Homecoming: Sixty Years of Egyptian Short Stories

This book came out in 2012 and presented 57 stories by Egyptian authors, published roughly between the 1940s and 2010. It was the largest collection of multiple Egyptian authors assembled by translator Denys Johnson-Davies, coming out just a few years before he died. It could be considered a capstone to his translating career, which had begun more than six decades earlier. If you’ve read his previous anthologies of Egyptian stories, you’ll recognize about a third of the tales, drawn from his earlier collections.The earliest writers in Homecoming were Mahmoud Teymour (b. 1894), Yahya Hakki and Naguib Mahfouz. The youngest for which biographical info was available was Rahab Bassam (b. 1976); thus, several generations of authors were included. Eight of the writers were women.As in most previous collections by Johnson-Davies, the works were presented with minimal notes, few dates of publication and little in the way of introduction. This made such a large collection a bit daunting, but the translator was old school: readers were expected to find their own way and draw their own conclusions.The stories were varied in style, setting and character, and a lot of care seemed to have been taken in selecting them. Most of the works were realistic, a few were experimental. Together, they offered a cross-section of Egyptian society; the only things missed, for this reader, were stories touching directly on politics and the elite. Nothing was set abroad, except for one tale in which the Taj Mahal was visited in a dream.The subjects depicted were varied: religious belief (Mahmoud el-Saadani), religious hypocrisy (Mohammed Afifi), the struggle to live amid poverty (Salwa Bakr), and relations between couples in the city and countryside (Abbas Ahmed, Youssef al-Sharouni). Government red tape (Abdel-Moneim Selim), a woman’s lot (Mohamed el-Bisatie) and people’s wasted lives (Sonallah Ibrahim). A few stories touching on sex surprised with their frankness (Shehata al-Erian, Hamdy el-Gazzar).Other tales of interest included one involving an attack on a man who was thought to be an enemy of the faith (Naguib Mahfouz), jealousy and hatred coming into the open (Said al-Kafrawi) and the depiction of a man who might or might not be truly devout (Yahya Abdullah). There was close observation and humor (Mohamed Makhzangi), and the outlook of the younger generation was presented (Rehab Bassam). Women’s points of view were depicted in works by both female and male authors; one involved a clitoridectomy (Abdou Gubeir), another --- one of the strongest in the collection --- an honor killing (Shawqi Faheem). Among the more experimental stories was one by Sahar Tawfiq in which both the narrator and the person spoken to were unclear, but the atmosphere of uncertainty and unreality was conveyed with some power. The tale by Afifi, from 1946, has been called one of the first published Arabic stories to be written wholly in the spoken language. One wonders why Johnson-Davies, in the course of his career, didn’t translate more by this author.A criticism might be that in the end there were just a few too many stories that didn’t stand out as strongly as the ones described above. The anthology was much larger than most of the translator’s previous collections, but it couldn’t include everyone of note. Among the missing were early modern writers such as Ibrahim Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini and Tawfik al-Hakim; a good story by the former can be found in Modern Arabic Fiction (2005), the massive anthology edited by Salma Jayyusi. Other Egyptian writers for whom there was no space in Homecoming: Suhayr al-Qalamawi, Nawal el-Saadawi, Fathy Salama, Yusuf al-Qa’id, Ahdaf Soueif, Mona Ragab, Alaa al-Aswany and Sahar al-Muji.Stories by some of these authors are in Arab Women Writers (2005), The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction (2006, translated by Johnson-Davies), Egyptian Tales and Short Stories of the 1970s and 1980s (1987) and the Picador Book of African Stories (2000). Other anthologies of multiple Egyptian authors include Modern Egyptian Short Stories (1977) and Egyptian Short Stories (1978, translated by Johnson-Davies). Writers from Egypt plus other countries can be found in Modern Arabic Short Stories (1967), Arabic Short Stories (1983) and Under the Naked Sky (2000), all translated by Johnson-Davies.For this reader, the most interesting story writers from Egypt encountered thus far have been Teymour, Idris and Rifaat. Sixteen works by Teymour appear in Tales of Egyptian Life (1946), called the first volume of modern Arabic short stories to appear in English translation. Idris is in The Essential Yusuf Idris (2009), Rifaat in A Distant View of a Minaret and Other Stories (1983). These translations too were made by Johnson-Davies.

very good book throughly recomend