In our aaahtts and cultcha sub-blog, Ursula reviews the reviews of books reviewed by reviewers themselves reviewed in the works they are reviewing. Read it and become instantly smarter, dazzle your friends, confound your enemies.

"Ma cousine Condoleezza : Et autres nouvelles" (Mahmoud Shukair)
Click below for Le Monde’s review of Palestinian writer Mahmoud Shukair “My cousin Condoleeza and other stories”, originally released in Arabic and now available in French. And here’s a review of his previous collection of stories, Mordechai’s Mustache and His Wife’s Cats.

Another new book about Egypt in the twilight of the Mubarak era has come out:
"L’Egypte entre démocratie et islamisme : Le système Moubarak à l’heure de la succession" (Jean-Noël Ferrié)
I haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet, but from the blurb it looks at how the “Mubarak system” works and its success in [...]

I read this Angry Arab post this morning and could not agree more:
Hichem Djait: Probably the most important and original scholar on Islam. I have been reading about the origins of the Great Fitnah in Islam. It is easy to discover that the best book there is on the subject is by the brilliant Tunisian [...]

If you read a lot of book reviews, as I do, you will have noticed that many reviewers (especially ones who are also writers or work in the same field as the author of the book) are reticent to go on attack mode when reviewing a peer’s work. Add to that the phenomenon of logrolling [...]

Search around Project Guttenberg, the excellent repository of free ebooks, and you’re bound to find dozens of books that in some way have to do with Egypt. One thing most of these have in common — particularly those from the 19th and early 20th century, when the Victorian fad was to write travel diaries — [...]

The London Book Fair, which this year shines a spotlight on Arab literature, ends tomorrow. Here are selected links to related stories:
✯ PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED - On religion and censorship for Egypt’s independent publishing houses.
✯ Pigs raid Sharqawi’s publishing house; confiscate books خنازير الداخلية تداهم دار ملامح للنشر وتصادر كتب at 3arabawy - Hossam [...]

Adam Shatz reviews a new biography of Abu Musab al-Suri, one of al-Qaeda’s most important theoreticians - Laptop Jihadi:

Al-Suri’s world-view isn’t original, although it is no less chilling for that: a Qutbian brew of political grievances (Israeli atrocities in Palestine, the US sanctions against Iraq), toxic prejudice (non-Muslims, but especially Jews and crusaders) and sexual [...]

Words Without Borders is running a series of excerpts from graphic novels from around the world this month, including two from Egypt and Lebanon. The fantastic Mazen Kerbaj, whose use of collage first surfaced during the Lebanon war of 2006, has an account of growing up during the Lebanese civil war:

For Egypt, I also like [...]

From Scott Horton’s very erudite blog at Harpers:

Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Ibn Khaldūn Meets Sultan al-Narir, ink drawing (ca. 1650)
“Politics is the ordering of the household or the city as they ought to be according to the requirements of ethics and wisdom so that the multitude could be made [...]

Beyond the Veil:
When the French government invaded Algeria, in 1830, it started a vast campaign of military “pacification,” which was quickly followed by the imposition of French laws deemed necessary for the civilizing mission to succeed. Women were crucial to that enterprise. In articles, stories and novels of the day, Algerian women were universally depicted [...]

Readers may be interested in reading this profile of Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswani from last week’s Le Mondes des Livres, accompanied by a review of the recently launched French edition of his last novel, Chicago.
We had mentioned Chicago when it came out earlier this year, while Baheyya had reviewed it.
Click on the image below to [...]

From the blurb:
When they’re not actively attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction, ‘Axis of Evil’ countries such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea are busy enjoying their region’s finest dishes. And their ‘Axis of Somewhat Evil’ cohorts, such as Cuba and Syria, are at it too. With over one hundred recipes, from soups and [...]

Although it has become well-known as one of Saddam Hussein’s worse crimes, the gassing of the Kurdish village of Halabja in March 1988 has not been the subject of extended reflection, particularly the tacit acceptance of Saddam Hussein’s policy of using chemical weapons against Kurdish dissidents and in his war with Iran that preceded Halabja. [...]