A fascinating book and a great pleasure to read: Betool Khedairi is a talented new voice in fiction. — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
“...he was one of the great intellectuals of the 1940s who completed their higher studies in the West and returned to their country to apply what they had learned there—lock, stock, and barrel—within Egyptian academia. For people like them, “progress” and “the West” were virtually synonymous, with all that that entailed by way of positive and negative behavior. They all… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share
“She represents the beauty of the common people in all its vulgarity and provocativeness.” — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
Egyptians are like camels: they can put up with beatings, humiliation and starvation for a long time but when they rebel they do so… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
“I lived through beautiful times, Busayna. It was a different age. Cairo was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly. I was different too. I had my station in life, my money, all my friends were of a certain niveau, I had my special places where… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share
If you can't find good in your own country, you won't find it anywhere else. — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
“If you can’t find good in your own country, you won’t find it anywhere else.” The words slipped out from Zaki Bey, but he felt that they were ungracious so he smiled to lessen their impact on Busayna, who had stood up and was saying bitterly, “You don’t understand because you’re well-off. When you’ve stood for two hours at the… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share
“Sheikh Bilal had taken him aside the day before the wedding and spoken to him of marriage and his wife’s rights in the Law, stressing to him that there was nothing for a Muslim to feel shy about in marrying a woman who was not a virgin and that a Muslim woman’s previous marriage ought not to be a weak… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share
“...oh that short hair, a la garcon that evokes unfamiliar, boyish kinds of sex.” — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
I am according to my slave's expectations of me: if good, then good, and if bad, then bad. — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
“He had worked out long ago that police officers evaluated a citizen on the basis of three factors—his appearance, his occupation, and the way… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
“The concept of the benevolent dictator, just like the concepts of the noble thief or the honest whore, is no more than a meaningless… — Alaa Al Aswany Copy Share Image
