https://arab.news/vgm4p
Author: Buddy Levy
In the summer of 1913, the wooden-hulled brigantine Karluk departed Canada for the Arctic Ocean. At the helm was Captain Bob Bartlett, considered the world’s greatest living ice navigator.
The expedition’s visionary leader was a flamboyant impresario named Vilhjalmur Stefansson hungry for fame.
Set against the backdrop of the Titanic disaster and World War I, filled with heroism, tragedy, and scientific discovery, Buddy Levy’s “Empire of Ice and Stone” tells the story of two men and two distinctively different brands of leadership: one selfless, one self-serving, and how they would forever be bound by one of the most audacious and disastrous expeditions in polar history.
DUBAI: London-based publisher Saqi Books is marking the 85th anniversary of the release of the seminal Egyptian writer Tawfik Al-Hakim’s satirical classic “Diary of a Country Prosecutor” with a special English-language paperback edition on July 11.
“Both a comedy of errors and a trenchant social satire, this classic by one of the Arab world’s leading dramatists has lost none of its bite,” the publisher states in its press release.
As the title suggests, it is the fictional journal of a public prosecutor stationed somewhere in rural Egypt. Laced with the kind of dark humor that arises from only the most horrific circumstances, the book “takes aim at a self-interested ruling class and the hapless public servants at their disposal,” the release continues.
In his foreword, the late novelist P.H. Newby writes: “Al-Hakim’s comedy is blacker than anything Gogol or Dickens wrote because life for the Egyptian peasantry was blacker than for the nineteenth-century Russian serf or English pauper,” adding that Al-Hakim’s “bitter humor” focused on “a social reality that he plainly regarded as shocking and, since he saw no immediate way of improving it, dispiriting.”
Al-Hakim is widely regarded as one of the greats of Arabic literature and drama, on a par with his great friend and peer, Naguib Mahfouz. (When Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, he insisted that Al-Hakim would have won it, had he still been alive.)
Saqi’s editorial director Elizabeth Biggs tells Arab News: “There is a beautiful photograph of Al-Hakim and Mahfouz that was taken in a café sometime in 1982, when both men are old and iconic. Mahfouz is in his dark glasses and a sharp coat; Al-Hakim is gesticulating animatedly in a spotless beige flat cap. They are both smiling, sharing some joke. It’s obvious from this photograph that these two know some wisdom and kindness about the human condition the rest of us are still trying to find.”
She describes Al-Hakim and Mahfouz as “the real pioneers of the novel in Arabic,” saying: “They built on one another’s legacies and inspired subsequent generations of writers around the world. Their skills in turning universal human foibles into timeless classics are unmatched, except by one another. ‘Diary of a Country Prosecutor’ is full of such vignettes, starring people who ‘mean well,’ but lack the requisite knowledge or skills to execute their ambitions, attempting to wrangle order out of confusion.
“It’s hard to unwind from this small but rich tapestry of a novel one thread when it is composed of so many vivid ones: social, political, local, national and international commentaries. Al-Hakim frequently chose to focus the lens of his writing on the farmers of the Delta and the ‘force within them they’re not conscious of.’ Like another of Al-Hakim’s novels, ‘Return of the Spirit,’ it’s a kind of apprenticeship novel,” she continues. “We are all works in progress who must take to the stage when we’re only really ready for the dress rehearsal while, on the other side of the room, Mahfouz and Al-Hakim are sipping coffee, making notes, smiling kindly and encouraging us to keep on going.”
Authors: David A. Ebert, Marc Dando, And Sarah Fowler
“Sharks of the World” is the essential illustrated guide for anyone interested in these magnificent creatures.
Now fully revised and updated, it covers 536 of the world’s shark species and is packed with color illustrations, color photos and informative diagrams.
This comprehensive, easy-to-use reference guide incorporates the latest taxonomic revisions of many shark families, featuring many species that were only described in recent years.
This book brings together archaeological and linguistic evidence to provide a sweeping global history of ancient Africa, tracing how the continent played an important role in the technological, agricultural, and economic transitions of world civilization. Christopher Ehret takes readers from the close of the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago, when a changing climate allowed for the transition from hunting and gathering to the cultivation of crops and raising of livestock, to the rise of kingdoms and empires in the first centuries of the common era.
Ehret takes up the problem of how we discuss Africa in the context of global history, combining results of multiple disciplines. He sheds light on the rich history of technological innovation by African societies—from advances in ceramics to cotton weaving and iron smelting—highlighting the important contributions of women as inventors and innovators.
He shows how Africa helped to usher in an age of agricultural exchange, exporting essential crops as well as new agricultural methods into other regions, and how African traders and merchants led a commercial revolution spanning diverse regions and cultures. Ehret lays out the deeply African foundations of ancient Egyptian culture, beliefs, and institutions and discusses early Christianity in Africa.
A monumental achievement by one of today’s eminent scholars, Ancient Africa offers vital new perspectives on our shared past, explaining why we need to reshape our historical frameworks for understanding the ancient world as a whole.
Author: ALVA NOE
In “The Entanglement,” philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, arguing that we have greatly underestimated what this entangled reality means for understanding human nature.
Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, “The Entanglement” offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.
Author: Nicolas Mathevon
What is the meaning of a bird’s song, a baboon’s bark, an owl’s hoot, or a dolphin’s clicks? In The Voices of Nature, Nicolas Mathevon explores the mysteries of animal sound. Putting readers in the middle of animal soundscapes that range from the steamy heat of the Amazon jungle to the icy terrain of the Arctic, Mathevon reveals the amazing variety of animal vocalizations. He describes how animals use sound to express emotion, to choose a mate, to trick others, to mark their territory, to call for help, and much more. What may seem like random chirps, squawks, and cries are actually signals that, like our human words, allow animals to carry on conversations with others.
Mathevon explains how the science of bioacoustics works to decipher the ways animals make and hear sounds, what information is encoded in these sound signals, and what this information is used for in daily life. Drawing on these findings as well as observations in the wild, Mathevon describes, among many other things, how animals communicate with their offspring, how they exchange information despite ambient noise, how sound travels underwater, how birds and mammals learn to vocalize, and even how animals express emotion though sound. Finally, Mathevon asks if these vocalizations, complex and expressive as they are, amount to language.