Summary
Egyptian novelist of the post-1952 generation, Nagib Mahfouz’s heir and, in “Cairo and Alexandria”, his most gifted disciple and younger friend, whose Zayni Barakat is set in the same Gamaliya districts as Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley (Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, PDF p.309, 326-327). The name is spelled “Gamal al-Ghitani” and “Ghitani” at PDF p.309, “Ghitany” at PDF p.311-312 and “el-Ghitani” at PDF p.326; all forms are held as printed (see the source page’s Open questions).
Details
- Several of his works — for example the recently translated Zayni Barakat — are set in districts like Gamaliyia (as printed), where Mahfouz’s Midaq Alley is also set; he considers himself one of Mahfouz’s heirs, and the overlap in setting and treatment confirms the generational relationship, made more explicit through the city of Cairo and Egyptian identity (PDF p.309). Note 1 gives Farouk Abdel Wahab’s translation of Zayni Barakat, published by Viking (1988) (PDF p.314).
- In “After Mahfouz” he is the comparison point for Elias Khoury: Khoury shares his gifts for invention and verbal bravura and, like him, is a practicing journalist, but differs as militant and editor (PDF p.311).
- Said walked Cairo’s most interesting route — the Azhar area, the Wikalet al-Ghuri, the Khan el Khalili Bazaar and the mile-long Shari Mu’izz el Din — with Ghitani, whose novel of intrigue in sixteenth-century Cairo, Zayni Barakat, is set in the Gamaliya district (PDF p.326-327).
- His theory about the street’s turns is psychological: rather than an endlessly long straight street, the architects broke it up to create a sense of wa’ad bil wusul (promises of arrival), deferring the distant trajectory and supplying momentary relief (PDF p.327).
- He knows all the attendants and custodians on the route and is a family friend of the keeper of the Suhami house, a seventeenth-century merchant’s residence; of its moucharabiya windows, which don’t use glass, he said they are “disciplining the sun”, the repetitive designs breaking up and taming the fierce light (PDF p.327).
Related pages
Nagib Mahfouz, Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays