggles with loneliness, exhaustion a

CAIRO — The Egyptian novelist Miral al-Tahawy withdrew from the international literary and cultural scene in 2005 and returned at age 37 to the Nile Delta village of her birth. For more than two years, she slept in her childhood room and cared for her ca

Although only half the novels I read in 2011 counted towards Challenges, I suspect I made some decisions based on speed of completion, and in doing so vaguely confirmed my suspicion of Challenges. So Resolution One is Read More Big Books. 'Big' is not ea

BEIRUT: A cottage industry in books about the Arab Spring is already well under way, despite the fact that most of the revolutions in the region are still incomplete, compromised, thwarted or stuck. Those responding to the chain of events set off by Moha

The pyramids at Giza are the most stunning sight I have ever seen. True, their lonely eminence is threatened by Cairo's unlicensed building sprawl, with half completed houses inching their way towards them. Surveying them at night as the calls to prayer

Cairo, Egypt—Naguib Mahfouz, the great Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate, once observed that revolutions are “plotted by the clever, fought by the brave, and profited from by cowards.” It’s a wise line that only gains further credence from the current