Blue Lorries

· A&C Black
1.0
1 review
Ebook
256
Pages

About this ebook

Nada is no stranger to protest. She is five years old when her French mother takes her to visit her Egyptian father, a political activist with a passing resemblance to President Nasser, in prison. When he returns home five years later, a changed man, their little family begins to fracture and eventually Nada's mother moves back to Paris. Through her teenage years Nada is surrounded by the language of protest – 'anarchism', 'Trotskyism', 'communism' – and, one summer in Paris, she discovers the '68 movement and her first love. And how to slam doors in anger.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Through student sit-ins, imprisonments, passionate arguments, accidental alliances, fallen friends, joys and regrets, Nada's story grows into the story of Egypt's many celebrated activists such as Arwa and Siham. Moving, uplifting and deeply human, Radwa Ashour's masterpiece is the story of Egypt in the second half of the twentieth century and a paean to all those who choose a life of activism and quiet defiance.

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1 review

About the author

Radwa Ashour is an Egyptian writer and scholar born in 1946. She is the author of numerous novels, short story collections and academic works and contributed to the essay collection Reflections on Islamic Art. A long-time professor of English literature at Ain Shams University in Cairo, she holds a PhD in African-American literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She lives in Cairo and is married to Palestinian writer Mourid Barghouti.

Barbara Romaine has previously translated three novels, including two by Radwa Ashour as well as Bahaa Taher's Aunt Safiyya and the Monastery. She has also published shorter pieces by Ibrahim Aslan and Mohamed Mansi Qandil. In 2011 her translation of Ashour's novel Spectres was runner-up in the competition for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.

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